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Organ Drops - TV Tropes It's an acquired taste. Video games have a tendency to confuse hunters with butchers, something that would save a lot of time in reality if it could be done in such a way. Thing is, most gamers live a modern sedentary lifestyle, not one where they have to hunt and kill small animals to survive. This may make some a bit squicked when they get meat from killing a monster or dangerous animal in a game. This is a common drop in many games and is understandable when your character or party is partaking in a long adventure (although occasionally unsavory — zombies that drop sausages? Ew.) However, some instances have higher squick potential than others... if the monster in question was possibly sapient or a transformed human, for example. Or if it is simply from animals which most people wouldn't see as all that tasty... such as giant spiders or cockroaches. Also, sometimes one wonders how you got pork from a wolf... did you rummage its stomach after cutting it apart? Or an egg from a hawk, did you rip that out of her? Combined with Video Game Stealing, it may create some Fridge Logic inducing events like stealing duplicates of parts it should only have one of, or inexplicably only having a chance to drop something they all appear to have. The most common version of this involves taking flesh, organs, hide or bones from animals or animal-like beings, but variants of this trope occur for other sorts of enemies. Plant-based enemies may yield parts of their own vegetal anatomies, robots or other automata may drop assortments of gears, springs, wires and other such paraphernalia as their equivalent of organ drops, and Blob Monsters may just drop lumps of their slime. Note that not all of these items are intended for food. It's common for them to be used for bounties, and additionally monster bits, parts and organs are often used in Item Crafting and as Eye of Newt for spells and potions. Sometimes they're simply Shop Fodder as well. If these Organ Drops are edible as food items to the player, may cross into I'm a Humanitarian. Will often involve a Loot Command to get, but not always. Sister Trope to Money Spider and Essence Drop. Contrast Impossible Item Drop. This is usually how one gets 20 Bear Asses, this trope also serves as the cornerstone of a Dungeon-Based Economy. See Also: Demanding Their Head, which is occasionally a setup for sidequests in games to target a specific enemy or monster and return with their severed head. Not to Be Confused with Piano Drop, which is about a keyboard instrument similar to that other organ falling overhead. ## Examples: - Cadaver has a turtle you have to kill with a cleaver to get a key. - Castlevania: "Rotten Meat" is a fairly common item drop from undead Zombie enemies. In some games, the item description says it comes from a recognizable farm animal. In others, it is somewhat more ambiguous. - Cave Story: "Jellyfish Juice" is an item that you need to find to advance the plot. Sure enough, you get it by killing a particular jellyfish enemy. Oddly enough, you find the juice inside a jar, inside a treasure chest that the jellyfish drops when you kill it. - The Legend of Zelda: - A variation is found in most 3D entries. ChuChus tend to drops lumps of the gel that makes them up. Some games also have them drop a useful item, which is visible floating inside them while they're alive. In Breath of the Wild, their elemental variants drop jelly charged with their specific element, as will regular ones killed with an elemental weapon. - The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds: Monster Tails, Monster Horns, and Monster Guts are used to make Blue, Yellow, and Purple Potions respectively. Lampshaded by one NPC who is understandably squicked out by the Purple Potion, and advises Link not to buy it. - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: - All the monsters drop parts unique to each species, including "[monster name] Guts" and assorted fangs, horns, claws, tails, eyeballs and the like. Non-organ drops are much rarer, and mostly consist of bundles of arrows dropped by archers and fish dropped by Octoroks (with the implication being that these are the creature's last, undigested meal). They're used for elixirs or upgrading armor with the Great Fairies, and can also be exchanged with Kilton for "Mon" currency at his shop. The skeletal stal- variants of some enemies only drop horns and fangs and lack the fleshy drops of their living counterparts. - The Talus and Pebblit Rock Monsters drop no organs, but instead scatterings of minerals. - In a variant, Guardians — Magitek robots — drop parts of their internal machinery such as screws, springs, gears, wheel shafts and power cores. These can be used for the same purposes as other monster parts (minus making elixirs) or turned into high-tech weaponry at Robbie's lab. - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom adds a handful of other unusual cases. Constructs drop their horns and power cores. Like-likes drop a stomach stone and a bundle of arrows, in this case due to due to their habit of eating weapons. Evermeans, enemies resembling animated trees, drop a log and an assortment of leaves, branches, lizards and beetles. The Fuse mechanic adds an additional use for monster parts, in that you can attach horns, claws, or fangs to weapons or arrows to increase their attack power or add other effects, like elementally-charged parts adding an elemental effect to attacks, eyes adding a homing effect to arrows, or wings increasing the range of arrows. - Animals only drop meat, with rarer and stronger kinds dropping higher-quality cuts. Birds drop increasingly large portions of meat — drumsticks, followed by bird thighs, followed by whole plucked birds. Eldin ostriches, the largest birds in the game, are notable for tending to drop either a whole bird plus an additional thigh or two (despite the whole bird model showing both legs in place) or just two whole birds. - Ōkami: The horns of slain demons can be collected and used as currency in certain stores. In the sequel Ōkamiden, this is changed to the bones, skin, and livers of the demons, which are used to upgrade your weapons. - Psychonauts does this. Use Pyrokinesis on squirrels for a tasty Roast Squirrel Dinner. As well as on Seagulls for a tasty Roast Bird. Raz: See you in hell! - Diablo II: - In Divinity: Original Sin II, a few sidequests involve obtaining a target's head as a unique Organ Drop: - Dungeon Master includes such tasty meals as screamer slices (chunks of mobile mushroom) and worm rounds (pieces of large purple worm). - * In Fallout: New Vegas, an NCR Major named Dhatri offers a bounty on three leaders of the Fiends, a gang of drugged up raiders. He asks for the heads as proof. If the player damages the heads too much in their efforts at collecting them, such as going for Boom, Headshot!, they will get a smaller reward. - Gothic plays this fairly realistically — many wild animals can be killed and harvested for chunks of raw meat, but the player needs to find an instructor in order to learn how to skin them and remove claws and teeth, which can then be sold to vendors. - Grim Dawn: Some Monster Infrequent items, which can only drop from certain monsters, take the form of body parts. This ranges from a basilisk's fangs used as jewelry, to a Dermapteran's claw used as a sword, to the heart of Theoden Marcell put on a stick and used as a scepter. - Monster Hunter: - The whole point of the game is to kill monsters for their gooey bits (scales, bones, and even organs) to make better weapons and armor to kill even stronger monsters for their gooey bits. Certain monsters will drop parts if you hit them hard enough or deal enough damage to certain parts of their bodies. Also, there are a couple that can be carved for parts while they're still alive. Even when you capture them alive with traps and tranq bombs, you're still rewarded with their gooey bits, and they're alive and well, contently sleeping in Astera despite having just lost their organs. - Gobul from Monster Hunter 3 (Tri) seems to be savvy about this, and leaves his whiskers out as a Schmuck Bait (not to say Gobul Whiskers aren't valuable). Anyone who incautiously tries to gather from them ends up getting spiked or bitten. - In Odin Sphere, most vegetables are mobile and thus, must be killed to be eaten, while most fruits just fall off a plant. And then there's the sheep. The sheep are fruits that similarly fall off a plant, and you have to hunt them down and kill them to get their meat. The chicken is a similarly squicky example for those who did not grow up on a farm: you hatch an egg and feed it seeds to get chicken meat. Or you could continue feeding it seeds to get more eggs. - Path of Exile: the Metamorph league added an encounter where certain monsters on the map drop an eye, brain, lung, heart, or liver (even if they logically shouldn't have one) and you take them to Tane Octavius to cook up a Metamorph in his vat, a monster which has moves of the enemy the organ parts came from and you kill for loot. - In Act 4, you need to gather Malachai's lungs, heart, and entrails from his three lieutenants, parts he left behind to shed his mortality. In Act 5, you take a pair of a templar's eyes to gain access to the Templar Courts. - In Toukiden, oni drop tongues, abdomens, etc. when they're killed. Large oni are fought by destroying their body parts one at a time and may drop limbs, horns, and more exotic substances. - The hearts of the spider splicers from BioShock can be harvested and used as medical supplies. - Blood had the people drop hearts which you could eat for health. You could kill the random sacrificial victims to do this. - In Half-Life 2 the antlion guardian in "Sandtraps" drops pheropods: pheromone containing sacs. You are advised to stand back while the vortigaunt opens the body since the "... process is not entirely hygenic." - In SMOD, an over-the-top mod for Half-Life 2, after killing enemies you can gib them to bloody bits and then eat the gibs for health. Awesome. Or gross. - In Half-Life 2: Episode Two, you can squish antlion grubs. Doing so will cause a yellow chunk of guts to pop out that you can eat for health. Seeing how they appear in three levels back to back ( To the White Forest, This Vortal Coil and Freeman Pontifex) with the middle one being a very long level with a bunch of angry antlions and few healing items, you'll want to kill them (if not for Get Some Grub). - System Shock 2 has alien organs for you to research as well. Doing so will grant you a permanent damage buff towards those creatures from that point onward. - In Progress Quest, many item drops are parts of the slain animal... including genitalia. - Ace Online loves this trope for its story quests: "Chill" of Sedium (being the organ that produces the supercooling liquid the Sediums spit as an attack), Rock Feathers (Rocks being a native species of predatory bird in the Ace Online world), Egg of Titanmoth, and so on. At least it also does this semi-logically with parts drops from mechanical enemies, like CPU of Watcher and Black Box of Downed Gear. Hilarity Ensues when the player tries to read the mission briefings for such bounties with a straight face. - Anarchy Online has a specific drop called "Monster Parts". It looks like what it sounds like. The icon is a mishmash of organs in a bloody ball. - Final Fantasy XI actually has you go after literal organs for a quest. One such organ is a brain. Qutrubs seem to have no preference for them, however. - Not just for quests—lots of monsters drop blood and/or various organs, but most of them are nonsentient. And none of them are human. - Kingdom of Loathing: Used to parody Money Spider, and also used for regular drops. It is also somewhat disturbingly and confusingly due to the fact that one can pickpocket such things as a skeleton's skull, the entire body of a bat, someone's sword, the skin and fur of certain animals, bat guano (uh, that wasn't a pocket...) or the creature's own corpse, and it doesn't have any effect on the fight. In fact, almost everything in Kingdom of Loathing drops meat (the game's currency), apart from monsters who logically wouldn't have meat to drop (plants, skeletons, automatons, ghosts, constellations, constructs that exist only in your mind as a result of a mushroom trip, etc). Considering that there are some interesting descriptions of how you get it (e.g. pushing two people into a crocodile's mouth and grabbing what it spits out)... - It's also possible to create such delicious food items as a rat appendix chow mein from the various body parts dropped by enemies. Yum. - Parodied by Word of God, in fact: When questioned about the issue about pickpocketing vital organs, skin, or the entirety of the monster from monsters, the game's designers always simply state that the monster just happened to be carrying that item from some other monster at the time you stole it. Which brings up an entirely new set of disturbing questions which are dutifully ignored. - La Tale has some enemies drop dolls of themselves. This is later explained by an NPC that it's the player that has been making dolls out of enemy parts.... Squick. - Ragnarok Online: Monsters typically drop a piece of themselves as Shop Fodder. This was actually a nod to the original manhwa: early on Chaos and Iris Irene needed proof to collect a bounty on a monster they were hunting, so they chopped off a piece of it. - RuneScape: - The reward for a special survival horror themed quest is the "Asylum Doctor's Ring" which causes various specific enemies to drop "Undercooked Mystery Meat". The enemies? Humans. - Less grossly, virtually every enemy drops bones of some kind. - Most types of demons, Edimmu, and Lava Strykewyrms, drop ashes instead of bones when killed because they combust when they die. - A few enemies in the game, mainly bosses, have a chance of dropping body parts that can be used for making weapons and armor, or upgrading existing ones. For example, Noxious weapons are made from parts of the Giant Spider boss Arraxi. - Several kinds of dragons, and also cows and some snakes drop hides which can be used for making leather armor. Vyrewatch, most kinds of shades, and Eddimu drop remains that have to be cremated to get a reward. - A few enemies like cows and giant rats drop meat, and birds drop feathers. - Pigs drop uncooked bacon and pig teeth. - Tree of Savior follows RO's example in that the most common loot from monsters will be some sort of organ or body part. However, unlike RO, most of these drops are usable in Item Crafting. - Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning has all sorts of organs drop; the butchering profession allows some of them to be used to make potions. - World of Warcraft - Mystery Meat is something dropped by many foes, including reptilian, bird-like, and bug-like ones. It is possible to make it into character-usable food, but most just feed it to their pets. In addition to this, World of Warcraft has, among other things, livers, giblets, jaws, rotting carcasses, and for certain bounties, heads. The strange part is, Azeroth does have actual butchers, usually the guys selling Cooking supplies, who given their equipment, do it the traditional way. - Not to mention the "pound of flesh" dropped by certain undead monsters. I decided not to touch it. - Also shows up in pickpocketing certain creatures; a common drop from pickpocketable canines (they do exist) is a 'Chew Toy'. The icon is of an eyeball... - Depending on your skills, you can expand even expand this. Leatherworking lets you harvest hides, Mining lets you get gems from rock-monsters, and Herbalism lets you get herbs from plant-monsters. - A goblin in Tanaris has invented a mechanical butcher in order to reduce waste and increase efficiency in gathering these drops. Guess who gets to test it? Like most of the stuff they build, it's clearly not ready for the open market; it's not nearly as clean as the regular way, and it seems to love its job a little too much, gleefully singing as it tears the carcass apart. - There's a rather desirable Unidentified Organ that drops from the horribly mutated body of Professor Putricide. - Among the many lovely drops you can get in zOMG! are eyes, bladders, teeth, and tentacles. - Many of your enemies are animated objects, so this could also apply to other loot items; presumably that piece of suede you picked up was taken from the body of that purse you just smacked down. - HellMOO lets players butcher various parts from other players, NPCs, and creatures. Virtually any part can be removed by someone with a knife and sufficient skill to avoid hacking it into a bloody mess, making it disturbingly common for newbies to hack off the boobs of rabid preteen orphans after brutally murdering them for money and XP....and then eating said boobs. - In Lost Souls (MUD), organs can be cut from corpses. Players, apparently all channeling their inner 13-year-old boy, cannot seem to get over their amusement at one of said organs being the anus. - Jak and Daxter: Metal Heads drop skull gems upon death, which are exactly what they sound like: large yellow gems embedded in their skulls. In Jak II: Renegade they can be collected and traded in to unlock Dark abilities; in Jak 3 they can be used to unlock sidequests. - Prehistorik: Enemies aren't killed, but rather turned into meat drops temporarily (they're still animated and start walking again after a few seconds). By walking over the body, you EAT THEM ALIVE, producing a giant bone (that rise into the air with points written on it). In the last level, your enemies are other cavemen. (Also, everything seems to just contain one big bone... including cookies and ice cream... which can be found underwater... in a game taking place in the stone age.) - Scribblenauts: Animals turn into steaks when they die. And not just cows, every animal turns into a functionally identical steak. The steak Tastes Like Chicken. Probably. - Roguelikes such as NetHack and Dungeon Crawl often require the player to eat foes' corpses to survive, leading to amusing but disturbing messages like, "This chunk of giant cockroach flesh tastes terrible." In most such games there's only a chance of a corpse being dropped, which can be frustrating if the player character is hungry or starving. Also leads to unnerving messages like: "The kitten eats a hobbit corpse", "The kitten eats a human corpse", "The kitten eats a housecat corpse" and "Yum! That was real brain food!" In most Roguelikes where players have to eat corpses you can just eat the corpse whole, but in Dungeon Crawl you have to first butcher the corpse into chunks, meaning that not only do you have to have an appropriate tool like a dagger, you also have to at least one hand free in order to use the tool. One hand stuck to a cursed shield and the other to a cursed sword? No butchering (or eating corpses) for you until you get one of them uncursed. - Baroque: Your only way to survive is to eat the monster's meat and hearts, which is already squicky in itself...and then you learn that they are actually \|\|humans deformed by their delusions...\|\| - Cataclysm lets you butcher the corpses of your dead enemies for materials such as bones, fur and leather (which need to be prepared before you can use them for crating), and, of course, meat. The game doesn't distinguish between different types of meat (except for monster and human flesh), so eating dog, turkey, or mutated cockroach meat has the exact same effect. If you have a blood draw kit, you can also get some blood. - Elona: Monsters will sometimes drop organs, which serve as Shop Fodder. They show up more often the higher the player's anatomy skill. - Albion has the Varniaks and Krondirr drop various body parts (a sphere shaped object in the venom gland for the former, a crystalline formation embedded in the forehead and a piece of meat for the later) that can be sold. Krondirr meat is also useful for feeding man-eating plants so they don't kill you when you step on them (which is necessary in order to make it through one of the dungeons). - Blue Dragon features a race of enemies that are effectively sentient animal poo. You can search the corpses. - Contact: There are five kinds of base "meat," and almost every kind of organic enemy will drop one of the five (especially if you use the eviscerating skill Gut on it, which highly ups the chance of Organ Drops). All friendly animals drop generic Meat, all enemy animals drop generic Wild Game, all flying animals drop Chicken, bugs drop Mystery Meat, and undead things drop Rotten Meat. Some enemies will drop Eggs if they're Gutted, which has its own weird implications. And then it's possible to use Gut on inorganic enemies... - Dragon Age: Origins has several variations of organs found on dead enemies like Demonic Ichor and "corpse gall" from the undead which is part of a quest provided by the local church. It also possible to collect wolf skins from said animals, including werewolves who you can hold conversations with just before you kill them. One of the earliest quests has you and your fellow Gray Warden wannabes collecting vials of darkspawn blood to use in the Joining Ritual... to drink. This is the most Badass beverage ever as it carries a death sentence of a few decades with it — if it doesn't kill you outright — so the Grey Wardens can sense darkspawn and stop Blights. - Even more disgusting variant: in Dragon Quest VIII, some bull-shaped creatures drop cowpats, and dragons drop dragon dung. Both can be used to craft useful items (dragon dung in particular is a component for a particular kind of cheese) but still, ew. - Drakensang: In both games, you can obtain certain body parts from killed enemies if your "fauna" skill was high enough. Some of the stuff you can get can be sold for money (Spider fangs, Scorpion's Tails, Silk Glands, Wolves paws) while certain parts can be used for ingredients to craft equipment or potions (like Harpy's Feathers, Crab's Pincers and Bear's Teeth). - The Elder Scrolls: - Starting with Daggerfall, you can typically pick apart the corpse of fallen monsters for certain alchemy-ready body parts common to that creature, from meat to skin to ectoplasm to (Deadra) hearts. And in latter cases these parts are edible. In a particularly squicky example, you can harvest flesh from zombies and eat it if one chooses. Mmmm—cannibalism and rotting flesh. - Morrowind: - Oblivion: - Has a sidequest in which you have to kill the target and bring his heart back for proof (the target has also killed another Argonian assassin before you get there, and offers a deal in which you take his heart instead). - Minotaurs and Ogres are considered semi-intelligent sapient species, but several of their body parts have a high value to alchemists. This leads to a Sapient Fur Trade in Minotaur Horns and Ogre Teeth, with hunters ignoring their sapience in killing them for their valuable parts. - In the Mehrunes Razor plug-in, one way to get the eponymous artifact is to eat the beating heart of its guardian. \|\|After extracting it.\|\| - Averted with human hearts and skin, which are some of the rarest items in the game and are never dropped by humans, despite their... obvious abundance. - The Shivering Isles expansion requires that you collect a specific woman's eye as a magic ingredient for enchanting a powerful relic, because it's the only eye left that's witnessed the End of an Age. - Skyrim: - One can occasionally find human hearts and flesh, usually in wooden bowls near corpse found in world not found as a pick up from defeated enemies, these are both Alchemy ingredients and can thus be eaten. - And dragons drop dragon bones, scales, and if Kahvozein's fang is equipped heartscales, in addition to the soul you absorb automatically. - Also after completing the quest Taste of Death \|\|and obtaining the Ring of Namira, one can actually eat defeated enemies for boosted health and regeneration.\|\| - Forsworn Briarhearts are semi-zombie soldiers animated by the briar heart embedded in their chest, hence the name. A skilled player can pickpocket the heart for an instant kill. - Several body parts of Giants are said to be quite valuable alchemically. In-game, one can only take their toes, but in the lore, their teeth and thumbs also have alchemical properties. - Fallout: - Fallout 3: - Every killable animal drops some kind of meat that can be eaten for HP, with the usual downside of increased radiation. Deathclaws drop Deathclaw Hands, which are used to make weapons. Each Deathclaw only drops one hand, perhaps because the player character can only use the right hand. The game also features "Radroach Meat", which you find on dead roaches even if you have reduced them to a glowing pile of dust with your plasma rifle. - With the Cannibal perk, the player can also consume the corpses of their human enemies, for a penalty of lowered karma. And if an ally or neutral NPC sees you doing it, they're likely to start shooting you. In Fallout: New Vegas, eating twenty-five corpses gives you the challenge perk "Dine and Dash", letting you scavenge chunks off the freshly dead before you dig in. Yum. - Fallout: New Vegas adds another perk called "Ghastly Scavenger", which lets you eat Feral Ghouls and Super Mutants. Old World Blues adds the perks "Them's Good Eatin'" and "Mile in Their Shoes". The former gives you a 50/50 change of each living creature to have one to three thin red paste or blood sausages on their corpses when killed, allowing you to eat them as is or cook thick red paste and black blood sausages for extra health and caps. note : With this perk, all other food items can be ignored, but to get the perk you have to be at least level 20 and have 55 survival points. The latter, gives you bonuses note : +1 Perception, +5 Poison Resistance and +5 Sneak for 4 minutes after consuming when you eat Nightstalker squeezin's, though you have to find/make Nightstalker squeezin's yourself. - In earlier Fallout titles, Radscorpion tails are the only organ drops. Certain NPCs can use them to make antidotes, though poison is not especially dangerous and the tails are rather heavy. - There's also the bounty hunting quest (Three Card Bounty) where you have to retrieve the intact heads of three Fiends, which means no headshots if you want the full price of the bounty. While you can get 1st Recon to aid you in killing Driver Nephi, it's generally not recommended as they will aim for Nephi and get a head shot. - Final Fantasy XII: Some enemies also drop pieces of meat after being defeated. Including zombies. You cannot eat it, however, it's used to make items in the bazaar. - What's more, you'll be seeking out zombies' Festering Flesh and Maggoty Flesh—undead drops usually have the best cash-to-time-and-effort-expended ratio in the game. - This gets a little creepy when you use the Steal command to get extra loot. Not only can you skin an animal of its pelt during battle, when it dies it has a chance of dropping a second pelt. - The game has a system where killing the same variety of enemy repeatedly, without killing any other variety in-between, increases the drop rate of items. Get the kill chain high enough, and each kill will result in multiple drops — it's not clear just how many pelts a wolf might have or how many shells a turtle might have, but you can get three or four from each kill even before stealing shenanigans are included. - Horizon Zero Dawn: - A mechanical variant — Aloy can rummage through defeated robots to scavenge mechanical odds, ends, and tidbits such as lenses, springs, heating coils, power cores, and sundry robotic components. By virtue of half-feral machines making up most of the setting's "wildlife", an at least passable knowledge of mechanics and the ability to efficiently salvage technology from wrecks is an important part of being a hunter. - Wild animals can be looted for assorted cuts of meat, hides, and bones. - Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: On Dxun, the moon of planet Onderon, you are tasked by a local Mandalarian to make yourself useful by hunting down Cannocks that have eaten parts of the thing he's trying to repair. Once you're done, your player character is understandably disgusted. - The Last Remnant: You can get body parts from defeated monsters, useful for upgrading your gear and that of your companions. You can also occasionally take a defeated monsters alive, at which point you get to decide to sell them whole to various merchants for a high price or carve them up for parts right then and there. Butchering captured monsters is far more likely to net you rarer organ drops, so it's a choice between useful parts or good money. - Persona 3: Elizabeth's Requests often involve hunting specific Shadows in Tartarus and returning with bits of their bodies. The squick factor drops somewhat since the parts she wants are often inorganic... as are, for that matter, the Shadows you're hunting. You can't get the drops without having that quest active; reasonable, since you wouldn't know that part could be removed otherwise. - Planescape: Torment: Parts are valuable treasure. There are skulls in abundance, sure, but the only organs you can harvest are... your own. Even from other people's bodies. You can get a shot of your own eyeball down at the local pub. And if you're not too squicked and wondering "What the hell am I doing with this?" you might be struck with the crazy idea to eat it. But surprisingly you're rewarded with some of the best benefits for doing this. - Planet Alcatraz is surprisingly reserved with drops from non-human enemies. Gerbils drop gerbil skins, Dogs drop dog fur, and Pig-bulls drop meat; the baboons and gorilloid sometimes drop necklaces (presumably taken from their victims). - Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey: Many of the enemy drops are either items carried by the demon (as shown in the artwork) or Organ Drops, such as feathers, angel hearts and wings, tails and scales, etcetera. Shin Megami Tensei IV has some demons even drop certain edible items. On the whole, though, while present, the trope is downplayed there. One of the earliest quests from SMT IV is about a drunkard from Mikado wanting livers from the Tangata Manu demon. To help with his hangover. Try to think about how that could work... - Tales of Symphonia: Getting Juicy Meat from the Sasquatch in the Meltokio Coliseum... ew. As well as getting meat and eggs from giant spiders. Another oddity is moving and, for all we know, sapient bell pepper trees providing you with bell peppers. - Early games are... weirder. In Tales of Phantasia, every mammal dropped beef (later games also added pork — seriously, bear pork!), every bird dropped chicken, plants dropped lettuce or some such, and so on. And it was even worse in the first incarnation where there were a hundred food items and a nebulous "food bag". - Similarly, in Tales of the Abyss, you can get beef from the decidedly porcine Armaboar enemies. - This sort of thing underlies a lot of the Item Crafting in Vesperia and Hearts. - Ultima VII: Dead deer yield five legs of venison. - The Witcher: You need to collect body parts of monsters in order to complete various quests. They are also necessary as ingredients for alchemical potions. The body parts include wolf livers, tongues, blood and fangs from various undead monsters, and even tendons from the sentient Vodyanoi (basically fish-men), but never regular human body parts. If you elect to kill \|\|the watch captain\|\| that is also a werewolf, you get to make a special potion using his heart as an ingredient. - Dwarf Fortress The products derived from butchering an animal include everything the animal would actually have; you can make food from their muscle and organs (including things like brains, hearts and eyes), tan their skin into leather, carve their bones, hooves, horns, and so forth into crafts, render their fat into tallow... the only unusable body parts are nervous tissue. - Necromancers and evil biomes can reanimate body parts, which include untanned hides, hair which hasn't been spun into thread, and even clam shells. Players who set up a fortress in evil biomes never butcher animals, since the hide and hair which isn't processed immediately is likely to rise up and kill people. - In Adventurer mode, you can slake your thirst with the blood of dragons. - The game's still-slightly-spotty values of things like space, mass and culture also occasionally ends up with things like traders bringing you a barrel full of monarch butterfly ichor. - There are some humorous discrepancies between what parts a creature has when alive and gives when butchered. For instance, butchering mountain goats suddenly makes their eyeballs disappear, and hydras used to only give one skull instead of seven. And you get the exact same amount of leather out of a newborn kitten and an adult elephant. - Certain bones are much more valuable than others. This led to the infamous "Mermaid Farming" incident note : whatever you're imagining, the reality is almost certainly worse, which is famous for being probably the only time in the game's history when Toady One has implemented a change in the next release specifically to kill a piece of Emergent Gameplay. He needn't have bothered, though; turns out even DF players have standards. - Disgaea: Hour of Darkness - There is one monster whose equipment is a brain, a body (muscle) and a \|\|horse wiener\|\|. They don't drop, but you can steal them. - You can also steal teeth, which make you go faster. - Some monster weapons also qualify, based on their descriptions as teeth, spines, claws, and the like. - ARK: Survival Evolved: certain animals drop trophy items which are used to get access to the boss monsters. Many of them are bones, (such as sauropod vertebrae or meaglodon teeth) whole body parts, (such as tyrannosaurus arms or tusoteuthis tentacles) or substances produced by their bodies, (titanoboa and megalania poisons) but some of them really do drop organs, namely allosaur brains, alpha tusoteuthis eyes, giganotosaurus hearts, and yutrannus lungs. To a lesser extent, the player implicitly harvests basically all the "unimportant" organs of any animal as they butcher them for meat, hide, and other resources. - Minecraft: All enemies and most animals drop body parts when slain, including various cuts of edible meat from animals, feathers from chickens, cow leather, rabbit hides, sheep wool, squid ink sacs, rotten zombie flesh, spider eyes, bones from skeleton archers, balls of slime from the slime monsters, heads from wither skeletons, and phantom wing membranes; iron golems, artificial metal constructs, drop chunks of iron. Weapons and armor are only dropped from enemies that are visibly carrying or wearing it, although skeleton archers may drop arrows. Creepers are an odd case — they drop gunpowder, but since they attack by exploding (and never drop gunpowder when they detonate themselves), this is implied to also be a part of their internal biology. - Red Dead Redemption: You can harvest useful body parts from killed animals, like coyote skins, but only by whipping out your knife and messily (but blessedly offscreen) butchering the carcass. The value of the resulting trophy depends on your Survival skill, so it's worth more the better a butcher/skinner you are. - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: In Shadow of Chernobyl, this occurs when a vendor asks you to recover the eye or foot of a particular monster. The drop only occurs if you have the quest, it's not possible to collect the items ahead of time along the way. These are very annoying as the organ drop is random despite you carrying a knife. How do you botch up cutting off a dead creature's foot ten times in a row? - Terraria: - Slimes drop slime gel. - Eaters of Souls drop rotten chunks of meat. - Demon Eyes drop lenses. - Enemies in the Crimson drop Vertebrae. - The Brain of Cthulhu (and its minions) drop Tissue Samples. - Hornets drop their stingers. - Angry Bones drop bone fragments. - The Man-Eater plants in the Underground Jungle drop vines. - The Black Recluses in Hardmode drop their fangs. - All bosses have a chance of dropping a decorative trophy upon death, a wooden shield-shape with the boss' body part. - Valheim: All enemies in the game drop at least one item (meat and skin for boars and deer, bones for skeletons, eyes for greydwarves, etc.), most of which find use in Item Crafting or cooking (disturbingly, the zombie-like draugr drop Entrails, hich are used to make sausages). - They exist in one- and two-star variants, which are tougher but yield two or three times the loot. Which leads to some odd moments when an elite greydwarf apparently has 3 eyes. - Enemies also have a small chance to drop a trophy (read: their head) independently of how many stars they have, some of which are used in Item Crafting. - Dungeons & Dragons: Early editions have monsters with body parts that are useful in creating magic items, particularly potions. - Hackmaster takes this to an extreme: a standard part of monster descriptions is the "yield", the body parts that have some use (medicinal, magical, etc.) - Rifts tends to list a monster's useful body parts as well as how much you might be able to get for a whole live one. Mind you, this may also include species' or races that are acceptable as Player Characters... - I Woke Up As a Dungeon, Now What?: Killing a dungeon's minions may cause them to randomly drop useful body parts, and people with the Harvesting ability can keep a minion's corpse from fading long enough to harvest additional bits. Taylor's initial refusal to let the inhabitants of Fort Aeresya kill her minions causes some tension, since it dramatically reduces the amount of loot they can harvest from her.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrganDrops
Orichalcum - TV Tropes Just Orichalcum is a legendary precious metal that was mentioned by Plato as used in Atlantis. Orichalcum appears in many other places in classical Greek and Roman writings (for example, the Homeric Hymns assign gold and orichalcum ornaments to Aphrodite) but it's the Atlantis reference that it's remembered for. one of orichalcum's many forms. It has since been commonly used in fantasy literature and games as a type of Unobtainium. The term is Greek for "golden stone" and originally meant "mountain copper" or "mountain metal", though nobody is sure exactly what it was supposed to be. Possibilities range from an alloy of normal metals to a completely fantastic material, though the most common perception is that it is brass. note : Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc that superficially looks like gold. Supported by, among other things, the discovery of a 6th century BC Greek ship carrying ingots of brass. Due to pronunciation changes, this word sometimes gets reborrowed as "orihalcon", particularly with works of Japanese origin. If you're curious why, in Ancient Greek the word was pronounced something like "ore-eh-kal-kos", which is reasonably similar to how it's pronounced in modern English, but in modern day Greece it's pronounced more like "oriy-khal-kos", with the "kh" in the middle being a cross between a K sound and a H sound. If you speak Scottish or German, it's the "ch" sound in loch or acht. Japanese borrowed the word based on this modern Greek pronunciation, but it further became muddled into オリハルコン orihalkon, which unfortunately is different enough translators often fail to recognize it as orichalcum. (If Japanese borrowed the word based on English instead, it'd probably be spelled オリカルカム orikalkam.) Compare Mithril, Adamantium, Hihi'irokane and Thunderbolt Iron. Subtrope of Fantasy Metals and/or Green Rocks. ## Examples: - Black Cat: The Chronos Guardians use weapons made of orichalcum. - Hyper Police: Natuski has an orihalcon dagger. - The Mysterious Cities of Gold: In the second season, it's revealed that all of the Mu artifacts we've seen (including the city) aren't actually made of gold, but Orichalcum. This does solve the problem of why an advanced race would make an aircraft out of an extremely heavy and brittle metal with a low melting point. - In Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water Nadia's pendant is eventually revealed to be made of orichalcum (and associated with Atlantis). - In Orichalcum Reycal, orichalcum is a type of clay that can be used to create orichalcums - sentient dolls with supernatural powers linked to their master's will. The protagonist's orichalcum, Reycal, is initially weak due to being sculpted from a 40-60 mix of orichalcum with mundane clay. - Peter Grill and the Philosopher's Time: Weapons made of orichalcum are the only weapons powerful enough to harm monsters called semimoles. Since semimoles haven't been seen in a 100 years, everyone started relaxing and forgot how to forge orichalcum, except for the studious Mithlim. A semimole shows up and Peter is able to kill it with an orichalcum weapon provided by Mithlim. Peter then lectures everyone on relaxing and tells them to shape up and relearn how to forge orichalcum. - In Saint Seiya, Poseidon's Mariners wear orichalcum armor, while Athena's Saints wear armor made of an alloy including the metal. - Spriggan: The weapons and body armor used by Yu Ominae, the US Army's Machineer's Platoon and the Trident Corporation, are made of "orihalcon" or "omihalcon". - Transformers: Armada has the Mini-Cons from a sunken city called the Orichalcum (translated as "Olihalicons"). - The White Whale Of Mu: "Orihalcon" is sought by the Atlanteans. - Yu-Gi-Oh!: Used in association with Atlantis, as "the Orichalcos". It's a mysterious glowing, turquoise, rock-like substance that fell from the sky 10,000 years ago; the ancient Atlanteans used it to create a Magitek Utopia, but it was also The Corruption and turned nearly everyone into monsters and The Good King, Dartz, into an Immortal Brainwashed and Crazy Evil Sorcerer and Omnicidal Maniac, and pressed him into unleashing an Eldritch Abomination to destroy the world and create Paradise from the ruins. It was ultimately the reason Atlantis sunk beneath the waves. - The members of DOMA all had rings with bits of Orichalcum in them and used the Spell Card "Seal of Orichalcos", which lets you have double the maximum number of monsters on the field, grants each of them 500 ATK... and creates an unbreakable forcefield around the duelists based on the Seal, and if you lose a duel inside the Seal, your soul gets eaten by the Leviathan. Dartz himself has two more versions of the card that grant additional effects, as well as an entire deck of Monster Cards and Trap Cards themed on the Orichalcos. The only way to break the Seal is is to use a piece of Orichalcum, hence the rings they use, although it seems like they can only be broken from the outside so they are only good for ending someone else's Duel. - Well, hitting it really hard with a Millennium Item works too... for a given definition of "works". - Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has an unrelated character, Jim Crocodile Cook, with an "Eye of Orichalcum" embedded in his face. This granted him certain powers. - Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka, orichalcum is a magical metal that is used in e.g. bullets against Disas or rogue magical users. - Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai: In the "Holy Sword Arc", the main characters decide Dai needs a sword made of orichalcum to use his full power. Eventually, Dai gets one orichalcum sword. - Orichalcum is retrieved from Atlantis in the opening scene of Iron Man Noir, in which it's a MacGuffin power source. - Mickey Mouse Comic Universe: In a story where Mickey and Goofy are working with an archeologist to rediscover Atlantis, orichalcum is a nigh-indestructible conductor metal. \|\|It's only indestructible as long as it's conducting. If not, it's very brittle\|\|. - The Princess and the Dragon: Orichalcum enhances a sorcerer's control over magic and can even give magic to someone who didn't originally possess any, but it also corrupts its wielder's soul. - In Tales from the Dark Side of the Mirror, Orichalcum is mentioned and used by Mirror Twilight in her \|\|Mana Collector\|\| due to its durability and magic resistance. \|\|As a result, she has a major Oh, Crap! when it shatters due to overload, since the amount of magic required to do that is tremendous.\|\| She also also \|\|makes chains of it to hold Trixie, but Maud breaks them, pointing out that since they were just magical copies of a sample she got rather than forged, they're far weaker than it otherwise would've been.\|\| - In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic The Long Eventide, the mysterious Umbral Society passes along an artefact to one of their members that has orchicalcum in it. What exact properties the metal gives this artefact is currently unknown. - Biggles: Biggles discovers the substance and then loses it again in a landslide in a short story from "Biggles, Charter Pilot". - Ciaphas Cain: - Subtly name-dropped in Caves of Ice, where the company is deployed to an ice planet called Simia Orichalcae... yep, "Brass Monkey". - The metal itself shows up in a few of the novels. In Cain's Last Stand, the main hangar doors of Orelius' ship are described as "vast slabs of orichalcum chased with gold filigree". - Decipher: Orichalcum is used used in association with Atlantis. - Dinotopia: Orichalcum appears as a substance used in a piece of a key, first thought to be bronze. - The Golden Oecumene: In The Golden Transcedence, a projected future includes more Oecumenes about other star systems. One is the Orichalcum Oecumene. - The Heroes of Olympus: The Greek gods and demigods use a metal known as celestial bronze, a metal mined from Mt. Olympus, while their Roman counterparts use a metal known as imperial gold, made by enchanting regular gold. As noted above, Orichalcum means "mountain copper" and the Romans transliterated it as Aurichalcum meaning "gold copper", so those two metals are symbolically this trope. They're supernatural metals capable of harming monsters, gods and their descendants; however, they can't harm mortals — they're simply not metaphysically important enough for the metals to register their presence. - Pendragon Cycle: Orichalcum is is a substance used in Atlantis. - Slayers: It's spelled "orihalcon", and its schtick is magic resistance — it can block any spells. - The Story Of The Amulet: Orichalcum is used by the Atlanteans. - That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: It can be used as a valuable material to forge powerful weapons and armor, and is produced by fusing gold with Magisteel (metal forged from magic ore transformed by exposure to high concentrations of magicules), which transforms the gold into an extremely durable metal that conducts magical power very well while retaining its various unique properties. It sees its most noticeable use as the building blocks for \|\|Veldora's skeleton monster in the Labyrinth as well as being the material Rimuru uses to create the skeletons of the Artifical Human bodies he prepped for three of his Primordial Demons while the other demons get "just" magisteel skeletons.\|\| - GoGo Sentai Boukenger: One treasure from Atlantis is first thought to be made of orichalcum. This treasure turns out to be the Vril, an artifact that gathers information from nearby objects to duplicate them in order to eventually replace the human race. - In Embers in the Dusk, it was made by the Remnant Kingdom, after they studied the Eternal (a not-quite-successful Great One) in an attempt to replicate his shell, which even the Ancient One could barely scratch. It's a bronze-colored metal matching the best the C'tan have, but the humans can only produce it at great expense. A single regular Marine suit with Orichalcum costs about fifty times as much an an Advanced Terminator Suit. - Arduin: The spell "Gandolyn's Gates" traps a person in a tower of orichalcum. - Conspiracy X: Atlantis exists, as does their mythical alloy "Orichalcum". It turns out that the Atlanteans are so advanced that their orichalcum is a product of nanotechnology in the days of Classical Greece. - D 20 Sytem: In Advanced Gamemaster's Guide, orichalcum is a material used to make weapons and armor. - Dungeons & Dragons: In Points of Light, mention is made of a magical metal called "orium" that has a "red-gold" appearance and was used by ancient empires, but which has since been lost and has yet to be rediscovered — in no small part due to the fact that the byproducts of fashioning it are lethally poisonous. The metallic dragon associated with orium is a serpentine figure with an affinity for ancient ruins and lost secrets, which it defends with its toxic Breath Weapon. - Earthdawn has the five True Elements: earth, air, fire, water, and wood. You get the golden metal orichalcum by combining all five. - In Exalted, Orichalcum is a magical metal associated with the Solar Exalted. The manufacturing process involves smelting gold in the heart of a volcano while using an elaborate array of mirrors to shine distilled sunlight on the metal (why? Because it's Exalted). - GURPS: Orichalcum looks just like bronze but it much stronger and automatically makes blades forged from it extremely sharp. - It's also a room-temperature superconductor, should anyone come along who knows how to use that sort of thing, as noted in the Infinite Worlds sourcebook. - In the Atlantis sourcebook it's also an "etheric resonator" if local physics allows such a thing, enabling a Steampunk campaign to keep the "advanced power source" concept without moving too far from the paradigm. In either case, it also has "additional secondary useful properties" allowing its use as "an all-purpose technobabble keyword". - Appears in the Immortals Handbook — EPIC BESTIARY: Volume One by Eternity Publishing as a red metal found in the heart of dead stars. The metal is so insanely dense and heavy that it has to be diluted with adamantine in order for even regular deities to be able to carry weapons made from it. - Mage: The Awakening: Orichalcum is produced by magically passing gold between the material world and Twilight until most of its substance is gone. It has no overtly magical properties of its own, but can be combined into alloys that can then hold powerful enchantments. The only one given is thaumium, which absorbs magic. - Mutants & Masterminds has it as a golden metal from Atlantis, whose secret is lost. - Nephilim has "orichalka" as a material from Saturn, used in the fight against the Nephilim in Atlantis. - Pathfinder: "Horacalcum" is a fantastically expensive coppery metal obtained from meteorites and alien planets that distorts time around it, allowing wearers of horacalcum armor to perceive threats more quickly. The centerpiece of Adrati Kalm's Golden Ossuary, itself a monument to Conspicuous Consumption, is a horacalcum vault of incredible value \|\|which has the side-effect of preserving his remains in a bubble of slowed time for easy resurrection\|\|. - Shadowrun has had Orichalcum available since not long after the Awakening. It's a very rare metal material known for its potency in reacting with and conducting magic, and can only be synthesized with magic. It has set the standard for the potency of magic reagents, and while it's not necessary for it, orichalcum is used to create the most powerful magic foci. - 7th Dragon: The final game, Code VFD, reveals that special swords made to slay the True Dragons, Dragonslayers, can only be forged from this mythical metal. - Age of Mythology: "Orichalkos" is all over the Atlantean civilization of the expansion pack "The Titans". It's used to explain some of their more advanced technology (like the Fire Siphon), a common mentioned material of advanced upgrades and the strongest material the Atlanteans can make their walls. The metal is also mentioned to magically become very lightweight after being quenched in seawater. - Arcana Heart: Orichalkos is the arcana of metal (and a huge frickin' dragon). - Shows up in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey as a currency accepted by only one merchant who sells rare goods. All other merchants accept drachmae. - Blob Wars has a quest to collect 25 boxes of orichalcum beads. - Castlevania: Curse of Darkness: Available by Video Game Stealing as an ore used to forge powerful items. - City of Heroes and City of Villains have it as salvage. - Dept. Heaven: The Grim Angels use weapons made of this material. - Dragon Age II: Orichalcum appears as a crafting material. - The Elder Scrolls has a tower made of "orichalc", which was on a sunken continent named Yokuda. - As of Skyrim, orichalcum is a blackish-green metal used to make Orcish armor and weapons, which in previous installments was just high quality steel equipment. Such items are known for their green tint and being "ugly and strong, like those that forged them." - Oddly, "Dwemer Metal" better fits the traditional description of orichalcum — it's a lustrous red-gold, an ancient and advanced civilization used it to make all their wonders, and it isn't found naturally, forcing players to smelt down items from Dwemer ruins for ingots. - Endless Ocean: The orichalcum ingot is one of the legendary treasures in Blue World, and is the most expensive non-treasure chest salvageable item (and the fourth most expensive overall). - Endless Space: Orichalx is a late-game strategic material, noted in the original to be an orange metal useful for extreme conditions. The sequel brought the material back and made it the strongest ship armor in the game, but also changed it to a purple crystal. - EOE: Eve of Extinction: Used for both the main character's weapon and the bosses' weapons. It's awkwardly pronounced in-game as "OriKILLUM" and "oRICKulum." - In Fate/Grand Order Lostbelt No. 5 "Atlantis", after analyzing the nanomachines Theos Klironomia are, da Vinci decides to name the unknown metal they are made out of orichalcum since they are in Atlantis. - Fly FF calls it "Shining Oricalkum." - Golden Sun: Orichalcum appears in Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn as an Item Crafting material called Orihalcon (that also Randomly Drops), used for getting one of the game's Infinity Plus One Swords. Strangely enough, you can't find any in Lemuria, the game's Atlantis equivalent. - In Guild Wars 2 Orichalcum is red-bronze in appearance and the highest-level base metal in the game, used in the top tier of crafting recipes. While present in all level-appropriate zones, prior to the expansion packs it was most frequently encountered in Orr, the game's Atlantis analogue. - Hadean Lands: The Orichalcum rod is one of the most useful alchemical items in the game, but you only get one. If it weren't for the "Groundhog Day" Loop you'd have a real problem, and even with that it can be tricky. - Harvest Moon: "Orichalc" is used to create jewelry in some of the games. - Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: Orichalcum is a central plot device and Plot Coupon. It's used as fuel for the Atlanteans' abandoned ancient artifacts scattered around the globe, which Indy must dig up. The Nazis want it because it \|\|powers the God Machine under Atlantis\|\|. - Kid Icarus: Uprising: The \|\|Great Sacred Treasure\|\| is stated to be made of orichalcum. - Kirby Super Star: Appears as the treasure "orihalcon". This was fixed in the remake. - Lineage 2: Orichalcum is used in dwarven crafting. - Lost Odyssey: Orichalcum is used to craft either Seth or Kaim's Ultimate Weapon. - Lunarosse: Beating the Abyss-King gives you a hunk of this, which can be used to max out your party member's weapons. It overlaps with Thunderbolt Iron, as it's mentioned to have fallen out of the sky some time prior. - MapleStory: It's called "Orichalcon" in-game because Orichalcum has the syllable "cum" in it, which is censored out. - In Mega Man X5, the Orichalcum, held by Crescent Grizzly / Grizzly Slash, is one of the components required to upgrade the Enigma laser cannon so it can destroy a colony ship. When recovered, it is said to increase the weapon's "striking ability." In Western releases, it was renamed the "Crystal Ball," possibly because the translators did not recognize the reference. - Poseidon: Master of Atlantis: "Orichalc" is used as a monument decoration, as well as fuel for the deadly Atlantean fire. - Ragnarok Online uses "Oridecon" as a crafting material. - RIFT: Orichalcum appears as a crafting material. - In Runescape, orikalkum is the proper name of what is commonly called "dragon" metal in the present day. It can't be worked in a forge, only in the direct heat of a dragon's breath, which led to it being used primarily by the Dragonkin. - Shining Force III: Orichalcum is used as material the blacksmith can use; it's the best material, beating out Mithril. In Shining Soul II it's used to make Ice and Holy elemental equipment at the blacksmith. - Soulcalibur: The Orichalcum is Sophitia's legendary weapon in the second game and can be purchased in SoulCalibur III. - In Soul Sacrifice Delta, the Orichalcum are giant snails with treasure chests as shells. They have low spawn rates but high Life EXP or Magic EXP, so be on the lookout for these guys. - Square Enix loves Orichalcum. Many of their RPGs typically include either the raw material or something made from it. - Dragon Quest: The general rule of thumb is that if it's made of Orichalcum, it either kicks three different kinds of ass or is a flat-out Game-Breaker. - Dragon Quest III: The Sword of Kings/Sword of Light/Erdrick's Sword is made of the metal "Oricon". - Dragon Quest VIII has it as an Item Crafting material. - Dragon Quest Swords: The near-unbreakable shield is a SPOON made of Orichalcum, but due to its obviously small size which can't be increases and that if you can block as accurately with any other shield as you can with the spoon, they'll be just as durable, it's not nearly as useful as it'd initially seem. - Dragon Quest IX: Orichalcum makes a comeback as one of the greatest yet rarest alchemy ingredients. To give you a scope on how rare it is, every other mineral in the game can be found as Randomly Drops or by finding them on the ground in certain spots of the world map. Orichalcum is found nowhere in the world and the only monsters that drop them do so with a 1/256 chance, which is as rare as it gets in this game. Fortunately, when you do get your hands on some, you can use it for some of the best gear in the game, such as the Sage's Stone, which heals your entire party, as well as Erdrick's gear, which is the best gear in the game barring the Uber-gear. - In Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, both orichalcum and orichalslime (a hunk of metal shaped like a Slime) are used as weapons and alchemy ingredients. - Final Fantasy: Some items are made of the material, with various spellings. Notably, an orichalcum dagger known simply as "the Orichalcum" is one of the strongest recurring daggers in the series. Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles instead have it available in the form of ore to make items. - Kingdom Hearts: Orichalcum appears in some games as an Item Crafting material. Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts III have an even stronger variety called "Orichalcum+", of which only a few pieces exist, and every one of them is needed to craft the Ultima Weapon. - Legend of Mana has it under the name "Orihalcon". - Romancing SaGa 3: the dolphin statue in Vanguard is made of it; in enhances water magic which allows the city to move freely in the ocean. - Tactics Ogre has it in the form of a sword translated as "Oricon". Also as "Oracion" in Knight of Lodis. - The World Ends with You has an Orichalcum pin, which is used as a trade material for extremely rare shop goodies. - Star Ocean: Orichalcum appears as an Item Crafting material. In the first two games, Orichalcum is a strong metal which can make some very good weapons, armor and accessories. In the third game, finding the right Inventors to produce Orichalcum reliably is the gameplay equivalent of nuclear weapons. - Super Robot Wars has a number of mecha and weapons made of "Orichalconium" (most famously Cybuster) or the stronger "Zol-Orichalconium" alloy ("Z.O." for short). In the Original Generation games, it plays the same role as Alloy Z and Super-Alloy Z. - Tech Romancer has a mecha, G-Kaiser, made of the material "Orihalconium". - Terraria features Orichalcum as an alternative to Mythril. Its appearance is pink, and a full set of armor with any of the helmets causes pink petals to strike an enemy you hit. - Tibia has a magic item called the Orichalcum Pearl. - Titan Quest: Orichalcum is a more powerful substitute for bronze. - Valkyrie Profile: Orichalcum is used for Item Crafting. - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Orichalcum ingots and ore are crafting ingredients found in loot drops and at merchants, which are used to craft many high-end weapons and armor. - In the sequel of Yo-kai Watch Blasters, an avian boss Yokai named Orifalcon is said to be made out of orichalcum, hence its name. - In Adventurers!, a Rummage Fail shows that the inventory contains one piece of "Orialicurirhum". - In Demon Fist, "orihalcon" is super-strong and damps out supernatural energies (so when Rory is handcuffed with it, he can't use his demon arm or manifest Shaise, Crag or Dither). The pirates are amazed to discover that Rosenquist has entire prison cells made of the stuff. - Irregular Webcomic!: In the Cliffhangers storyline, Those Wacky Nazis are after Atlantis' orichalcum to build their war machines with. - Mindmistress: "Orichalium" is mentioned as one of the stable transuranic elements carried by a meteorite that hit the Atlantic Ocean, whose remnants became the islands that Atlantis was built on. - The Descendants: It's first seen as a rough type of armor called 'orihalcite' that even Alloy couldn't effect with his powers. Later appears in a refined form with the proper name. - Used with WILDLY variable spelling in the Whateley Universe. - The name derives from Greek ὀρείχαλκος, oreikhalkos (from ὄρος, oros, mountain and χαλκός, khalkos, copper), meaning literally "mountain copper". The name "oros" was sufficiently close to vernacular pronunciation of Latin word for gold, aurum as oro, that it was transliterated "orichalcum" as "aurichalcum," which was thought to literally mean "gold copper". It is known from the writings of Cicero that the metal which they called orichalcum resembled gold in color but had a much lower value. This description fits perfectly to brass. Brass itself is an alloy of copper and zinc, and while it was known to Ancient and Medieval world and manufactured by smelting copper and zinc-containing ores, zinc itself was isolated only by the Medieval alchemists and in 14th century India. Brass itself was first made from pure metals instead of ores in the 16th century. Today, "oreikhalkos" and "aurichalcum" means "brass" in modern Greek and Latin respectively. - In 2015, 39 ingots believed to be orichalcum were discovered in a sunken vessel on the coasts of Gela in Sicily which have tentatively been dated at 2,600 years old. They were analyzed with X-ray fluorescence by Dario Panetta of TQ - Technologies for Quality; they turned out to be an alloy consisting of 75-80 percent copper, 15-20 percent zinc, and smaller percentages of nickel, lead, and iron. This is high quality brass. - While not exactly magical, brass itself is a noble metal alloy and widely used on application which require resistance for corrosion, such as marine instruments, marine propellers, door handles, locks and coins. Brass is also irreplaceable as a metal for musical instruments. Aside from corrosion resistance, it's also soft enough to be easily worked into complicated shapes, and low-melting enough to make casting a breeze. It also won't scratch harder metals like iron, and is also non-sparking.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Orichalcum
Organ Theft - TV Tropes "There was this crazy albino guy with a hook, and he lived in a mirror! And if you even look at him, you'd wake up a bathtub full of ice with your kidneys gone!" Organ Theft, as the name would imply, is the practice of stealing people's organs via surgery, which can then be used for further purposes such as transplants or sold on the Black Market. note : Yes, there's a black market for organs, because legitimate doctors (and, for that matter, lawyers) are way too Squicked out by the idea of selling organs to even consider doing it or allowing it to happen. Never mind that the demand for organs is shockingly high, and sadly, some people need money more than they need their organs. Which is why said black market exists in the first place. One particularly common variant of this trope is the "kidney theft" Urban Legend, in which the victim is conned somehow and drugged into unconsciousness, and then wakes up kidney-less, crudely stitched up in a bathtub full of ice in a cheap motel, often with a message attached telling them to go to a hospital. At first glance, it may seem plausible because if the wealthy, powerful Big Bad is on death's door and needs an organ tomorrow, they do have a motive to get that kidney by any means necessary and they have henchmen willing to kidnap a victim. But beyond that point, organ theft fails the logic test for a few reasons: - Organ transplant requires lots of specialized equipment to remove the organ and keep it viable for transplanting — equipment not generally found outside a hospital. Yes, bad guys can steal or buy basic medical equipment, but this is unusual gear. Theft or purchase would raise red flags. - How will The Syndicate assemble an entire surgical team? Yes, bad guys can force or pressure one down-on-their luck doctor (who owes money at the casino) to sew up a mook after a robbery, but getting a whole surgical team for an illegal, non-consensual transplant is implausible. - In the standard version, the perps display a monstrous disregard for the victim's human rights — yet they apparently still care enough to keep them alive. (To potentially file a police report no less). - Organ transporting containers are huge due to the amount of dry ice needed — the thieves would stand out to any witnesses they passed. - Organs need to be checked for compatibility, both for blood chemistry and size. Also, the recipient would be highly vulnerable to any infectious disease the donor might be carrying. A random victim offers no guarantees on any account. - It takes a lot of surgical skill and medical knowledge to extract a living organ and keep it in a condition where it can be transplanted successfully to another patient. You'll be hard pressed to find a Hippocratic Oath-bound surgeon willing to do this. Not to mention they're generally too well paid to need to resort to crime. - It's the organ that needs to be kept on ice, but the legend always seems to involve the patient being left in a bath of the stuff, sedated — a great recipe for hypothermia. - Aside from cannibals (who are obviously far too small a demographic to profitably market to) and surgeons (who have too much to lose —their license and social status— to resort to kidnapping-based acquisition, done in league with The Syndicate), who on Earth would the alleged perps even be selling these stolen, roughly-extracted organs to, and what potential customers would want C-grade black market organs for? This trope was popularized by, and originated with, Larry Niven's Known Space, in which Organ Theft is called "organlegging", a portmanteau of "organ" and "bootlegging". (The Niven variant makes more sense, though, since in the stories, they do take everything useful and kill the donor during the procedure). Needless to say, this trope is a potent source of Nightmare Fuel, Rule of Scary and Fridge Logic (why not steal multiple organs and kill the victim instead of leaving a witness?). Sub-Trope of Human Resources. Super-Trope of Brain Theft. # Examples: - Battle Angel Alita uses this early on, except with cyborg spines, which are probably much more removable than any human organ. - Defied in the first chapter of Black Jack. A Spoiled Brat crashes after reckless driving and is on the verge of death, so his influential father hires the legendary surgeon Black Jack. To provide the necessary organs, the father sentences an innocent boy to death so that Black Jack can harvest his organs in a simultaneous operation. Instead, Black Jack gives the innocent boy plastic surgery to look like the brat, along with enough money for him and his mother to flee the country. - Cyberpunk: Edgerunners: - David almost finds himself on the receiving end of this when an unscrupulous EMT notices just how valuable his Sandevistan implant (which is essentially his spine replacement) is and decides to take it for a payday while he's barely conscious and hooked up to a stretcher in no position to fight back due to overuse of said implant. Luckily for him, Lucy bails him out of that situation (and the ambulance). \|\|He almost finds himself on the end of it again when Lucy's boss, Maine, shows up looking for that same Sandevistan since it was supposed to be his in the first place (he even paid in advance), but they're able to hash things out into a job offer.\|\| - This is heavily implied to be how \|\|David's mother Gloria managed to make ends meet for their struggling financial situation. Using her position as an EMT, she had easy access to steal cyberware from the corpses she works with. Maine, one of her more notable buyers, notes she was a good earner, and the military-grade Sandevistan David acquires and was supposed to go to Maine was scavenged off a dead Cyberpsycho that she herself zipped up and put in the back of the ambulance.\|\| - Fabricant 100: A MO for Fabricants is to kidnap humans and steal their high-grade body parts, normally killing the unfortunate. Some keep kids with them until they group up. - An episode of the Get Backers anime features this, though in a more realistic manner. The organ, a heart, has already been extracted in a legitimate medical operation, but the ambulance transporting the organ is then intercepted and hijacked by mercenaries. Ban and Ginji are then contracted by the father of the heart's intended recipient, a sickly girl, to retrieve it in just a few hours since the refrigeration unit will not be able to keep the heart good for very long. - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: - One episode features a trio of medical students who sell discarded organs on the black market. Major Motoko Kusanagi later threatens to sell their currently-in-use organs on the black market to Scare 'Em Straight by pretending to be a member of the Yakuza, who actually do sell organs on the black market. - A later episode deals with girls being kidnapped so that their organs and cybernetics can be sold off, which was apparently based on a public scare blaming North Korea for doing this to Japanese people. - In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean, this is the Stand Marilyn Manson's modus operandi. In order to repay gambling debts, it will take valuable items from the loser, and considering how much organs sell for on the black market... - This happens to Plucky Girl Sakura Tomoe in an early episode of Knight Hunters. Because this is Knight Hunters, though, it isn't a bathtub that she wakes up in, it's an entire swimming pool full of ice. Unfortunately for her, the organ thieves in question later decide that they're tired of doing things by halves. - The Wolkenritter hunting Linker Cores in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's is the magical equivalent, though they're being used to fuel an Artifact of Doom and they naturally grow back over time. - Genetically-transferred powers in Naruto tend to be tied to specific organs that can be transplanted into others. Eyes, arms, hearts, entire bodies, you name a body part, ninja are stealing it from each other. There's even a whole clan that got powerups from stealing each other's eyes. Though many of them (though not all) are courteous enough to kill the person before stealing their body parts. - In One Piece, Trafalgar Law's Devil Fruit allows him to steal the hearts of people, either for a quick kill, to blackmail them into doing his business, or as an insurance that they won't attack him later on, as he does with Smoker, Tashigi, and Monet. - One episode of Trigun features a town which deals in smuggling girls who sell their bodies as potential organ donors and as prostitutes. - In Vandread, the Harvesters raid human colonies for specific organs and tissues, such as the reproductive organs of the crew's homeworlds. \|\|The Harvesters were created by humans on Earth who, faced with a population collapse, became obsessed with lengthening their lifespans and came to view the colonies as organ banks.\|\| - In an episode of Wolf's Rain, some muggers tell our heroes there's a market for healthy young organs. Of course, our heroes are only disguised as humans and aren't about to part with their organs. - In the "Heart of Hush" arc of Batman, Mad Doctor Hush kidnaps Catwoman and removes her heart, keeping her alive by elaborate machinery and using her hostage heart to blackmail Batman. - Clean Room invokes this as explanation for Anika Wells' abduction and medical experimentation. It's nowhere near the truth. - A two-part Daredevil storyline revolves around organ trafficking, courtesy of a criminal who calls herself the Surgeon General. - One of Howard the Duck's more persistent nuisances is "the Kidney Lady", an annoying old battleaxe who believes Howard to be the ringleader in a kidney-stealing conspiracy. - In Mega-City One from Judge Dredd, organ transplantation is illegal because it has advanced to the point that it can render an individual immortal. Organ selling is a prevalent crime throughout Mega-City One. - Justice League of America: In 'JLA: Year One'', the Brain comes into possession of a 'genegraft ray' which instantly and cleanly transplants organs of its targets. The Brain ends up pulling an All Your Powers Combined thanks to the Flash's legs, Green Lantern's arm, Martian Manhunter's eyes and Black Canary's vocal cords. - A two-part JSA Classified story arc with Dr. Midnite features a villain harvesting super-powered body parts to sell to wealthy patrons in the black market. The gruesome part is that the heroes whose body parts are stolen are often left alive after the procedure and basically crippled. Midnight lampshades just how ridiculous it is that the urban legend has been made real, given how strange it is that any of the victims survive their unwanted surgery. - Organ theft (a.k.a. "organleggers") is a common crime in the original Marvel 2099 comic book line for victims who cannot afford to pay for police protection. - In My Little Pony: Friends Forever #25, three thieves steal Rainbow Dash's wings with magic and attempt to use them to turn themselves into Alicorns. If the transfer could not be reversed in time, Dash would have lost her wings permanently. You know, for kids! - New X-Men features a group of villains who call themselves the U-Men, humans with a major fanboy affection for mutants... which drives them to "jump up the evolutionary ladder" by hijacking their superpower-oriented organs. This often leaves the mutants dead, and occasionally leads to the U-Men suffering organ rejection. - In the Sin City yarn "Hell and Back", the protagonist finds that the Big Bad is into organ theft, among other things. - In Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, the leader of the Decepticon Justice Division, a team of psychopaths (even by Decepticon standards) who hunt down Decepticons who betrayed the cause, Tarn is addicted to transformation. He made a deal with \|\|Pharma\|\| to provide him new T-cogs which are taken from other Transformers every time he burns out his own. He's gone through a lot of T-cogs. - Vampire: The Masquerade (Vault): A group of vampire hunters in Winter's Teeth called the Wolves in Sheeps' Clothing hunt down the undead in order to do this. They surgically graft the vampires' organs to themselves and gain some of their powers. - Johnny is taken by an organ harvest ring in the Emergency! fic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" - In the Turning Red fanfic The Great Red Panda Rescue, Mei is kidnapped and gets her appendix harvested for experimentation. - Hidden Frontier cast member Rebecca Wood (posting under her character name) claimed this had happened to a friend of her cousin. She became quite cross when forum friends gently pointed her to Snopes.com. After all, her mother and cousin wouldn't lie, would they? - Subverted in Promstuck. It seems that Snowman has done this to Jack in the epilogue, but then he remembers that he's a carapace and doesn't have any organs that could be called kidneys. - Seventh Endmost Vision: The Big Bad, Lucrecia, did this to \|\|Ifalna\|\| by stealing her eye... and implanting it in her own skull. She's made almost no attempt to hide the change; multiple characters have figured out a rough date for the change by looking at photographs of her, since there's photos of her before that show her with her two natural brown eyes, and all photos after show her having the one green eye. \|\|Ifalna, at least, thinks she did it to see as an Ancient would see.\|\| - In Spice Girls Fic, Case of the Missing Technology, if Unwilling Roboticisation wasn't enough, the narrator had to inform Simon after discovering what happened to Melanie's original organs apart from her brain, "Black market, Im afraid. How else he makes his money to put innocent people through?" \|\|Melanie C had to get biomechanical replacements, via 3D printer\|\|. - At the end of Spider-Ninja, \|\|Raphael is unconscious in SHIELD's medical bay. Dr. Connors, believing that the turtles' mutated DNA might hold a clue to genetic alteration, steals some of Raph's blood to further his experiments.\|\| - A Game of Cat and Cat: "Doctor Dude" is an odd case. He has removed the appendixes - just the appendixes - of many of his living patients, and takes all the organs of anyone who happens to die on his operating table - even though he does his best to treat them. It is unknown why he is taking people's organs, as there's no indication he is involved with the Black Market. When asked about it he more or less says that the body is nothing but a bag of meat after the spirit has departed for the next cycle or Karma. \|\|Though given what game he comes from...\|\| - The plot of Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero revolves around Mr. Freeze kidnapping people who share the same blood type as his wife, which includes Barbara Gordon. She (correctly) points out that he could use any negative blood type to save her until it's revealed he's actually kidnapping them for this trope, and being as obsessive as he is is going after the same blood type to reduce the risks of rejection. - In 12-Hour Shift, nurse Mandy and her cousin Regina regularly deliver organs to a trafficking ring. One night, Regina delivers her boss a cooler with just a soda, thinking she had placed the organ bag in the cooler. The boss makes it clear: she either delivers a kidney or she will serve as donor. - In Andhadhun, Dr. Swami runs an organ harvesting operation. - Art of the Dead: While possessed by Envy, Donna murders the Alpha Bitch head cheerleader Tiffany, amputates her breasts, and gives herself a 'boob job' by transplanting them on to herself. She does the same thing with Tiffany's lips. - Awake: Clay and his mother joke about this as a solution to having to wait for his turn on the heart transplant list. Lillith: I'm serious this time. Let's go to China, try out luck on the black market. Clayton: Why don't we just go outside, grab some random person, drag him in here and, y'know... Lillith: Sounds good to me. Drag 'em in and cut 'em open! Hey, whatever it takes, right? - In the 2015 section of Back to the Future Part II, a headline reads "Thumb Bandits Strike Again". In The Future, all transactions are carried out via thumbprint ID. The filmmakers speculated that this could lead to a new type of crime, where thieves cut off the thumb of their victim and use it to make illegal purchases, like stealing a credit card. - Central Station: Dora the retired schoolteacher sells Josue, an orphan, to two people whom she thinks are running a black-market adoption racket, but who apparently are actually organleggers. She goes back and rescues the boy before he can be chopped up. - In Cradle of Fear, Nick Holland is an amputee who is unable to engage in sexual activity with his girlfriend Natalie due to his frustration with the loss of his left leg in a prior accident. Nick visits his old friend Thomas and shoots him in the head. He then removes Thomas' left leg, puts it on ice and has it transplanted to himself by his doctor overnight. - The Jason Statham action movie Crank: High Voltage starts with the main character getting his heart stolen. He then proceeds to kick ridiculously large amounts of ass while trying to keep his replacement organ running. - Corrupt prison officials in Death Warrant have prisoners killed to sell their organs for profit. - Dirty Pretty Things: the film revolves around illegal migrants yielding to terrible pressure and selling their kidneys to an organlegging outfit, and one Nigerian surgeon being strong-armed into working for them. The film ends with the protagonists stealing a kidney from the Big Bad who is running the operation, in order to give it to the client in place of the intended victim's. As you can see, this film has the trope all sewn up in a back room. - Donor is a horror film about a government worker who registers homeless people with the authorities, only to get sucked into a horrifying conspiracy when it turns out the Disposable Vagrants are being murdered and their organs harvested by a Russian crime ring. - Feeding Frenzy: Mr. Plinkett is ultimately revealed to be killing people to harvest their organs and rebuild his family from their parts. - In the German made-for-television film Fleisch, also known as Spare Parts, a young couple are enjoying their honeymoon in the American Southwest, when suddenly the husband is kidnapped by armed men in an ambulance. The wife escapes at the last minute, and enlists the help of a local truck driver in helping her locate her missing husband. Together, the uncover the existence of a vast international smuggling ring supplying the world's wealthy elite with organs stolen from healthy young people. - Hitchhiker Massacre: The killer has an unseen boss that he converses with over his phone, who pays him for bringing him organs. At one point, the killer is seen sawing a victim's organ out. - Hrudaya Geethe: Dr Prasad the Chief doctor of a mental hospital is harvesting his patients' organs. First, he is running an involuntary confinement for pay scam in which certain people who are an inconvenience are designated as mentally ill and confined for the right price. Those people are then prescribed a tonic which is actually a poison that causes them to have painful spasms. To treat this, they are sent to surgery where they die and their organs are semi-legitimately harvested. - In The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus \|\|this turns out to be what Tony did to the children of his charity. He had previously claimed the reason for his disgrace was doing business with Russian gangsters in order to fund the charity.\|\| - Iron Man 2: Referenced and subverted when Tony Stark meets with Nick Fury and Black Widow at a donut shop. Widow injects him with a dose of lithium dioxide to counter the symptoms of his palladium poisoning and help him focus, but until they explain, Stark thinks this trope is in effect: Tony Stark: Oh, God, are you gonna steal my kidney and sell it? - Through a series of odd events in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Jay and Silent Bob find themselves hitchhiking with Mystery Incorporated (just don't ask). After a dream sequence in which they all get high, it is revealed that Jay and Silent Bob have fallen asleep, whereupon the gang decide to "sell their kidneys on the black market and leave them in a seedy hotel on ice". \|\|Of course, that was also just a dream.\|\| - The creature from Jeepers Creepers commits periodic fatal organ thefts, for reasons that had more to do with hunger than transplantation. - Koma's plot revolves around a series of organ thefts. - The main bad guys of the Korean film The Man from Nowhere are Triad gangsters operating in South Korea that engage in organ harvesting. When they kidnap a girl named So-Mi, the little neighbor of protagonist Cha Tae-Sik, to have her eyes harvested, things quickly turn out bad for them. - In The Man Who Could Cheat Death, Dr. Georges Bonnet has taking to attacking people in the street and extracting the glands he needs to manufacture his elixir. - Anderton buys a pair of black-market eyes in Minority Report, so he can get past the retinal scanners that are literally everywhere. - An unlucky fellow in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life had some gentlemen come to collect his liver, on the grounds that someone needed it and he'd filled out a liver donor card. Too bad for him he wasn't done using it... Mr. Brown: Listen! I can't give it to you now. It says, "in the event of death"! Man: Well, nobody who has ever had their liver taken out by us has survived. - Muggers has a pair of students steal organs from the most hateful people in their lives, after they get the idea from taking a kidney that just happened to be compatible with a patient from a man who had jumped off a tall building. Worse, they run afoul of a gang led by a nurse and two ambulance officers at the hospital, who simply take organs indiscriminately and don't want any competition. - The Pet: The main antagonists are slavers who harvest organs. - Repo Men: The Union is a company that supplies cybernetic organs to people who need them, but unfortunately their contracts have the clause that if the recipient misses too many payments, the Union will send Repo Men to collect the organ even if that means the death of the recipient. The plot kicks into high gear when one of said repo men ((Remy, The Hero) falls behind in payments for his own artificial heart, leading to him becoming a target for repossession. - Repo! The Genetic Opera: GeneCo makes artificial organs, which they repossess if a customer misses too many payments. The Repo Man is in charge of doing the actual repossessing, which usually results in the customer's death. Not for nothing are they often considered "legal assassins." "Ninety-day delinquent gets you Repo Treatment!" - In RoboCop (1987), is said that OCP Corporation owns the cadavers of their employees (even if the employee is not quite dead yet). - Discussed in Saw when Adam looks over his body and tells Lawrence that they're in a typical organ theft situation where someone has kidnapped them, took their kidneys and put them on sale in eBay. Lawrence assures Adam that's impossible, because if he had lost his kidneys, he would be in extreme pain or already dead. - Scream and Scream Again involves a Mad Scientist assembling a Master Race from body parts. At the start of the film, a jogger collapses from a heart attack. When he wakes at the hospital, he discovers his leg has been amputated. Every time the movie cuts back to him, another limb has been amputated. - In the 1998 Donnie Yen movie Shanghai Affairs, Donnie plays a doctor in a rural town who ends up investigating a series of mysterious murders involving children being found dead with their organs removed. Turns out Donnie's mentor (and one heck of a Broken Pedestal) is the mastermind behind an organ trafficking ring, and is specifically targeting the children of poor townspeople because "nobody will miss them". - The Thai horror film, Sick Nurses, revolves around a doctor and his nurses who secretly sells organs in the black market. The plot is kicked off when one of those nurses attempts to leave her organization and threatens to spill their activities to the public, which predictably leads to her ex-colleagues kidnapping and eliminating her for knowing too much; however her spirit comes back seeking revenge. - The Korean movie Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is about a man who sells his organs on the black market to get enough money to pay for his sister's hospital bills but is soon cheated out of his life savings. - A major plot point in Toy Story 4 is that the Big Bad has a voice box just like Woody, only hers is broken, so she seeks to steal his. The equivalence to organ theft is never stated outright, but the fact that the toys view their stuffing and other innards the same way we view our organs is. Woody is even knocked unconscious for the operation. - In Trespass (2011), the robbers threaten to remove Avery's kidney if her father Kyle doesn't cooperate. - Train: Travelling aboard a Russian train, a college wrestler and her teammates fall victim to a gang of sadistic thieves harvesting human organs. - Turistas and Train turned out to be about this sort of thing. - Urban Legends - One of the legends referenced by the serial killer in Urban Legend. Of course, the killer admits that they are not too good at anatomy and will probably just grab the first major organ they see. - This is the first kill used in the sequel, Urban Legends: Final Cut, which was tagged on when it was realized that the film didn't have that much to do with actual urban legends. - Vitals revolves around a man who wakes up to find that his kidney was removed by organ harvesters, led by a man called Kaliyah. - Snakehead, one of the later Alex Rider books, uses this as a justification for the villain keeping Alex alive yet again. He has Alex taken to a hidden facility where his various organs will be removed one-at-a-time (finishing with the heart) and sold to wealthy customers, allowing him to recover what Alex has cost him. Alex doesn't stick around. - In Animorphs, a group of Andalites come to Earth to assassinate Visser Three (\|\|or so they claim\|\|). The actual sniper is a Boxed Crook named Aloth arrested for trying to sell the organs of warriors who fell in battle. - Blood Books: Blood Debt deconstructs this as Vickie comments it is an incredibly weird and impractical trade due to how much trouble you'd get in for little financial gain. Also, you could get the organs from much easier sources. - Bubbles in Space: In the future with so much cybernetics and attempts to live longer, this is a thriving market. Bubbles comments that there's more bodies than missing persons. This is Foreshadowing \|\|that the organ traffickers have been targeting refugees from the Barrens.\|\| - In Rick Griffin's short story Bravo Charli Charli's biker gang is coerced by a cartel boss to transport a sealed cooler to Santa Fe within seven hours. Halfway through the story she finds out it's a human heart. - Burke mentions a Noodle Incident in which he acted as a go-between for a wealthy family seeking a heart for their dying child. He collects the heart, implied to have been taken from a child murdered for the purpose. - Coma features a conspiracy of organ theft in the hospital system. Apparently, they started using hospital patients who were already comatose, but demand (and profits) is such that they start artificially inducing brain death in healthy patients undergoing surgery to get more victims, drawing the attention of the protagonist. - The Igor clan of Discworld is known to harvest organs or limbs... but only postmortem, and mostly from people who have received a transplant performed by an Igor at some point in their lives. The Igors also practice this extensively upon themselves/other Igors, and when an Igor says he's got his father's eyes, he's not being metaphorical. - Doctor Who - In one of the Expanded Universe novels, this one is done rather weirdly. The Doctor is ill because something is the matter with one of his hearts. The villain thought transplanting a Time Lord's heart to himself would help him time travel, so he stole it, curing the decaying heart problem but creating a new, massive-hole-in-the-Doctor's-chest problem. Good Thing He Can Heal. One of his hearts was a link to Gallifrey, which he'd destroyed in "The Ancestor Cell" (different Time War). - In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio play "Spare Parts", the Doctor encounters Thomas Dodd, a Back-Alley Doctor dealing in recycled organs that he gets from desperate people on Mondas who sell their own or that of recently deceased relatives. He can't resist when the perfectly healthy Doctor turns up and tries to lock him in his organ freezer. Later the Doctor gets his cooperation by promising one of his hearts (he doesn't have to pay because Dodd gets dragged away to be turned into a Cyberman). - In Dream Park's South Seas Treasure Game, an early confrontation with the power of the Fore occurs when the villainous tribe launches a supernatural attack on the Daribi village. While conjured giant birds beset the Gamers, the aged Daribi chieftain's belly caves in on itself, his liver "eaten" by the Fore tribe's evil magic. - Eveless Eden by Marianne Wiggins. An Intrepid Reporter discovers that the Romanian diplomat his girlfriend ran off with runs a company involved in selling blood products (everything from plasma to skin cream, as well as blood itself) taken from Ceausescu's hellish orphanage system. Thanks to the incompetent way the orphanages are run, HIV-tainted blood has long ago entered the system. - Every Heart a Doorway: When the murders start, the first victim has her hands taken - while she's still alive. The second loses her eyes in the same way. The third, her brain. \|\|The killer is trying to create a "skeleton key" - a girl who will allow her to open any of the Doors to otherworlds.\|\| - Iron Widow: Like other condemned prisoners in Huaxia, Li Shimin had one kidney and part of his liver taken for transplants. Zetian is aghast at how the damage could affect his Life Energy in the long term. - The concealed Evil Plan of the fourth Journey to Chaos, book, Transcending Limitations, centers on this trope. \|\|Kaiba Gunrai wants to kidnap Annala and extract everything from her, organs included, because she has been Touched By Volrons and he wants to replicate this for super soldiers that he can sell, in addition to boosting other industries, such as magical reagents.\|\| The victim isn't killed because her Healing Factor means she can't be killed, and more importantly for her captor, he can collect multiple copies of each organ. - Christopher Moore's Island of the Sequined Love Nun has two Big Bads convincing an island full of people that they are the personification of the local Cargo Cult gods. It turns out they have a database composed of the natives' medical information and are running an on-demand black organ market, harvesting (among other things) kidneys, hearts, and corneas. - In Kea's Flight, this has been known to happen to women who go to back-alley abortionists. - Larry Niven's Known Space series is the Trope Maker. Prior to the invention of cloned organs to replace failed ones, the demand for replacement organs is so high that lawmakers make more and more crimes punishable by death penalty, with the organs of the punished being harvested for use. Naturally, such a high demand makes it a high profit item, which attacts criminals who become as "organleggers" who are even less picky than the legal system about whose organs are harvested. Eyes in particular are noted to be in high demand, for criminals who wish to fool retina scanners. - Kronk has roving "Bounty Hunters" who harvest the bodies of anyone who can't fight back and resell the organs to hospitals. - In the Legends of Dune prequels it is claimed that the Bene Tleilaxu were originally slavers and organ dealers. They claimed that the organs were cloned but during the Butlerian Jihad the vats couldn't meet demand so they ripped most of them from captured slaves too injured to work. - In the English sci-fi drama Never Let Me Go, \|\|the protagonist and her fellow students willingly submit to having their organs removed — they're all cloned humans created for the specific purpose of organ harvesting\|\|. - Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast has Lazarus Long mention how he'd never engage in killing people to strip them of their organs, but, he knows of several planets where you could point someone out, and a thug would quote you a price and ask which parts you want and "when and where did you want them delivered?" (He's giving the explanation to point out that there are some places where you can buy anything). - A government version occurs in A Planet Named Shayol by Cordwainer Smith, in which criminals are made to grow extra limbs and organs for harvesting and use in transplants. - The novel Raylan by Elmore Leonard features a couple crooks doing this, but in a variation they're not selling the organs to others, but essentially holding them hostage for money from the person they were taken from, bypassing the whole comparability issue. - Unwind exaggerates this in the most horrific way possible — not only is the process legal, it's used as a way to get rid of unwanted children and supported and run by the government. - Technically yes, although more reminiscent of the trope are the Parts Pirates, who capture kids not specifically marked for unwinding, basically kidnapping them and shipping them to private unwind facilities. It's stated that in China, they don't even take all of you at once, which the lead Parts Pirate in North America finds revolting. - The dictator assassinated in the opening scene of Use of Weapons has used off-world technology to make himself young. There's a mention that his current heart once belonged to a young female anarchist, implying that dissidents executed by the state are being harvested. - In The Wandering, the "murders" on Neshi's homeworld are all for the sake of supplying the government with organs, and not just for organ replacements, as Neshi finds out. - In World War Z, Fernando Oliveira describes his participation in the transplant of a black market heart obtained from a "donor" in China. Unbeknownst to the recipient and the transplant team, China happened to be in the early stages of a Zombie Apocalypse at the time. The doctor goes on to suggest that this was the cause of many other Solanum outbreaks outside of China at the time. - Angel: Wolfram & Hart's subsidiary health care operation, the Fairfield Clinic, operates a body parts bank where organs are harvested from still-living prisoners. As magic is involved, this naturally leads to an Evil Hand plot. - The Aquabats! Super Show! features the "in transit" variant: the Aquabats are assigned to transport a replacement brain to Governor Robot, and the villainous Silver Skull is trying to steal it from them - with Governor Robot incapacitated, Silver Skull will be able to usurp his authority. \|\|In a twist, he succeeds by impersonating the very general who gave the Aquabats the job in the first place.\|\| - Blake's 7: In "Powerplay", Cally and Vila are picked up by a hospital spacecraft from the neutral planet of Chenga, rescuing survivors from the battle against the Andromedans. Chengan society split into two factions, the Primitives who wanted to live the simple life, and the High-Techs who embrace it. Unfortunately, the Primitives are being hunted and captured by bounty hunters so their organs can be used for Human Resources, and it turns out the hospital ship isn't missing the opportunity provided by the wide-ranging battle. Only a last-minute Teleportation Rescue saves our heroes from being dissected. - Variant on Bones, where bone and other tissues were being stolen from corpses. Unfortunately one of those corpses had cancer, and Booth's boss was not amused when his daughter contracted said cancer from one of said grafts. - A later episode had this as the suspected motive for a murder, as a body missing several organs was discovered. Turns out \|\|the victim was killed in a blind rage; the killer felt guilty but couldn't bring him back to life, thus brought his body to an "organ dealer" so he could possibly save someone else's life\|\|. They do explore the organ black market, but the organs there are either purchased from living but desperate people or taken from corpses at a funeral home. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Gentlemen from "Hush" need to steal seven human hearts for reasons that are never explained. In order to harvest the organs they take the voices of the entire population of Sunnydale so their victims can't scream for help. - Shows up from time to time on Charmed (1998). - In its classic form, one episode features a doctor gaining the sisters' powers via blood transfusion and losing his mind because of it. He uses the newfound powers to steal organs from criminals who had been treated at his hospital. - Wendigoes are formed when one person steals and eats another's heart. They then transform into monsters on the "three nights of the full moon" to continue eating hearts. - In possibly the weirdest (and least explained) version, the succubus kills men in order to drain them of their testosterone. - The Teaser of the CI5: The New Professionals episode "Choice Cuts" played the Urban Legend version entirely straight. The villains left the hotel room telephone right next to the ice-filled bathtub along with a note: Call 911 or you will die!, but the victim (an FBI agent) dies anyway thanks to having both kidneys removed. - Criminal Minds likes this trope and its variations. - There's Frank Breitkopf in Season Two, whose entire MO is sedating his victims and removing their organs while they were still alive, getting off on the fear on their faces as this was happening. It's unclear what he does with the rest of the organs once his victim is dead, but it is known that Breitkopf takes a rib from each of his victims to make a wind chime for his love interest. - "Blood Hungry" has a killer taking organs which he believes house the human soul. He (or possibly his mother) returns one of the organs to the crime scene in a Tupperware container. The victims were already dead when he took the organs, and he keeps them to eat (or maybe just to admire them), not to transplant. He's more than a little crazy. - Then there was the man stealing his victims' eyes to use in taxidermy. - Another episode features a Jack the Ripoff who is said to have taken the kidney from a victim, just like Jack himself. - "God Complex" comes closest to the Urban Legend described in the trope (in Criminal Minds classic, at least), only it's not internal organs the unsub is stealing — it's legs. The first victim is left in a motel with his leg stolen, but no ice bath or note. The second victim gets a note, but is dropped off just outside the ER. He's the one who dies, because the UnSub amputated his leg, sewed the wound closed (poorly), then opened it back up to attach the first victim's stolen leg. The UnSub at least has a sterile(-ish) facility to perform the... operations. - There was also a variation, where instead of stealing the organs himself, one man started killing organ donors in the hopes that his daughter would get a liver. It nicely sidesteps the issue of transport and removal (he even dropped one victim off at the hospital and called 911 before committing the other murders so EMTs would get there on time), but it still didn't work out how he wanted. - Each of the spin-offs has had its own take on the trope as well. - Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior had an episode where a man was attempting to harvest women's skin to graft onto his daughter's face. The team pointed out how futile this idea was, but he wasn't exactly stable. - The Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders episode "Harvested" plays out the Urban Legend from the description, with a healthy dose of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, in that the victim dies. \|\|The killer wasn't even concerned about the organs' viability. His dead father had his liver, corneas, and heart donated (properly, by doctors in a hospital setting) and he believed he needed to replace them so that his father could be complete in the afterlife.\|\| - CSI: - Organ-legging is mentioned in "Justice is Served" after a jogger turns up dead with his liver and a couple other organs removed. At the end of the episode, \|\|it turns out that the killer took the most blood-rich organs to make into a health elixir, convinced that that it's the only thing preventing her from becoming sick\|\|. - Another episode has organs being taken from dead bodies that were processed in a specific crematorium. - In the CSI Trilogy crossover storyline, young women were abducted and smuggled cross-country by a network of criminal truckers. While most were forced into prostitution, those girls who fought back against their captors became salable body parts. - Yet another case involved two brains stolen from cadavers. The first was that of a boxer who'd committed suicide due to neurological damage from repeated head trauma, and who'd asked that his brain be examined posthumously to diagnose this. The second was swiped from a freshly-entombed corpse to exchange it for the first brain, by a trainer who didn't want the boxer's brain tested for steroids. - CSI: Cyber: In "Fit-and-Run," the motivation for a series of kidnappings and murder turns out to be a father and a husband desperate to find a replacement kidney for a dying woman. - CSI: NY: - An episode had an organ being stolen after it was legitimately removed, with a murder or two in the process. It turned out \|\|the transplant surgeon at the recipient's hospital\|\| was behind the theft because his wife was dying and needed it. - Yet another episode had a corrupt ex-coroner who'd been stealing organs and tissues for a different reason - to process them for the drugs they contained; the victims were all dead drug addicts from cases that came through his morgue. - On Desperate Housewives, Katherine thought she'd found the perfect guy until she found out he'd been to prison for doing this. Of course, every adult living on Wisteria Lane has committed multiple felonies, but this was the one crime that was too much for them to accept. - Doctor Who: "The Brain of Morbius" is about a Mad Scientist trying to steal the Doctor's head, which he wants to finish off his Frankenstein's Monster. - The Firefly episode "The Message" turns out to be about this. Tracy has to pretend to be dead to transport (and incubate) some super-viscera, and despite the stated cost of the organs, the guys who go to recollect shoot to kill. In a way, Tracy kind of does this to himself, because the way he's smuggling the organs is that he had all of his replaced. Then he decided to go for a better offer, forgetting that the other people STILL had his original organs. - Forever Knight had an episode with an organ theft ring. The first body was found dead in a dumpster, and later, Natalie almost ends up getting her heart stolen when she goes in for knee surgery by a desperate surgeon whose daughter was dying. Averts some of the problems with this trope, but not the compatibility one. - In the Fringe episode "Marionette", the villain of the week is stealing back the donated organs of a girl he's obsessed with in an attempt to bring her Back from the Dead. The villain is actually something of an Apologetic Attacker who makes attempts to leave his victims alive long enough for emergency services to stabilize them once he's finished harvesting the organs. - In one episode of Grimm ("Organ Grinder"), teenage runaways are kidnapped and their organs harvested to sell on the black market, as human organs are used to make illegal drugs for wesen. - An episode of Hannibal has the Behavioural Sciences Unit hunting someone who is taking organs to sell on the black market and doing a dodgy job of keeping his victims alive. They initially think it might be the work of the Chesapeake Ripper, a notorious Serial Killer who removes organs from his victims before killing and mutilating them, but we already know who the Ripper really is and what he's doing with the organs. The Ripper winds up using the organ harvester's activities as a smokescreen to do some, ehem, grocery shopping. - The Haven episode "The Farmer" had Harry Nix. His Trouble is that he suffers from progressive organ failure, so he must regularly steal organs to replace his own. He can sprout a tentacle that can suck the victim's organs out of their body and absorb it. He is aware of the problem with organ compatibility, so he targets his illegitimate children from when he donated to a sperm bank. To make matters worse, his children run the risk of developing the same condition and being forced to harvest organs as well. - On Heroes, Claire jokes that she has used her regeneration powers to sell a kidney for quick cash. - Human Giant: A hypno-therapist steals Aziz's kidney while he's under. Then the paramedic who finds him knocks him out and steals his hair (for wigs). Then the the cop who finds him after that knocks him out and steals his ice from the bathtub and his right testicle. - Done slightly more realistically with the witness of the week on In Plain Sight. It was a doctor removing kidneys from gastric bypass patients, since they are operating in the same area and the patient is likely to write off any problems caused by loss of kidney to complications from surgery. - Jessica Jones (2015): When Kilgrave got badly injured in a car accident on the night Jessica broke free of his control over her, he was left with crush syndrome where one of his kidneys was badly damaged. He wanted to be made whole again, so he made the ambulance driver give up his kidneys and ordered the transplant surgeon at the hospital to falsify a death certificate and give Kilgrave the new kidneys. The original donor had a stroke and is now confined to his home where he's hooked up to a dialysis machine (and writes out "KILL ME" when Jessica stops by to interview him), while Jessica learns from the transplant surgeon that Kilgrave will have to harvest a new set of kidneys in a couple of years. - Iron Fist (2017): It's not outright organ theft, but a subtle hint that Joy Meachum is actually not quite as straight arrow as she seems is when her idea of convincing a businessman to sell a pier to Rand Enterprises is to bribe him by showing him a dying kid whose liver will be transplanted to the businessman's nephew and completely bypass the national donor list. - On Justified a group of criminals sell organs on the black market. However, they primarily harvest the organs from the recent corpses of people who died in prison rather than then by stealing them from living people. They have access to the prisoners' medical records and use people trained in this type of operation. The one time they operate on a live person \|\|it is a ruse to make the victim think that they took his kidneys so he will steal for them. All they did was make a couple cuts and sutured them up.\|\| - An episode of Las Vegas had a guest at the Montecito claim this had happened to him. He had a fresh scar and X-rays revealed he was short one kidney. It turns out that he'd already sold the kidney in an under-the-table deal with an ailing celebrity, and was trying to extort money from the casino for additional profit. - Played straight on Law & Order, which may actually have helped disseminate the "kidney theft" urban legend ( Snopes speculates that the plot, which Word of God claims a friend saw in a newspaper, was based on a false allegation published in the Daily Telegraph in 1989). SVU's Captain Cragen (who appeared in the episode) later dismissed such stories as urban legends. - A more realistic variant shows up in Law & Order: SVU, where a pediatric surgeon is revealed to illegally harvest organs from her braindead patients without their parents' consent. It's done in a hospital setting with all the proper staffing and equipment; the only thing missing is a signature on a form. - Leverage features a bizarre version in that a heart is stolen in transit for a rich businessman who is dying. As it was stolen from its intended recipient, a 15-year-old kid, Nate commits everything to stealing it back. - The Magician: In "The Illusion of the Deadly Conglomerate", Tony initially believes believes the homeless men being abducted are being used as involuntary organ donors for illegal transplants. They are actually to abduct to provide corpse to an organisation that specialises in helping rich criminals to fake their deaths. - The Crapsack World of Max Headroom has "body banks" which will pay for organs — or whole bodies — with no questions asked. - Nip/Tuck has an entire story arc dedicate to an organ thieves, beginning in "Shari Noble" where Liz falls for a The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction when going to a lesbian bar and getting the attention of what she considers a "10" and tragically, the Head-Turning Beauty woman turns out to be a Honey Trap who only brings Liz to her home in order to steal her kidney. - Happens in the NUMB3RS episode "Harvest". Four Indian girls come into the US each intending to sell a kidney willingly on the black market to get money for their families. But when one of the girls dies from a surgical error, the doctor running the organ ring figures he's already crossed the Moral Event Horizon and decides to kill the two he has left (one of the surviving girls ran and hid inside another part of the hotel basement when the first surgery got botched and was taken into FBI protective custody) in order to harvest all their organs for the money and to get rid of any potential witnesses. One of the girls is killed, but fortunately, the FBI interrupts just before the procedure on the second girl begins, and she is rescued unharmed. - Red Dwarf features an episode where Lister and the Cat are captured and restrained by an apparently rogue medi-droid. After being rescued, Lister wakes up in medbay and is told by Kryten that his kidneys have been stolen. \|\|He ultimately ends up going back in time to steal his kidneys from his past self, which is why they had gone missing in the first place\|\|. - Riverdale: In Season 3, it is eventually revealed that \|\|Edgar Evernever runs a cult where he eventually harvests his followers organs to sell on the black market.\|\| - The RoboCop: The Series episode "What Money Can't Buy" deals with this as Murphy goes against a black market organ ring when two people steal a pair of lungs meant to save a boy Murphy helped rescue in the prior episode ("Officer Down") after his body started to reject the lungs he was given in an earlier operation. \|\|The duo and their boss stole the lungs for a crime boss, and the boy's earlier lungs came from the same criminal ring and were taken from someone who died from tuberculosis.\|\| - One episode of The Rockford Files featured an insane doctor who arranged "accidental" deaths in order to obtain and sell the victims' organs for his wealthy clients. He tended to target victims with rare blood types. - Scrubs had one of JD's daydreams parodying the kidney theft legend. - What appears to be a people smuggling operation turns out to be this idea in Sea Patrol. The Big Bad of the episode wastes the only kidney aboard which matches a current order in the process of capturing two of the crew. One of them is the right blood type... - Gerry Anderson's Space Precinct had criminals engaged in organlegging. - In Squid Game, Loser Protagonist Gi-hun was strongarmed by his Loan Shark into signing away his physical rights, with the threat of losing a kidney and eye should he miss another payment. After he joins the Deadly Game in the hopes of using the prize money to repay his debts, it's revealed that a group of the guards overseeing them was secretly harvesting the organs of dead players and selling them to the Chinese for extra money on the side, with the help of a player who was a former doctor. - Star Trek: The Original Series has an example, in the infamous episode "Spock's Brain", with the autonomic brain functions that regulate breathing and blood circulation being used to circulate air, heat and water through an Underground City. - Star Trek: Voyager: The Vidiians. Only that this is not so much organ theft as organ hijacking: they literally take away an organ from a person by teleporting it. When this happens to Neelix in "Phage", the Doctor gives him Hard Light lungs until they can be replaced. In this case, the fact it's a cross-species theft raises serious Fridge Logic issues, as there's no reason why medicine that's advanced enough to perform xenografts couldn't turn to non-sentient animals as donors instead. The "urban legend" aspect does come up in conversation between Janeway and Chakotay. - Star Trek: Picard has this as a plot point in "Stardust City Rag", in which it is revealed that former Borg drones are targeted so that their Borg components can be harvested and sold on the black market. \|\|Icheb, one of the children rescued from the Borg by Voyager, was abducted and killed by such a group.\|\| - White Collar had a multimillion dollar corporation involved in a conspiracy to sell body parts purchased in foreign countries to needy transplant patients, circumventing the organ transplant system and pocketing the "donations" from the grateful patients. Neal and Peter take them down, of course, when they try to sell to June's young granddaughter. - Space: 1999: In "Mission of the Darians", a Generation Ship suffered a radiation overload, and only fourteen crewmembers survived uncontaminated while the others eventually formed a primitive society that forgot its origins. The fourteen extend their lifespans via this trope, believing it's Necessarily Evil to get their spacecraft and its genetic bank to a new planet where their race can start anew. They use God Guise to convince the primitive outside to hand over sacrifices that get used for their organ bank. - The X-Files: Aside from several organ-eating monsters, which variously stalk victims for their livers, body fat, brains, pituitary glands, and even cancer tumors, the episode "Hell Money" features a Tong-controlled Organ Gambling Ring in which destitute Chinese laborers bet their body parts for the chance at a monetary prize. The operation is disrupted — at least, for that particular city — when the canister of tokens is tipped over, revealing that the game is rigged and all the tokens mark the contestant for death by heart extraction. - According to the old Gorillaz website, Murdoc had most of his internal organs surgically exchanged with 2D's. - The second part of the That Handsome Devil song "Viva Discordia" has the 'stolen kidney' variation happening to a woman named Mona. - In the Andes region, there's the story of the Pishtaco, a cadaverous humanoid who murders people to steal their body fat and organs. What it does with the fat depends on the story; in some versions it eats the fat, while in others it sells the fat to corporations to use as machine lubricant. While the fat-stealing aspects are old, the idea about the Pishtaco stealing organs and working with corporations is new; folklorists attribute this to locals's beliefs that factories from the USA and other developed countries are exploiting them. This myth is more dangerous than it sounds; visitors to the regions have actually gotten killed because the locals thought they were one of them. - According to a Cherokee legend, the shapeshifting cannibal ogress known as U'tlun'ta (or "Spearfinger") used her knife-like right forefinger to extract the livers out of her prey; her victims didn't notice until they rapidly sickened and died a few days later. - Disturbingly, organ thieves appear in two Dilbert stories: - Cyberpunk 2020 has rules for selling organs, limbs included, to the Organ Banks. Officially you need the deceased donor card in order to donate the organs and get the reward, but in practice the paperwork can be easily faked and there's a thriving black market of spare parts, whose clients include corporates. There is also mention of a Organ lottery that runs in Night City. - It is stated in Cyberpunk RED that such activity has ceased to be profitable, as advances in cloning technology has allowed lost or damaged body parts to be regrown easily. That said harvesting of cybernetic parts is another thing. - GURPS: Bio-Tech has a template for a freelance organlegger. The Evisceration spell from Magic is made for this exact purpose. - Rifts. While natural organs are generally not bandied about, it is mentioned that cyber-snatchers are a problem in crime-ridden areas, murdering people for their expensive cybernetic implants. - Shadowrun. Tamanous is a criminal syndicate that deals in organlegging. They kidnap and murder the homeless and will pay for recently-dead bodies, and among other things are known for stripping dead bodies of their cyberware to sell on the black market. Street doctors have been known to engage in Organ Theft as well, including patients who can't pay their medical bills. Tamanous even has a way to get rid of the leftovers once all the saleable parts are gone - they sell them to ghouls. - Warhammer 40,000: - Ork rippadoks from the universe tend to do this to their patients as a form of 'payment' for their services. Orks, however, don't usually miss the stolen organs (being Orks), nor is comparability usually an issue (they can accept whole "donated" heads, for instance). - Chaos Space Marines frequently raid their loyalist counterparts for gene-seed, as their own have been mutated beyond recovery by the Warp. How this is done tends to differ depending on the writer; either the Chaos Marines harvest the corpses of everyone on the battlefield, or they will make a raid on one of the genetic labs found on a Chapter Homeworld or a Forge World tasked with storage of gene-seed tithes. - Crypt of the NecroDancer opens with the villain stealing Cadence's heart after she takes a fatal tumble. He then resurrects her, and she sets out to learn what happened and find some way of breaking the curse. - Cyberpunk 2077 features the Scavengers, a gang that specializes in kidnapping people and harvesting their organs, both biological and cybernetic, for sale on the black market. Victims of this are often never found, because Scavs will strip everything that can be sold off from them before dumping, burning, or leaving what's left for the rats in Night City's sewers. They are the one gang in Night City that everyone despises and no-one in the game has a kind word to say about them; even V, who's mostly a live-and-let-live sort, hates Scavs with a passion, especially since it's revealed that they also make and distribute XBDs (basically this universe's version of the Snuff Film), something only one other gang (the Tyger Claws that answer to Jotaro Shobo) deals in. - In Dead Rising 3, the Psychopath Albert Contiello is a greedy Mad Doctor who sees the Zombie Apocalypse as an opportunity to abduct survivors and harvest their organs for the Black Market. To make it even more horrific, he just straps them down and extracts the organs without using anesthetic, though he does sometimes inject them with hallucinogens, more for his own twisted amusement than to ease their pain. - Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Harvester gang in Hengsha operate very similarly to this and have the same terrifying reputation. Just swap "augmented parts" for "internal organs". - Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth: One case involves a criminal organization of humans and Digimon selling "ultra-realistic dolls" that serve the customers, but the customers have to agree that they mustn't leave their room ever. It turns out that while the customers' minds are actually in EDEN, the criminals kidnap their real bodies and steal their organs to sell them. While the customers live their lives unknowingly in the virtual world, they can't return to their original bodies. The organizations earn their profit not only from selling organs, but also with their dolls. - Fallout: - A weird example from the Fallout 3 expansion Point Lookout: after (unknowingly and involuntarily) undergoing trepanning, your character wakes up with a chunk of brain missing. This wasn't sold on a black market or anything, but put in a jar and kept as some sort of souvenir by your surgeon. You can actually recover your bottled Lump of Brain, though looking at the item fills you with "a terrible sense of loss." - The Fallout: New Vegas expansion Old World Blues goes even farther, with the Think Tank removing your entire brain, along with your spinal column and heart and replacing them with cybernetic components. It's up to the player whether to put your original organs back or keep the robotics (both options offer their own stat buffs). - In Grand Theft Auto IV, in order to get rid of the bodies of two people Elizabeta shot to death, Niko takes them to a back alley doctor who harvests organs. The doctor complains that she shot one of them in the eye, because he would've liked to have taken it. - Headhunter is set in a world where the organ market is very profitable. Weapons are designed so they don't damage the target's precious organs. There was a massive black market of organs. The player gets to explore the cargo-ship which is the centre of the operation. - Killer7 has organ theft as part of its fourth chapter's plot (Encounter). Made even creepier because the organs are taken from immigrant children and children abducted from a creepy theme park. Plus the things Curtis Blackburn did with the bodies of the girls he killed. - In a Bad Moon run of Kingdom of Loathing, you can get your kidney stolen by a unicorn, and you can buy it back from the Black Market. - The Lost Experience has a side-plot involving sold organs. It doesn't have much to do with anything other than adding to the general corruptness of the Hanso Foundation and providing Product Placement for Jeep. It also ties into Locke's backstory in Lost: his father, who he'd never known, found him and struck up a relationship for the sole purpose of getting him to donate a kidney, then tossed him out again. - An assignment in Mass Effect requires the player to bring to justice (or just kill) a Back-Alley Doctor who manages a business of this sort... with a horrible, horrible twist: he pays homeless people to grow extra cloned organs inside their own bodies, with nightmarish medical implications. He then harvests the extra organs... if they grow properly. Otherwise, he just leaves them to die a terrible and painful death with two stomachs. - In Max Payne 3, it turns out that \|\|the Cracha Preto and the UFE are working together to abduct the poor of Sao Paulo in order to murder them and harvest their organs for the black market\|\|. The revelation enrages Max to a degree that not even the murder of his family could match, and his rampage escalates rapidly. - In Policenauts, you eventually stumble upon \|\|a secret facility where hundreds of people are kept brain-dead, but otherwise still alive, so that their organs can be harvested whenever the organ traffickers need\|\|. - RimWorld allows player to harvest organs like kidneys or hearts from prisoners and your fellow colonists. Organs can be used for replacing unhealthy organs, or making money by selling them. - Crops up in The Secret World Halloween mission "The Organ Smugglers." Here, it's revealed that the Orochi Group have been singling out unique individuals for organ harvesting, using their contacts among the CDC to isolate the donors and provide the medical service. Most of the cliches inherent to the urban legend are lampshaded during Marianne Chen's confession, and are only fulfilled on explicit orders from the harvesters - apparently for no other reason than to further the legend. For good measure, Bong Cha warns Dragon players to avoid getting captured by the harvesters after you run into a pack of them, noting that with your abilities, they could harvest you for a virtual eternity. \|\|A visit to Orochi headquarters reveals that one unfortunate Bee has already been subjected to this.\|\| - Sleeping Dogs: One of the Police side missions ends up uncovering an organ harvesting ring preying on members of the Sun On Yee Triad, being run by their rivals, the 18K Triads. Sun On Yee foot soldiers are kidnapped off the streets and delivered to a surgeon on 18K's payroll, who harvests their organs and transplants them into 18K's paying customers, while the abducted gangster's corpse is dumped into the harbour. The 18K make a tidy profit while literally killing off their competition in the process, and since the victims are exclusively triad footsoldiers, the cops' apathy over the deaths of a few gangsters and thugs ensures the operation stays under the radar. - The Medic from Team Fortress 2 apparently lost his medical license after stealing a patient's skeleton. He also seem to deal in non-human organs as well, as we can only imagine what a "Mega Baboon" is supposed to be. - In The Thrill Of Combat this is what you do for a living. Using a helicopter, stun beam and a rappelling surgeon to get the sweet, sweet organs and points. - Happens twice in asdfmovie. One gag has someone stealing another's lungs after tricking him to look up at the ceiling. Another has a Disproportionate Retribution Laser-Guided Karma hit a man who was being sarcastic over liking another's hat by having his face stolen. - Used in the Twist Ending of Charlie the Unicorn. - He gets it back (or at least manages to find it again) in the third installment. - This received a Shout-Out in Kingdom of Loathing, where a Bad Moon adventure leads to you getting your kidney stolen by unicorns. - Homestar Runner: - In "Bug in Mouth Disease", Bubs tries to sell Homestar a new pancreas, which is kept in a cooler marked "EXHIBIT B", implying Bubs was caught up in organ trafficking. - In episode 2 of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, a puzzle involves convincing Strong Sad he has "acute aphasic pretendicitis" so he'll get his "pretendix" taken out, which Strong Bad will then steal and sell to Bubs in exchange for a Plot Coupon. - In "Marzipan's Answering Machne 17.2", Bubs leaves a message announcing that, in response to Marzipan's demand for more "organic stuff" at the Concession Stand, he's now selling goods "pertaining to the illegal selling and trade of human organs". Bubs: I got ice packs, little Igloo coolers, scalpels, discounts on hotel rooms, bathtubs fulla ice, chloroform, and fifteen pass Econoline vans pre-lined with plastic sheeting! So come on down to Bubs' Organic Concession Stand! Where we're keepin' that one urban legend alive! You know the one I'm talkin' about? - Some The Slender Man Mythos stories involve the titular character doing this. Although most of the time, it's organ stealing and haphazardly replacing with an extra item or two. - Used humorously in an episode of Weebl & Bob, in which Bob goes to France and ends up having his kidney stolen by a French stripper named Kevin. According to the voiceover at the end of the episode, "the French are notorious kidney thieves". - Lynn Tailor nearly lost her eggs (and more than likely her ovaries as well) due to a faulty Auto Doc in Data Chasers. A REAL doctor showed up and turned it off. - Right after The Big Damn Kiss of Nick and Ki in General Protection Fault when they reach Ki's apartment, their friend and colleague Fooker calls her to explain he is in Mexico right now and ... would she know someone with a kidney to spare? - In He Is a Good Boy, Crange (who is an acorn, and came from a tree that also had organs) dreams that he's taking a hot bath, but is woken up by remembering the tree he came from being murdered, and finds himself in a tub full of ice, with a hole in his torso and all of his organs gone. Before he sees the hole, he finds a note taped to his stalk that reads "Sorry we got a little carried away XOXO". Surprisingly, he finds that his organs weren't stolen by the Mad Doctor/Artist spider that had been using organs as a medium. - Gets played with in the Space plotline of Irregular Webcomic! Some of the crew get mugged and their organs stolen. So what do they do? Take the organs from their future selves who failed at going back in time and preventing their organs from being removed, and then later find their original organs and get those implanted inside themselves so that when their future selves get their organs removed, they'll have a spare set. - In this Kevin & Kell strip, a rhino wakes up in a bath of ice with his horn missing. - In SomethingPositive, Pepito did this to a guy to get the money for English lessons. - In Super Stupor, Claw-Frog doesn't bother with keeping his target alive. Then again, he's not selling it for transplant either... - Super Effective: Red blacks out after all his Pokémon are KO'd, and wakes up in ice with a pair of scars. - Inverted in this xkcd, where a guy's ice* is stolen and he wakes up in a bath full of KIDNEYS. - Subverted in American Dad!, Roger was planning to do this to Steve so he could sell the kidney for 50 million dollars to buy Dolly Land, but Steve woke up before he could and pointed out that Roger wouldn't get that much for a kidney. Roger gave up on the idea then. - Roger once had an operating room in his attic that looked like he was going to use it to harvest Hayley and Jeff's organs; it was actually to remove his own, but he couldn't sell them because there wasn't a market for alien organs. When he collapses without them, his organs (which are autonomous) reinsert themselves anally. - On an episode of Drawn Together, Wooldoor does this to Toot. - This was one of the Urban Legends used in Freaky Stories, although they moved it into the future in an attempt to slightly reduce the Squick factor. In this version the guy's entire body got stolen, leaving him a disembodied head connected to a portable life support unit. - In a Family Guy Valentine's Day Episode, Meg's date turns out to be a black market dealer who takes her kidney. After spending the day together, they kiss and he gives the kidney back to her in a jar. - Futurama: - Spoofed in "My Three Suns". A sleazy street vendor offers Fry some (supposedly) ill-gotten organs and almost operates on him ("I take lungs now. Gills come next week.") before Leela stops him. - In "Anthology of Interest II", when Leela comes to after the Professor knocks her out pulling a lever on the What If machine, it's revealed that he planned to harvest her organs while she was out cold, but she woke up before he could, much to his disappointment. Hermes insists that he can try again next year. - Spoofed again in "Spanish Fry" Fry loses his nose to alien poachers because "human horn" is considered an aphrodisiac. He gets it back, only for Bender to tell the aliens that, logically, they should want his "lower horn." - Richard Nixon threatened to sell children's organs to zoos once. - In "Murder on the Planet Express", Fry suspected Bender of using his toothbrush to polish his ass so he put up a camera in their apartment. Instead he caught Bender and a team of surgeons harvesting his kidney while he slept. Then Leela accidentally ate Fry's kidney after Bender stashed it in Hermes' lunch cooler, and the Professor got a manwich in place of a kidney transplant. - Invader Zim has an entire episode about this, entitled "Dark Harvest". In the episode, Zim is afraid of being revealed as an alien by medical science, and decides that the solution to this issue is to pack his torso with human organs from the children at the school and replace the stolen parts with random nearby objects. Oddly, this generally only seems to cause discomfort and severe fatigue, but it leaves Zim a grotesquely obese sack of organs. In the end, this plan somehow works. - The Loud House: In "Garage Banned" Lisa tries to take Lincoln's kidney for an experiment. Lincoln: Lori, tell Lisa she can't have my kidneys! Lisa: Tell Lincoln he only needs one! Lori: Lisa, you already took out his appendix. Don't be greedy. - Men in Black: The Series: - The first episode dealing with Alpha involved him stealing a Sintillian heart. The victim didn't die as his species has two hearts and can live just fine with one, leading J to think that there's no problem. K quickly corrects him: K: You have ten toes. You wake up one morning with one missing, how would you feel? - Organ Theft is basically Alpha's hat. In his first appearances he had multiple alien body parts grafted to his body using Applied Phlebotinum. Notably the alien parts included heads which were still fully conscious, if under Alpha's control. He lost those in a Shapeshifter Swan Song, then reappeared with a completely new set that coincided with an animation change. By the time the series ended Alpha didn't even resemble anything human, although by then he'd moved on to robot parts. - A Robot Chicken sketch involved a woman falling victim to this, and waking up just as the thief was leaving. She just laughs and points to the mirror, where she wrote "Welcome to the AIDS club!" They both have a chuckle over it. note : The possiblity that the victim has a disease is one reason why this doesn't occur too often in real life. "Good luck selling that organ!" - Another sketch has a Troll doll steal the belly-button gem from a Treasure Troll in this fashion. - One episode of Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century had an organ trafficking ring that turned out to be cloning their products... and cloning is considered illegal due to Clone Degeneration. - The Simpsons: In "Homer Simpson in: Kidney Trouble", Grampa's kidneys burst when Homer refuses to stop and let him use the bathroom, so Homer decides to give Grampa one of his kidneys. However, upon finding out from Moe that people with one kidney can't drink beer as well as people with two kidneys, Homer is reluctant to give his kidney to Grampa. Near the end of the episode, the operation is about to go underway, but Homer escapes before it can happen. However, he gets hit by a car that falls on top of him from Hans Moleman's car carrier trailer, and since he wasn't going to give up the kidney willingly, Dr. Hibbert took it from him and gave it to Grampa while nursing Homer back to his normal self. - In the South Park episode "Cherokee Hair Tampons", Kyle became sick and needed a kidney, but the only person with his bloodtype was Cartman, who naturally refused to give up one of his. Stan and Kenny break into his house one night to try to steal the kidney, only to find Cartman had anticipated this and donned a 'Kidney Blocker 2000.' They later \|\|tricked Cartman into thinking that\|\| they had somehow bypassed the thing and took a kidney from him, and when he demanded that it be put back and willingly entered the operating room, \|\|the doctors removed a kidney for real and gave it to Kyle.\|\| - Transformers: Animated: Organ Theft among Mechanical Lifeforms is pretty common. How else can you explain Lockdown? He's in it for the upgrades, and seems especially fond of parts that come from another Transformer's body. Lockdown: "But don't worry... I got everything I wanted from you long ago." - Transformers: Prime: - The Venture Bros. used the kidney theft variant in the episode "Dia De Los Dangerous." Better justified than many examples, since we know it was being done by a relatively poor doctor that Dr. Venture was going out of his way to be an ass toward. Yes, even more than usual. - Largely averted in reality, as stealing organs from unwilling sources is a great way to infect your intended recipients with HIV, hepatitis, or other ailments. Illegal and/or for-profit kidney sales do happen in reality, but generally with the donors' willing participation (see Dirty Pretty Things, above). - The urban legend also fails on two facts that would make this implausible at best. First off, the stolen organ has to match sizes and be compatible to the donor, something you can't control with a randomly picked victim. Second, the large loss of blood from removing a kidney would make death of the victim a much more likely outcome. Another problem with this legend, though less a medical than a practical one, is that it would be much simpler to outright kill the victim and remove all their organs. They would then be unable to bear witness to the police, especially if their now much lighter body was disposed of permanently... And how do you even get enough ice cubes into a hotel room to fill a bathtub without drawing attention to yourself? Furthermore, the typical kidney theft urban legend is highly unlikely because motel rooms (or wherever the theft takes place) lack the sterility to conduct surgery. Although that doesn't necessarily make much difference, as any back-alley "plastic surgeon" worth the title can tell you. - There has been documented kidney theft among various poor people in India, who were then paid afterwards with "hush money" or threatened with death (Indian Victims Relate Horror of Kidney Theft -- ABC News). - Chinese government: - They are believed to harvest organs from prisoners executed in the colorfully named "death vans" that provide capital punishment services to outlying regions. - The Chinese government also executes Falun Gong prisoners (who are detained without trial) whenever wealthy foreign tourists place a demand for an organ transplant. - All this could never be factually proven by anybody, although some time ago the government issued a statement that "they didn't perform that practice anymore." - As of late 2019, these allegations are back in the news, this time regarding the Chinese government's mass imprisonment of Uyghur Muslims. - The allegations were investigated and proven true in a 2019 Tribunal (link provided here). - In South Korea, loan sharks are known to strongarm debt defaulters into selling their organs to make up for missed payments. - There are urban legends regarding this trope, doctors, and malpractice. While these are generally true, there have been some cases of supposedly brain dead patients waking up right before their organs were to be removed. - In one variant, if a registered organ donor's life is ever in jeopardy, then they will be murdered by doctors through substandard medical treatment, except doctors in the United States don't check donor status until an individual has been declared dead. Furthermore, the doctors treating the living and the transplant teams work independently from one another. And where are all the medical malpractice lawsuits alleging this urban legend? If it were true, then litigation lawyers would have fortunes to make. The usual variant goes thus: "If you have to go the ER, the doctors will not try as hard to save you if you are a donor. They don't consciously choose to do it, they just do." Aside from being an insult to doctors, it always fails to explain just how would the doctors treating you know that you are a donor. (And if you say, "By your driver's license or ID, of course!" — remember, they don't actually see that). - This is also said of doctors treating patients in persistent vegetative states, which is probably similarly untrue; there have been cases where doctors have put pressure on relatives of someone in that condition to discontinue treatment, occasionally to the point of asking for a court order, but that's only done when the patient's chances of recovery are nonexistent and they are to all intents and purposes dead. This stems from the fact that those in permanent vegetative states make very practical organ donors, as the organs can be harvested in a very controlled setting rather than relying on the chance of an otherwise healthy organ donor dying. While no ethical doctor would pressure a family to end the life of a loved one simply for the organs, no ethical doctor would let someone in such a state die without bringing up organ donation, given that literally dozens of lives may depend on it. In fact, vacillating relatives uncomfortable with the notion of withdrawing a brain-dead loved one's life support are often the ones who ask doctors about this option, feeling that organ donation will let the patient's passing be a worthwhile one, and/or that permitting organ recovery will help the survivors come to terms with the necessity of terminating support. - There is a story of an American missionary who went down to Nicaragua once, only to be confronted with rumors of him trying to kill children and harvest their organs. Locals responded by beating him into a persistent vegetative state. Similar stories exist of aid workers, tourists, and military personnel being attacked for the same reason. Verifying their authenticity is difficult. - The Israeli military was accused of killing Palestinian prisoners for their organs. Regardless of the accusation's validity, the Israeli military did admit to taking corneas, arteries and other tissue from dead Palestinians. This is not the same as executing prisoners for their organs, and the practice was discontinued over ten years previous. Dead Israelis were also "harvested." - Israel has a chronic problem with a shortage of organs, as for whatever reason Israelis have a surprisingly low rate of organ donation (8% of Israelis are registered donors, while in most Western countries the level's closer to 35%). It's not entirely clear why. Unfortunately, people who don't like Israel or Jewish people have played this up when given the chance, and still more unfortunately, a small number of Jewish people have given them ammunition by engaging in organ trafficking (which is to say, taking legitimately donated organs and then selling them rather than providing them free of charge) to Israel. The most famous incident is probably the 2009 bust of a ring in New Jersey which included five rabbis, three mayors, the Deputy Mayor of Jersey City, and two NJ State Assemblymen. Naturally, when this ring was exposed, many portrayed it as stealing kidneys, when in fact what they did, while reprehensible and illegal, was not nearly as bad as that. note : Technically, they did "steal" the kidneys—but since the kidneys had been freely donated, the theft was from the organization that tries to match organs to patients (with which the members of this ring had high-level connections), not from the donors. No ice baths or back-alley doctors were involved. It was more like organ embezzlement than organ theft, which is why it got broken up as part of a corruption investigation. - There have been allegations of the Kosovo Liberation Army murdering prisoners, and murders occurring along the US-Mexico border, for the purpose of organ theft. However, there has been no evidence to support either allegation. - However, in case of the organ trafficking in Kosovo, the Dick Marty report has been endorsed by the Council of Europe and the EULEX and there's a lot of evidence to back it up. It should also be noted that Albanian authorities have denied any cooperation. - In some countries, organ-harvesting is practiced under a policy of presumed consent, meaning that a deceased person's recoverable organs will be salvaged unless their survivors object and/or there's documentation saying that they didn't want it done. It's not "theft" because it's perfectly legal, but it can look like this to people from countries where lack of consent is the default assumption. - Not strictly an organ, but back before they could synthesise erythropoietin, East Germany would allegedly kill people to harvest their natural EPO and feed it to athletes, thus stimulating their bone marrow to produce extra red cells and enhance performance. This is probably just another urban legend, as you could get exactly the same performance advantage by blood-doping with ordinary donor blood and/or by sending your athletes for a few months of high-altitude training. Plus, erythropoietin from most other mammals is identical to that of humans, so they could get it more cheaply from sheep. Please take a moment to fill out your organ donor cards.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Organlegging
Orifice Invasion - TV Tropes Mariana: Don't pee in the water. Beck: Why? Mariana: A candiru, a vicious parasite will swim up the urine into your pau . Beck: Swim up my what? Mariana: Your pinto. It'll swim up your ding-dong. And once it gets in, you can't get it out. Beck: [stammers] Well, then what? Mariana: They have to amputate. Beck: [closing his pants really tight] Not this boy's pinto. Uh-uh. Not today! A creature basically forces all of itself into someone else, but through an established opening of the body (as in naturally, not a cut or piercing), even if it's not really an opening (like the navel). It could be the mouth (do not confuse with Force Feeding, but it can overlap with Attack the Mouth), the nostrils, the ear, or through orifices below the belt. Pores could even count. Effects on the victim can range from mind control to transformation, and even death. Can be very strong Nightmare Fuel due to this being a pretty potent Primal Fear, even and especially when it's used in some really odd Hentai (remember Rule 34, boys and girls). Still, do not read the examples unless you want to be really squicked. Sometimes an orifice evacuation implies that is how it came in, even if that isn't stated. A Super-Trope to Kill It Through Its Stomach (in that the invaded thinks it's just eating the invader). Compare Personal Space Invader, Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong, Anal Probing, Ass Shove, Nose Shove, Groin Attack (if it enters the urethra), and Body Horror. Combat Tentacles sometimes enter this. Contrast Orifice Evacuation (where something leaves a body through an orifice), Chest Burster. Not to be confused with Alien Invasion (although these can overlap). ## Examples: - In Dragon Ball Z, one of the first acts Super Buu commits after being formed is to turn entirely into pink goo, force himself down the throat of one of the Earthlings that shot Fat Buu's dog and expand, blowing the guy apart from the inside. - Later tried again against Vegetto in the anime adaptation, who responded by beating the crap out of Buu from the outside. - In Dragon Ball GT, Baby possesses Vegeta while he's powering up by reverting to his liquid metal state and enters his body through his pores. - This is how the larval form of the entities in Parasyte take control of their hosts, usually entering through the ear of a sleeping person to get at the brain. When the protagonist fell asleep with headphones on, his symbiote tried getting in through one of his nostrils instead, which caused him to wake up prematurely, so it had to settle for burrowing into his arm. He could see it under his skin trying to travel up to his head so he tied his headphone wires tight around his arm to keep it in place, screwing up the transformation process so he and it end up Sharing a Body instead of it taking over completely. - Getter Robo has the Invaders, a race of cosmic horrors who can invade people's bodies if they so much as bleed on them. Though most of the time they prefer to just dive into people's throats, or simply rip a hole in their torso and use that. - Medusa in Soul Eater possesses an innocent girl in the suburbs this way, by turning into a snake and slithering into her mouth. - And before she did it to the girl, she did it to a dog. - She also does this with the snakes she controls instead of herself: if she can get something into an entry point to your body she can send in hundreds of snakes which let her track you wherever you are and can rip you to pieces whenever she tells them to. - Happens too many times to count in Jojos Bizarre Adventure. - In the manga version of Ju-on, this is how Kanna meets her end when a bunch of possessed cats enter her mouth \|\|and tear her jaw off\|\|. - In the DVD remake of one episode of Bakemonogatari, an invisible snake-like oddity tries to force its way down \|\|Nadeko's\|\| throat. - In Basilisk, one of the ninjas from the Iga clan whose power is to turn into a slug-like thing in the contact with salt kill a ninja from the Kouga clan by jumping in his mouth, inside his throat and breaking his neck. - Done constantly to poor Sakura in Fate/Zero (with a pit full of crest worms) by her adoptive grandfather as part of her "training" as a mage. It's explicitly said that they enter her body through her vagina, and she had to endure said training from age 5 to 16. - Tokyo Ghoul: During Kaneki's ten-day period of captivity at the hands of Yamori, one of the various tortures Yamori inflicts on him is stuffing a live centipede in his ear. After breaking free from his restraints and beating Yamori into submission, Kaneki stops just long enough to pull said centipede out. - During the penultimate battle of Yo-kai Watch: Shadowside, one of the Shinma, Big Bad's shadowy minions, forces itself down Micchy's throat to possess him. It succeeds, albeit briefly, as Micchy is rendered unconscious seconds later, forcing the Shinma to leave his body. The same thing later happens to Jibanyan, although the viewers are spared the gory details this time around. - Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V: The Doktor uses parasite bugs to brainwash the Bracelet Girls; the parasite invades the victim's ear and latches onto their brain and infect the victim to make them the Doktor's puppet. The Doktor also tries it with Yuya, but the darkness inside him causes the parasite bug on his brain to burn to ashes. - The DC Universe 52 series answers a question no one ever asked before: can orifice invasion of \|\|a robot\|\| be made to look horrific? The answer? Dear Nicolas Cage, yes. - The image example for this trope comes from The Piper #2 by Zenescope comics. The woman in question (Sandra) just had a poisonous snake slide into her mouth after putting her lips on a french horn's mouthpiece, \|\|all thanks to the Piper playing his lethal song outside her room in behalf of Sean due to her beating the crap out of Sean for her buddies over him having recorded a tape, then getting away with it. She dies.\|\| - A (relatively) innocent example happens in PS238 when Polly Mer tries to stop a metahuman with Super Strength and Make Me Wanna Shout powers by wrapping herself around his head. Unfortunately his inhaling abilities are a bit stronger than expected. Polly states afterwards it's the first time she's felt what lungs feel like. - Averted in Hack/Slash. A fetal Slasher with a knife attempts to crawl into Cassie Hack's vagina while she's at the gynecologist's office. Cassie, of course, takes exception to this. - In Marvel Zombies Return, the Zombie heroes are transported to a parallel universe similar to theirs before the plague. While searching for a cure, Zombie Spider-Man runs into the Sinister Six, who confuse him for their version of the hero. They are extremely and understandably shocked when Zombie Spidey gives in to his hunger and starts killing and eating them. Since his sand-like body cannot feed him, he leaves Sandman alive, who escapes. Later, he runs into his universe's Spider-Man, who, unaware of the situation, jokes around normally. Not realizing there are two Spideys, this sends Sandman into a fit of rage, reasoning that Spider-Man clearly no longer cares and rather than be converted into food he decides to kill the hero, by forcing himself into Spidey's mouth and exploding his body from inside in a rather gruesome (if bloodless) manner. - Red Robin: Sac has his spiders crawl inside of one of Ra's Al Ghul's trusted workers (trusted in the sense that Ra's had the man's family hostage at gunpoint) in order to force him to divulge information about Ra's' location. When he's done with him Sac has his spiders and the thousands of young in the eggs they'd laid in the man kill him by eating and clawing their way out of him. - Guardians of the Galaxy (2008): Moondragon gets a baby Eldritch Abomination in the face, which enters her via the nose. Rocket Racoon, who is a witness, mentions hearing the sound of bones breaking as it forced its way inside. - In Calvin and Hobbes, one of Calvin's fantasy sequences involves a frog forcing its way into his mouth and being swallowed. Which leads to the punchline: \|\|he had a frog in his throat.\|\| - Played for laughs in Army of Darkness when one of Ash's miniature clones dives into his mouth. He retaliates by drinking boiling hot water. - The monster in Baby Blood enters a woman through her vaginal canal. - Black Wake: The Specimen (played by Kelly Rae LeGault) gives a man a kiss, allowing a parasite inside her to enter his body through his mouth. - Camel Spiders: A camel spider gets inside of Schwalb's body by climbing into his mouth before the body bag is zipped up. - Used with a snake in Collateral Damage by the Big Bad, to execute a spy. - Don't Listen: \|\|Whenever someone gets possessed by the witch's ghost,\|\| a fly enters that person's ear. - The fly that enters the nose of the main characters Drag Me to Hell. - The Hidden: The alien parasite burrows into and out of mouths several times during the movie. One scene used a prosthetic head to show the process in gory detail; upon seeing that scene on film, the actor whose likeness was on the head was physically ill. - During the interrogation scene from The Matrix, Agent Smith and his men put a "bug" into Neo, a horrible creature that enters through his belly button. It is exactly as terrifying as it sounds, especially since they had also fused his mouth shut in response to him demanding his phone call. - A monster in Poltergeist II: The Other Side disguised itself as a tequila worm to take over the dad. However, the dad overcame this and threw it up. - The Decepticon Doctor (Scapel) in Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen reads Sam's brain by sending a small robot up his nose. - The slugs in Night of the Creeps. - The slugs in the movie Slither enter their hosts through their mouths. - In Sniper, Thomas Beckett (Tom Berenger) warns his partner not to urinate as they are wading through a waist-deep river, because small organisms will enter his urethra and dig in with spikes. - Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, the low-budget sequel to the first movie, introduced a breed of bugs that entered through the mouth to control the humans (it was also a convenient way to save on the special effects). - The larval Ceti eels in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan enter through the ear. - In the short film Ghosts, the Maestro (played by Michael Jackson) possesses the Mayor (also played by Jackson) through the mouth. - In The Island, the diagnostic sensors (which look like a cross between ticks and spiders) crawl into the body via the eyesocket. - In John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, the Antichrist is a green liquid who enters into people via their mouths: the hosts then do the same thing to spread the possession, i.e. vomiting into other people's mouths. - eXistenZ is played this way. - Played for laughs when Bill & Ted's ghosts try possessing two men. They squeeze in through the ears. - "I totally possessed my dad!" - In Scourge, the titular black silverfish-like parasite enters through the navel. - After he is blown to bits, Jason Voorhees's heart in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday evolves into a small creature which does this to take over bodies. - In Flubber, the titular Flubber shoots into Wilson's mouth, wriggles around inside of him, and then explodes out the rear. - In Freddy vs. Jason, the bug creature in Freeburg's nightmare forces itself down his throat. - The snake scene from Lady Terminator. Still pondering how they got away with that. - Faust: Love of the Damned: During the ritual to summon the Homunculus, M pulls an albino snake out of his mistress' abdomen before forcing it down the throat of an honest cop that he brainwashed to follow him. - Shivers: The lust-spreading parasites enter through a person's throat, with someone who's already been infected kissing another person to spread the parasite. Or in one case, through a woman's vagina while she's taking a bath. - Piranha 3DD has a baby piranha swimming into a woman's vagina as she's Skinny Dipping. When she's having sex later, the piranha makes short work of the approaching penis. - The titular Cat from Hell (a Stephen King short story adapted into the anthology Tales from the Darkside: The Movie) leaps into the mouth of a hitman hired to kill him, causing the hitman to choke to death before the cat goes all the way down his throat (we read/see just the tail wagging out of the mouth before it disappears into the victim). This really goes with Rule of Scary in The Movie, where the cat is obviously way too big to do that (although vaguely hinted to be a spirit of vengeance). - The babelfish of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy enters the ear (but just stays in the ear canal), although it's more helpful than other creatures of this trope. - The creature in Piers Anthony's novel Firefly does this. - In Animorphs, Yeerks take over human beings by way of infestation through the ear canal. - Also Father in the Ellimist Chronicles, a giant sentient sponge (well, sort of) that sticks tendrils into the body to keep its victims alive (or in the case of the dead, keep them from decaying as long as they remain attached) and giving it access to their minds. - Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded: At one point in the story, Japheth, Chantel's Familiar, entered her head through her ear, and stayed in her body for a large part of the story. - In the short story "Motherhood Redeems Women" by D. Douglas Graham, \|\|an aborted fetus decides to return to the womb by the same door he came out\|\|. Squick ensues. - There's a story by Tanith Lee about a demon that takes possession of humans via their orifices, so to try and prevent being possessed one guy blocks all of his orifices, but \|\|forgets his urethra. Ow.\|\| - In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel "The Siege", an evil shapeshifter kills a Cardassian by ramming himself down the victim's mouth, then expanding inside. In a later novel, Odo threatens to do this to a Cardassian officer should he dare to disturb Odo's regeneration. - The biotech of the villainous Yuuzhan Vong in the Star Wars Expanded Universe often does this. Numerous creatures fit the trope more exactly by slithering into ears or eye sockets, or down the mouth. - Spore, in Galaxy of Fear, combines this with evacuations. Its hosts shoot vinelike tentacles out of their mouths and eyes; these sink into the skins of new victims and they are converted into new hosts within seconds. It doesn't actually leave its current hosts - its unwillingness to ever let go of anyone it's claimed is marked. - In Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, meltmassif/the Melters enter as spines thinner than needles through people's pores. When they're purged, they ooze out of pores and eyes and mouths as oily liquid. - In Stephen Baxter's Space, the hero Malenfant is integrated with an android/computer system. Tendril-probes infiltrate him... essentially everywhere, and there is no attempt at anaesthesia. He is doomed to live for billions of years in this state unless he fails in the task for which he was converted, in which case \|\|a stellar event will occur that will kill every living thing in the galaxy except for archaeobacteria and slime moulds.\|\| - The Fallen. Leviathan'' has people having their bodies taken over by making the creatures enter through their mouths. - In BIONICLE: Island of Doom, Zaktan "lectures" one of his men, Avak, by dispersing his body into the microscopic insects its made up of, and swarming them into Avak's mouth and eyes. - Ignatius of Horns can exert control over snakes. \|\|He uses this to trick a large snake into slithering into the open mouth of an injured villain, resulting in his death.\|\| - The victims interviewed in Budd Hopkins' Intruders retell of ear probing and possible tracking device installation. - Deeplight: The Gathergeist defeated the Swallower by shoving its tentacles into the Swallower's mouth, breaking its jaw, and eating it from the inside. - One Real Life example was in The Amazing Race, where one of the guy woke up partly covered by leeches, and one somehow crawled into his urethra. - In BrainDead (2016), the alien insects who are taking over people's bodies get in by crawling through someone's ear while they're asleep. - Doctor Who: In the TV Movie, the Master in the form of a slug-like creature crawls into the mouth of a sleeping paramedic to take control of his body. - An episode of Lexx had space carrots that take over people's bodies by ramming themselves up their anuses. - In Series 4 Episode 4 of Misfits, Rudy sleeps in a slug-infested room in the community center, and one of the slugs crawls up his anus. He attempts to remove it by inserting some salt. - My Hero (2000) had a character, Piers, voluntarily get taken over by an alien that enters through his urethra. It's not shown; the scene cuts to the door of the room he's in and we hear an agonized scream. Then we cut back to the room where Piers is bent over in agony, clutching his abdomen and saying to the alien, "Did you have to go in that way?" to which the alien apologizes. - A classic Night Gallery episode has a man hiring someone to do away with a rival by planting an earwig in his ear at night, where it will crawl into his head, constantly eating (see "Real Life" below) — in a karmic slip-up he gets it planted in himself. In a million-to-one fluke, he survives weeks of agony when it crawls out his other ear. With the boldness of one who's been through Hell he owns up to his deed and claims he'd do it again... \|\|then he finds out that the earwig was an egg-laying female\|\|. - The Outer Limits (1995): The prehistoric worm parasites in the episode "From Within" enter (and later exit as they died) through nostrils, mouths and ears. One girl actually has a worm go in her right ear (complete with blood) and at the end of the episode have it come out her left ear without leaving her with any ill effects (other than a great deal of pain). - In the River Monsters episode "Amazon Flesheaters", Jeremy Wade interviews a man who has had an unpleasant encounter with a candiru and shows video of the removal surgery. - The creature that inhabits Helen Magnus of Sanctuary has a parasite exit through her ear canal \|\|after she dies\|\|. Based on the dialogue, it got in through her pores. - Sliders had an episode where Maggie gets taken over by a parasite that got in through her mouth. - Stargate SG-1: - In a bit of a twist, through the mouth is the more pleasant way for a Goa'uld symbiote to enter a human host: Goa'uld normally enter through the neck, not wishing to see the expression of horror on their future host's face as their body is stolen from them. Only the Tok'ra, a breakaway group who only accept voluntary hosts, normally enter through the mouth. - Non-Tok'ra will enter through the mouth to avoid leaving a visible scar, however — if they have reason to suspect they will be attacked if discovered. - In Supernatural, demons usually enter their meat suits' mouths as smoke. - This is how the Nogisune tends to possess or influence people in Teen Wolf. It tok control of its first body by entering it's mouth the form of a fly. Later, while in \|\|Stiles's\|\| body, it released many more flies. They entered Isaac through his IV pump, Ethan through his nose, Aiden through his ear, and Derek through an open wound on his back, and acted as a Hate Plague for all four of them. - Hunting for mole lizards in Baja California, the host of Weird Creatures is told a local Urban Legend that these worm-like animals will invade the anus of anyone who defecates over their burrows. - It's one of the trademarks of The X-Files. The Black Oil a.k.a. Black Cancer a.k.a. Purity is an alien virus that gets into your body through your eyes and mouth and assumes complete control over it, optionally using it as a host for gestating a baby alien. - Legends of Tomorrow: In "The Getaway", a roach belonging to the Egyptian Goddess of Truth enters the mouth of anyone telling a lie to feed, forcing them to tell the truth. Sara tries to prevent this by covering her mouth, but the bug just goes through her nostril instead. Thankfully, Constantine's magic can pull it out. - Björk: During the music video of "Hidden Place" from Vespertine fluids flow in and out of Björk's nose, mouth and ears, but she doesn't seem to be bothered by it. - The Alp-Luachra in Irish folklore is a kind of fairy that takes on the form of a newt and crawls down the throat of anyone who falls asleep near a stream to feed off of the food that person has consumed. The only way to get rid of this creature was to eat a large quantity of salted meat and wait near a stream until the creature left the body to take a drink. - Dungeons & Dragons: - The 3.5 edition sourcebook Lords of Madness introduces a new (and decidedly creepy) aberration: the Tsochari (singular Tsochar), a mass of tentacles that bores into victims and can either coerce the victim into behaving itself by causing them great pain, or, kill the victim and wear the body as a disguise. - And then there are hellwasp swarms that can enter a dead body and animate it... or enter a living body and force it to do what they want... - And then there's the process of ceremorphosis, which a mind-flayer tadpole is inserted into the ear of a hapless humanoid (usually a captive human, orc or drow), which eventually turns them into a new mind flayer. - And to crown the collection there's the DC 90 Escape Artist check from the Epic rules. Combined with Enlarge Person... - Metroid: - In Devil May Cry 4, Nero can do this to Bael with a Buster move after stunning him. Cue Nero hopping into the demon frog's mouth and slashing him up from the inside before bursting out of his back. Ironic, considering that Bael was trying to eat him at the time... - Daemites from BloodRayne force themselves into the victim's mouth, then take control over the body. - G-Virus monsters of Resident Evil 2 reproduce by implanting their spawn into a host through the mouth. If the victim is compatable with the monster (related by blood) the victim will mutate into a new one, otherwise the offspring explodes from the chest Alien style and mutates into a different monster. - Several of Las Plaguas were inserted at adult size into the mouth of the victims in Resident Evil 5 for quicker control of the hosts. - The alien species in Microsoft's Freelancer entered a host through the mouth and effectively take complete control of the body, including the host's memories and personality traits, or at least enough so that nobody realizes that the person they're talking to isn't really \|\|the Chancellor\|\| anymore... - In one of the dungeons in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, Grovyle is attacked by a Spiritomb, which took control of his body by entering through his nose. - Mortal Kombat II: One of Shang Tsung's fatalities is forcing himself into his opponent's body, causing them to inflate to ridiculous proportions followed by the victim exploding into a massive shower of blood and bones. - The Mysterious Shadows in Deadly Premonition sometimes do this. Word of God says this is part of an attempt to return to life. - The Winter Windster from Wario World flies into Wario's mouth if he looks at him while his eyes are red. - The Death Slug from The Visitor in it's larva/parasite form does this, allowing itself to be eaten or, taking the back door in order to absorb and messily kill it's host - In Bugsnax, \|\|it's revealed that the adorable eponymous creatures are actually parasites that assimilate anything that eats them into the living island they're a part of. As the climax shows, they're willing to resort to Force Feeding themselves to their hosts. Under certain circumstances, it's entirely possible for almost every character to die this way.\|\| - The slaver wasps in Girl Genius enter the body to enthrall their victims through the mouth. - In Gods World, Arby dives into the Creator's mouth in order to feed him sleeping potions. - Yeon from Tower of God falls victim to a Puppeteer Parasite that invades her gastro-intestinal tract. The fact that it was as big as her and disguised as a \|\|Monster Clown\|\| makes it just as squicky as the fact that the way how it entered her mouth on the bed was shot made it reminiscent of something else entirely. - The...uh...nurses(?) in Oglaf use a "polyp of cleansing" to cure the unfortunate Ivan of poison. The phrase "open your food tract, mammal" is employed, followed by a very unpleasant-looking panel. Of course, given which webcomic this is, perhaps we should be glad it was his mouth. - In Commander Kitty, Commander Kitty ends up with one of his crew rammed up his nose after a transporter accident. - In the animated short "The Pier", a strange creature stalks a bird-man as he fishes for a meal. The creature regurgitates one of its fish-like young into the water, and the child is "caught" by the bird-man who promptly swallows it whole. The baby then starts nibbling on the bird-man's stomach lining, causing him to collapse in agony. The creature grabs the bird-man and forces even more of its young into his throat. The short ends with the children gleefully munching away. Moral of the story? Always chew your food. - SCP Foundation, SCP-695 ("Eels"). SCP-695's life cycle starts when its juvenile form enters a human male through his mouth, nose, anus, and urethra. - Whateley Universe: For several (real world) years, there was a running gag about a Noodle Incident involving Generator, which everyone referred to as... The Noodle Incident. However, when they finally gave Lancer's full (and-spoilerific) Superhero Origin story, author Phoenix Spiritus broke with tradition by describing what actually happened. It involves Jinn demonstrating that \|\|even a Flying Brick has trouble breathing when their lungs are filled with animated spaghetti\|\|. - In the "Danger Music" episode of Epic NPC Man, the mouse that goes Killer Rabbit on Ben can be seen to leave his neck and crawl into his mouth after he collapses. - In an episode of The Venture Bros., The Monarch threatens to dunk the Venture family in a river teeming with candirus. Bizarrely, Dr. Venture claims the candiru are a myth (when it's just the part about them crawling into people that's made up). - In one episode of Batman Beyond, an amorphous woman named Inque tries to suffocate Terry by forcing herself down his throat, which is followed by a scene in which Terry graphically vomits her back up. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop her. - Code Lyoko: - XANA's specters generally possess people by entering through the mouth or the ears. - In episode "Franz Hopper", instead of possessing one specter tries to clog Jérémie's airways by entering his mouth and nose. - In Adventure Time episode "Jake vs. Me-mow", Me-mow climbs into Jake's mouth with a syringe of poison. - Legion of Super Heroes (2006) has Timber Wolf's father infecting him with nanites that enter through his ear while he sleeps. - In one episode of The Simpsons, Groundskeeper Willie fills the auditorium with rats in revenge for being humiliated. Bart warns Milhouse not to open his mouth; of course, Milhouse starts to say "What?", at which point half a dozen rats leap in. - Played for Laughs a few times in Avatar: The Last Airbender. - Happens to Sokka when Momo grabs a spider out of his mouth to eat it. - Momo is missing, and Sokka thinks Appa ate him, so he crawls in Appa's mouth to see. Appa just spits him out. - The Legend of Vox Machina Scanlan suggests this as a method for he and Vax'ildan to attempt to kill the dragon Umbrasyl from the inside, Vax assumes Scanlan is suggesting they get Umbrasyl to eat them whole and shoots down the idea by pointing out the dragons acid breath. Turns out Scanlan wasn't suggesting taking the front entrance.... queue them both held in one of Scalan's magically projected Giant Hands of Doom as it also extends two of it's fingers and zooms towards Umbrasyl's anus. - Looney Tunes - Done in Sylvester's first short "Life with Feathers", in which a henpecked male bird wants to commit suicide, so decides to feed himself to the cat. Of course, Sylvester is suspicious about why the bird would want to do this, so he spends the entire cartoon running away, with the aforementioned bird chasing him and pleading to be eaten. Found here. - This premise is later used in Cheese Chasers, as mice Hubie and Bertie, going off cheese after binging on it, decide there's nothing to live for, and haunt Claude Cat trying to be eaten. Found here. - In "Beanstalk Bunny'', Bugs and Daffy try to get away from the giant (Elmer) by crawling into his ears and into his head. Elmer isn't hurt (indeed, his head seems quite empty) but gets angry and "smokes" them out by lighting a cigarette. - Sym-Bionic Titan takes this to a disturbing extreme. Xishi, a squid-like monster about the size of an average human, climbs all the way down her victim's throat and forces them to speak the truth. What's really creepy about it is that Xishi's face is visible from inside the victim's throat. - Carrie from The Amazing World of Gumball can posses someone by flying into their mouth and down their throat. - Star Wars: The Clone Wars: - The Geonosian Brain Worms enter the victims through the nose, and take control of the body. Obi-Wan is more interested in guessing whether it goes in the ear or the nose than worrying about the fact that one of his closest allies is about to be mind-controlled, and he's next. - A subversion occurs in Season 4, when \|\|Obi-Wan voluntarily swallows a "vocal emulator", a spider-like device that changes his voice, in order to perfect his disguise as Bounty Hunter Rako Hardeen.\|\| - Mr. Slave from South Park enjoys forcing small animals to crawl up his ass. - The candiru is popular claimed to do this by entering a victim's penis and lodging itself in there. However, such claims about its hunting methods rest on very little evidence, as there has been precisely one documented case of a human attack, in 1997 (which has been disputed). In particular, it is not chemically sensitive to either ammonia (excreted by fish) or urea (by humans) and actually hunts by sight, attacking the gills of its prey. Furthermore, its body shape and hydrodynamics means that it's really not possible for it to force its way into a human urethra. Injuries previously thought to have been caused by candiru infestation and removal are now believed to actually have been caused by piranha biting the genitals of swimmers. - There's also an urban legend about earwigs crawling into your ears (hence the name), although they don't actually do that. - Earwigs, as well as spiders and other creepy crawlies, actually do prefer small, tube-like spaces, and will occasionally find their way into someone's ear canal. They'll usually just leave as soon as they discover it's coated with slippery and unpalatable earwax. Supposedly this is why your ears and nose are so susceptible to itching. - A similar urban legend persists about the average person swallowing seven spiders per year in their sleep, due to the offending arachnid crawling in the nose or mouth and not being able to climb back out. Spiders aren't prone to crawling into damp, breathing caves, so while occasionally this may happen, it's much rarer than the legend portrays. note : In actuality, the "strange but true fact" was originally circulated as part of an experiment in human gullibility. Turns out, humans can be pretty damn gullible. - Some Argentinian torture methods during the Dirty War involved a bunch of naked people in a small room, in fetal position, forming a circle. Then, their torturers dropped a starving rat inside the circle the people were making. The rat would try to escape by entering someone's ass, literally. - There are tales of this sort of torture from many different situations supposedly brutal in their methods. For instance, they say the Imperial Chinese did this from time to time, except that there was only one person and the rat was in a hot cauldron strapped to the victim's ass. - This is how most scavengers consume carrion, as it requires the least amount of effort to get to the soft fleshy bits. - Ants, such as army ants, will often attack a larger creature's soft spots in order to bring them down or drive them off. People being attacked by army ants can expect — in addition to painful bites and blisters — to get ants in their mouth, nose, eyes and ears. There have been a few cases where ants have killed infants and small children by invading their mouths and noses and more or less causing them to drown in biting, stinging ants. - Some species of parasitic worms crawl into people's anuses. - The pearlfish, a small eel-like creature inhabiting barren underwater sand flats near coral reefs, finds shelter in the hind ends of sea cucumbers. As sea cucumbers breathe through the lining of their anal orifice, the echinoderms can't close them off long enough to stop the pearlfish from slipping into the only available hiding place which their habitat affords. - Benign example: some pet rats love sticking their heads into their owners' mouths, the better to sniff at the teeth and determine what the human has been eating lately. Rat lovers have even coined a term for this bizarre habit: "rodentistry". - Several stories have come out of China regarding people having live eels inserted rectally with terrible results. One man died after several friends inserted an eel into his rectum after he passed out following a night of drinking. Another man nearly died after he WILLINGLY put one up there to relieve his constipation.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrificeInvasion
Organ Theft - TV Tropes "There was this crazy albino guy with a hook, and he lived in a mirror! And if you even look at him, you'd wake up a bathtub full of ice with your kidneys gone!" Organ Theft, as the name would imply, is the practice of stealing people's organs via surgery, which can then be used for further purposes such as transplants or sold on the Black Market. note : Yes, there's a black market for organs, because legitimate doctors (and, for that matter, lawyers) are way too Squicked out by the idea of selling organs to even consider doing it or allowing it to happen. Never mind that the demand for organs is shockingly high, and sadly, some people need money more than they need their organs. Which is why said black market exists in the first place. One particularly common variant of this trope is the "kidney theft" Urban Legend, in which the victim is conned somehow and drugged into unconsciousness, and then wakes up kidney-less, crudely stitched up in a bathtub full of ice in a cheap motel, often with a message attached telling them to go to a hospital. At first glance, it may seem plausible because if the wealthy, powerful Big Bad is on death's door and needs an organ tomorrow, they do have a motive to get that kidney by any means necessary and they have henchmen willing to kidnap a victim. But beyond that point, organ theft fails the logic test for a few reasons: - Organ transplant requires lots of specialized equipment to remove the organ and keep it viable for transplanting — equipment not generally found outside a hospital. Yes, bad guys can steal or buy basic medical equipment, but this is unusual gear. Theft or purchase would raise red flags. - How will The Syndicate assemble an entire surgical team? Yes, bad guys can force or pressure one down-on-their luck doctor (who owes money at the casino) to sew up a mook after a robbery, but getting a whole surgical team for an illegal, non-consensual transplant is implausible. - In the standard version, the perps display a monstrous disregard for the victim's human rights — yet they apparently still care enough to keep them alive. (To potentially file a police report no less). - Organ transporting containers are huge due to the amount of dry ice needed — the thieves would stand out to any witnesses they passed. - Organs need to be checked for compatibility, both for blood chemistry and size. Also, the recipient would be highly vulnerable to any infectious disease the donor might be carrying. A random victim offers no guarantees on any account. - It takes a lot of surgical skill and medical knowledge to extract a living organ and keep it in a condition where it can be transplanted successfully to another patient. You'll be hard pressed to find a Hippocratic Oath-bound surgeon willing to do this. Not to mention they're generally too well paid to need to resort to crime. - It's the organ that needs to be kept on ice, but the legend always seems to involve the patient being left in a bath of the stuff, sedated — a great recipe for hypothermia. - Aside from cannibals (who are obviously far too small a demographic to profitably market to) and surgeons (who have too much to lose —their license and social status— to resort to kidnapping-based acquisition, done in league with The Syndicate), who on Earth would the alleged perps even be selling these stolen, roughly-extracted organs to, and what potential customers would want C-grade black market organs for? This trope was popularized by, and originated with, Larry Niven's Known Space, in which Organ Theft is called "organlegging", a portmanteau of "organ" and "bootlegging". (The Niven variant makes more sense, though, since in the stories, they do take everything useful and kill the donor during the procedure). Needless to say, this trope is a potent source of Nightmare Fuel, Rule of Scary and Fridge Logic (why not steal multiple organs and kill the victim instead of leaving a witness?). Sub-Trope of Human Resources. Super-Trope of Brain Theft. # Examples: - Battle Angel Alita uses this early on, except with cyborg spines, which are probably much more removable than any human organ. - Defied in the first chapter of Black Jack. A Spoiled Brat crashes after reckless driving and is on the verge of death, so his influential father hires the legendary surgeon Black Jack. To provide the necessary organs, the father sentences an innocent boy to death so that Black Jack can harvest his organs in a simultaneous operation. Instead, Black Jack gives the innocent boy plastic surgery to look like the brat, along with enough money for him and his mother to flee the country. - Cyberpunk: Edgerunners: - David almost finds himself on the receiving end of this when an unscrupulous EMT notices just how valuable his Sandevistan implant (which is essentially his spine replacement) is and decides to take it for a payday while he's barely conscious and hooked up to a stretcher in no position to fight back due to overuse of said implant. Luckily for him, Lucy bails him out of that situation (and the ambulance). \|\|He almost finds himself on the end of it again when Lucy's boss, Maine, shows up looking for that same Sandevistan since it was supposed to be his in the first place (he even paid in advance), but they're able to hash things out into a job offer.\|\| - This is heavily implied to be how \|\|David's mother Gloria managed to make ends meet for their struggling financial situation. Using her position as an EMT, she had easy access to steal cyberware from the corpses she works with. Maine, one of her more notable buyers, notes she was a good earner, and the military-grade Sandevistan David acquires and was supposed to go to Maine was scavenged off a dead Cyberpsycho that she herself zipped up and put in the back of the ambulance.\|\| - Fabricant 100: A MO for Fabricants is to kidnap humans and steal their high-grade body parts, normally killing the unfortunate. Some keep kids with them until they group up. - An episode of the Get Backers anime features this, though in a more realistic manner. The organ, a heart, has already been extracted in a legitimate medical operation, but the ambulance transporting the organ is then intercepted and hijacked by mercenaries. Ban and Ginji are then contracted by the father of the heart's intended recipient, a sickly girl, to retrieve it in just a few hours since the refrigeration unit will not be able to keep the heart good for very long. - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: - One episode features a trio of medical students who sell discarded organs on the black market. Major Motoko Kusanagi later threatens to sell their currently-in-use organs on the black market to Scare 'Em Straight by pretending to be a member of the Yakuza, who actually do sell organs on the black market. - A later episode deals with girls being kidnapped so that their organs and cybernetics can be sold off, which was apparently based on a public scare blaming North Korea for doing this to Japanese people. - In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean, this is the Stand Marilyn Manson's modus operandi. In order to repay gambling debts, it will take valuable items from the loser, and considering how much organs sell for on the black market... - This happens to Plucky Girl Sakura Tomoe in an early episode of Knight Hunters. Because this is Knight Hunters, though, it isn't a bathtub that she wakes up in, it's an entire swimming pool full of ice. Unfortunately for her, the organ thieves in question later decide that they're tired of doing things by halves. - The Wolkenritter hunting Linker Cores in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's is the magical equivalent, though they're being used to fuel an Artifact of Doom and they naturally grow back over time. - Genetically-transferred powers in Naruto tend to be tied to specific organs that can be transplanted into others. Eyes, arms, hearts, entire bodies, you name a body part, ninja are stealing it from each other. There's even a whole clan that got powerups from stealing each other's eyes. Though many of them (though not all) are courteous enough to kill the person before stealing their body parts. - In One Piece, Trafalgar Law's Devil Fruit allows him to steal the hearts of people, either for a quick kill, to blackmail them into doing his business, or as an insurance that they won't attack him later on, as he does with Smoker, Tashigi, and Monet. - One episode of Trigun features a town which deals in smuggling girls who sell their bodies as potential organ donors and as prostitutes. - In Vandread, the Harvesters raid human colonies for specific organs and tissues, such as the reproductive organs of the crew's homeworlds. \|\|The Harvesters were created by humans on Earth who, faced with a population collapse, became obsessed with lengthening their lifespans and came to view the colonies as organ banks.\|\| - In an episode of Wolf's Rain, some muggers tell our heroes there's a market for healthy young organs. Of course, our heroes are only disguised as humans and aren't about to part with their organs. - In the "Heart of Hush" arc of Batman, Mad Doctor Hush kidnaps Catwoman and removes her heart, keeping her alive by elaborate machinery and using her hostage heart to blackmail Batman. - Clean Room invokes this as explanation for Anika Wells' abduction and medical experimentation. It's nowhere near the truth. - A two-part Daredevil storyline revolves around organ trafficking, courtesy of a criminal who calls herself the Surgeon General. - One of Howard the Duck's more persistent nuisances is "the Kidney Lady", an annoying old battleaxe who believes Howard to be the ringleader in a kidney-stealing conspiracy. - In Mega-City One from Judge Dredd, organ transplantation is illegal because it has advanced to the point that it can render an individual immortal. Organ selling is a prevalent crime throughout Mega-City One. - Justice League of America: In 'JLA: Year One'', the Brain comes into possession of a 'genegraft ray' which instantly and cleanly transplants organs of its targets. The Brain ends up pulling an All Your Powers Combined thanks to the Flash's legs, Green Lantern's arm, Martian Manhunter's eyes and Black Canary's vocal cords. - A two-part JSA Classified story arc with Dr. Midnite features a villain harvesting super-powered body parts to sell to wealthy patrons in the black market. The gruesome part is that the heroes whose body parts are stolen are often left alive after the procedure and basically crippled. Midnight lampshades just how ridiculous it is that the urban legend has been made real, given how strange it is that any of the victims survive their unwanted surgery. - Organ theft (a.k.a. "organleggers") is a common crime in the original Marvel 2099 comic book line for victims who cannot afford to pay for police protection. - In My Little Pony: Friends Forever #25, three thieves steal Rainbow Dash's wings with magic and attempt to use them to turn themselves into Alicorns. If the transfer could not be reversed in time, Dash would have lost her wings permanently. You know, for kids! - New X-Men features a group of villains who call themselves the U-Men, humans with a major fanboy affection for mutants... which drives them to "jump up the evolutionary ladder" by hijacking their superpower-oriented organs. This often leaves the mutants dead, and occasionally leads to the U-Men suffering organ rejection. - In the Sin City yarn "Hell and Back", the protagonist finds that the Big Bad is into organ theft, among other things. - In Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, the leader of the Decepticon Justice Division, a team of psychopaths (even by Decepticon standards) who hunt down Decepticons who betrayed the cause, Tarn is addicted to transformation. He made a deal with \|\|Pharma\|\| to provide him new T-cogs which are taken from other Transformers every time he burns out his own. He's gone through a lot of T-cogs. - Vampire: The Masquerade (Vault): A group of vampire hunters in Winter's Teeth called the Wolves in Sheeps' Clothing hunt down the undead in order to do this. They surgically graft the vampires' organs to themselves and gain some of their powers. - Johnny is taken by an organ harvest ring in the Emergency! fic "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" - In the Turning Red fanfic The Great Red Panda Rescue, Mei is kidnapped and gets her appendix harvested for experimentation. - Hidden Frontier cast member Rebecca Wood (posting under her character name) claimed this had happened to a friend of her cousin. She became quite cross when forum friends gently pointed her to Snopes.com. After all, her mother and cousin wouldn't lie, would they? - Subverted in Promstuck. It seems that Snowman has done this to Jack in the epilogue, but then he remembers that he's a carapace and doesn't have any organs that could be called kidneys. - Seventh Endmost Vision: The Big Bad, Lucrecia, did this to \|\|Ifalna\|\| by stealing her eye... and implanting it in her own skull. She's made almost no attempt to hide the change; multiple characters have figured out a rough date for the change by looking at photographs of her, since there's photos of her before that show her with her two natural brown eyes, and all photos after show her having the one green eye. \|\|Ifalna, at least, thinks she did it to see as an Ancient would see.\|\| - In Spice Girls Fic, Case of the Missing Technology, if Unwilling Roboticisation wasn't enough, the narrator had to inform Simon after discovering what happened to Melanie's original organs apart from her brain, "Black market, Im afraid. How else he makes his money to put innocent people through?" \|\|Melanie C had to get biomechanical replacements, via 3D printer\|\|. - At the end of Spider-Ninja, \|\|Raphael is unconscious in SHIELD's medical bay. Dr. Connors, believing that the turtles' mutated DNA might hold a clue to genetic alteration, steals some of Raph's blood to further his experiments.\|\| - A Game of Cat and Cat: "Doctor Dude" is an odd case. He has removed the appendixes - just the appendixes - of many of his living patients, and takes all the organs of anyone who happens to die on his operating table - even though he does his best to treat them. It is unknown why he is taking people's organs, as there's no indication he is involved with the Black Market. When asked about it he more or less says that the body is nothing but a bag of meat after the spirit has departed for the next cycle or Karma. \|\|Though given what game he comes from...\|\| - The plot of Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero revolves around Mr. Freeze kidnapping people who share the same blood type as his wife, which includes Barbara Gordon. She (correctly) points out that he could use any negative blood type to save her until it's revealed he's actually kidnapping them for this trope, and being as obsessive as he is is going after the same blood type to reduce the risks of rejection. - In 12-Hour Shift, nurse Mandy and her cousin Regina regularly deliver organs to a trafficking ring. One night, Regina delivers her boss a cooler with just a soda, thinking she had placed the organ bag in the cooler. The boss makes it clear: she either delivers a kidney or she will serve as donor. - In Andhadhun, Dr. Swami runs an organ harvesting operation. - Art of the Dead: While possessed by Envy, Donna murders the Alpha Bitch head cheerleader Tiffany, amputates her breasts, and gives herself a 'boob job' by transplanting them on to herself. She does the same thing with Tiffany's lips. - Awake: Clay and his mother joke about this as a solution to having to wait for his turn on the heart transplant list. Lillith: I'm serious this time. Let's go to China, try out luck on the black market. Clayton: Why don't we just go outside, grab some random person, drag him in here and, y'know... Lillith: Sounds good to me. Drag 'em in and cut 'em open! Hey, whatever it takes, right? - In the 2015 section of Back to the Future Part II, a headline reads "Thumb Bandits Strike Again". In The Future, all transactions are carried out via thumbprint ID. The filmmakers speculated that this could lead to a new type of crime, where thieves cut off the thumb of their victim and use it to make illegal purchases, like stealing a credit card. - Central Station: Dora the retired schoolteacher sells Josue, an orphan, to two people whom she thinks are running a black-market adoption racket, but who apparently are actually organleggers. She goes back and rescues the boy before he can be chopped up. - In Cradle of Fear, Nick Holland is an amputee who is unable to engage in sexual activity with his girlfriend Natalie due to his frustration with the loss of his left leg in a prior accident. Nick visits his old friend Thomas and shoots him in the head. He then removes Thomas' left leg, puts it on ice and has it transplanted to himself by his doctor overnight. - The Jason Statham action movie Crank: High Voltage starts with the main character getting his heart stolen. He then proceeds to kick ridiculously large amounts of ass while trying to keep his replacement organ running. - Corrupt prison officials in Death Warrant have prisoners killed to sell their organs for profit. - Dirty Pretty Things: the film revolves around illegal migrants yielding to terrible pressure and selling their kidneys to an organlegging outfit, and one Nigerian surgeon being strong-armed into working for them. The film ends with the protagonists stealing a kidney from the Big Bad who is running the operation, in order to give it to the client in place of the intended victim's. As you can see, this film has the trope all sewn up in a back room. - Donor is a horror film about a government worker who registers homeless people with the authorities, only to get sucked into a horrifying conspiracy when it turns out the Disposable Vagrants are being murdered and their organs harvested by a Russian crime ring. - Feeding Frenzy: Mr. Plinkett is ultimately revealed to be killing people to harvest their organs and rebuild his family from their parts. - In the German made-for-television film Fleisch, also known as Spare Parts, a young couple are enjoying their honeymoon in the American Southwest, when suddenly the husband is kidnapped by armed men in an ambulance. The wife escapes at the last minute, and enlists the help of a local truck driver in helping her locate her missing husband. Together, the uncover the existence of a vast international smuggling ring supplying the world's wealthy elite with organs stolen from healthy young people. - Hitchhiker Massacre: The killer has an unseen boss that he converses with over his phone, who pays him for bringing him organs. At one point, the killer is seen sawing a victim's organ out. - Hrudaya Geethe: Dr Prasad the Chief doctor of a mental hospital is harvesting his patients' organs. First, he is running an involuntary confinement for pay scam in which certain people who are an inconvenience are designated as mentally ill and confined for the right price. Those people are then prescribed a tonic which is actually a poison that causes them to have painful spasms. To treat this, they are sent to surgery where they die and their organs are semi-legitimately harvested. - In The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus \|\|this turns out to be what Tony did to the children of his charity. He had previously claimed the reason for his disgrace was doing business with Russian gangsters in order to fund the charity.\|\| - Iron Man 2: Referenced and subverted when Tony Stark meets with Nick Fury and Black Widow at a donut shop. Widow injects him with a dose of lithium dioxide to counter the symptoms of his palladium poisoning and help him focus, but until they explain, Stark thinks this trope is in effect: Tony Stark: Oh, God, are you gonna steal my kidney and sell it? - Through a series of odd events in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Jay and Silent Bob find themselves hitchhiking with Mystery Incorporated (just don't ask). After a dream sequence in which they all get high, it is revealed that Jay and Silent Bob have fallen asleep, whereupon the gang decide to "sell their kidneys on the black market and leave them in a seedy hotel on ice". \|\|Of course, that was also just a dream.\|\| - The creature from Jeepers Creepers commits periodic fatal organ thefts, for reasons that had more to do with hunger than transplantation. - Koma's plot revolves around a series of organ thefts. - The main bad guys of the Korean film The Man from Nowhere are Triad gangsters operating in South Korea that engage in organ harvesting. When they kidnap a girl named So-Mi, the little neighbor of protagonist Cha Tae-Sik, to have her eyes harvested, things quickly turn out bad for them. - In The Man Who Could Cheat Death, Dr. Georges Bonnet has taking to attacking people in the street and extracting the glands he needs to manufacture his elixir. - Anderton buys a pair of black-market eyes in Minority Report, so he can get past the retinal scanners that are literally everywhere. - An unlucky fellow in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life had some gentlemen come to collect his liver, on the grounds that someone needed it and he'd filled out a liver donor card. Too bad for him he wasn't done using it... Mr. Brown: Listen! I can't give it to you now. It says, "in the event of death"! Man: Well, nobody who has ever had their liver taken out by us has survived. - Muggers has a pair of students steal organs from the most hateful people in their lives, after they get the idea from taking a kidney that just happened to be compatible with a patient from a man who had jumped off a tall building. Worse, they run afoul of a gang led by a nurse and two ambulance officers at the hospital, who simply take organs indiscriminately and don't want any competition. - The Pet: The main antagonists are slavers who harvest organs. - Repo Men: The Union is a company that supplies cybernetic organs to people who need them, but unfortunately their contracts have the clause that if the recipient misses too many payments, the Union will send Repo Men to collect the organ even if that means the death of the recipient. The plot kicks into high gear when one of said repo men ((Remy, The Hero) falls behind in payments for his own artificial heart, leading to him becoming a target for repossession. - Repo! The Genetic Opera: GeneCo makes artificial organs, which they repossess if a customer misses too many payments. The Repo Man is in charge of doing the actual repossessing, which usually results in the customer's death. Not for nothing are they often considered "legal assassins." "Ninety-day delinquent gets you Repo Treatment!" - In RoboCop (1987), is said that OCP Corporation owns the cadavers of their employees (even if the employee is not quite dead yet). - Discussed in Saw when Adam looks over his body and tells Lawrence that they're in a typical organ theft situation where someone has kidnapped them, took their kidneys and put them on sale in eBay. Lawrence assures Adam that's impossible, because if he had lost his kidneys, he would be in extreme pain or already dead. - Scream and Scream Again involves a Mad Scientist assembling a Master Race from body parts. At the start of the film, a jogger collapses from a heart attack. When he wakes at the hospital, he discovers his leg has been amputated. Every time the movie cuts back to him, another limb has been amputated. - In the 1998 Donnie Yen movie Shanghai Affairs, Donnie plays a doctor in a rural town who ends up investigating a series of mysterious murders involving children being found dead with their organs removed. Turns out Donnie's mentor (and one heck of a Broken Pedestal) is the mastermind behind an organ trafficking ring, and is specifically targeting the children of poor townspeople because "nobody will miss them". - The Thai horror film, Sick Nurses, revolves around a doctor and his nurses who secretly sells organs in the black market. The plot is kicked off when one of those nurses attempts to leave her organization and threatens to spill their activities to the public, which predictably leads to her ex-colleagues kidnapping and eliminating her for knowing too much; however her spirit comes back seeking revenge. - The Korean movie Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is about a man who sells his organs on the black market to get enough money to pay for his sister's hospital bills but is soon cheated out of his life savings. - A major plot point in Toy Story 4 is that the Big Bad has a voice box just like Woody, only hers is broken, so she seeks to steal his. The equivalence to organ theft is never stated outright, but the fact that the toys view their stuffing and other innards the same way we view our organs is. Woody is even knocked unconscious for the operation. - In Trespass (2011), the robbers threaten to remove Avery's kidney if her father Kyle doesn't cooperate. - Train: Travelling aboard a Russian train, a college wrestler and her teammates fall victim to a gang of sadistic thieves harvesting human organs. - Turistas and Train turned out to be about this sort of thing. - Urban Legends - One of the legends referenced by the serial killer in Urban Legend. Of course, the killer admits that they are not too good at anatomy and will probably just grab the first major organ they see. - This is the first kill used in the sequel, Urban Legends: Final Cut, which was tagged on when it was realized that the film didn't have that much to do with actual urban legends. - Vitals revolves around a man who wakes up to find that his kidney was removed by organ harvesters, led by a man called Kaliyah. - Snakehead, one of the later Alex Rider books, uses this as a justification for the villain keeping Alex alive yet again. He has Alex taken to a hidden facility where his various organs will be removed one-at-a-time (finishing with the heart) and sold to wealthy customers, allowing him to recover what Alex has cost him. Alex doesn't stick around. - In Animorphs, a group of Andalites come to Earth to assassinate Visser Three (\|\|or so they claim\|\|). The actual sniper is a Boxed Crook named Aloth arrested for trying to sell the organs of warriors who fell in battle. - Blood Books: Blood Debt deconstructs this as Vickie comments it is an incredibly weird and impractical trade due to how much trouble you'd get in for little financial gain. Also, you could get the organs from much easier sources. - Bubbles in Space: In the future with so much cybernetics and attempts to live longer, this is a thriving market. Bubbles comments that there's more bodies than missing persons. This is Foreshadowing \|\|that the organ traffickers have been targeting refugees from the Barrens.\|\| - In Rick Griffin's short story Bravo Charli Charli's biker gang is coerced by a cartel boss to transport a sealed cooler to Santa Fe within seven hours. Halfway through the story she finds out it's a human heart. - Burke mentions a Noodle Incident in which he acted as a go-between for a wealthy family seeking a heart for their dying child. He collects the heart, implied to have been taken from a child murdered for the purpose. - Coma features a conspiracy of organ theft in the hospital system. Apparently, they started using hospital patients who were already comatose, but demand (and profits) is such that they start artificially inducing brain death in healthy patients undergoing surgery to get more victims, drawing the attention of the protagonist. - The Igor clan of Discworld is known to harvest organs or limbs... but only postmortem, and mostly from people who have received a transplant performed by an Igor at some point in their lives. The Igors also practice this extensively upon themselves/other Igors, and when an Igor says he's got his father's eyes, he's not being metaphorical. - Doctor Who - In one of the Expanded Universe novels, this one is done rather weirdly. The Doctor is ill because something is the matter with one of his hearts. The villain thought transplanting a Time Lord's heart to himself would help him time travel, so he stole it, curing the decaying heart problem but creating a new, massive-hole-in-the-Doctor's-chest problem. Good Thing He Can Heal. One of his hearts was a link to Gallifrey, which he'd destroyed in "The Ancestor Cell" (different Time War). - In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio play "Spare Parts", the Doctor encounters Thomas Dodd, a Back-Alley Doctor dealing in recycled organs that he gets from desperate people on Mondas who sell their own or that of recently deceased relatives. He can't resist when the perfectly healthy Doctor turns up and tries to lock him in his organ freezer. Later the Doctor gets his cooperation by promising one of his hearts (he doesn't have to pay because Dodd gets dragged away to be turned into a Cyberman). - In Dream Park's South Seas Treasure Game, an early confrontation with the power of the Fore occurs when the villainous tribe launches a supernatural attack on the Daribi village. While conjured giant birds beset the Gamers, the aged Daribi chieftain's belly caves in on itself, his liver "eaten" by the Fore tribe's evil magic. - Eveless Eden by Marianne Wiggins. An Intrepid Reporter discovers that the Romanian diplomat his girlfriend ran off with runs a company involved in selling blood products (everything from plasma to skin cream, as well as blood itself) taken from Ceausescu's hellish orphanage system. Thanks to the incompetent way the orphanages are run, HIV-tainted blood has long ago entered the system. - Every Heart a Doorway: When the murders start, the first victim has her hands taken - while she's still alive. The second loses her eyes in the same way. The third, her brain. \|\|The killer is trying to create a "skeleton key" - a girl who will allow her to open any of the Doors to otherworlds.\|\| - Iron Widow: Like other condemned prisoners in Huaxia, Li Shimin had one kidney and part of his liver taken for transplants. Zetian is aghast at how the damage could affect his Life Energy in the long term. - The concealed Evil Plan of the fourth Journey to Chaos, book, Transcending Limitations, centers on this trope. \|\|Kaiba Gunrai wants to kidnap Annala and extract everything from her, organs included, because she has been Touched By Volrons and he wants to replicate this for super soldiers that he can sell, in addition to boosting other industries, such as magical reagents.\|\| The victim isn't killed because her Healing Factor means she can't be killed, and more importantly for her captor, he can collect multiple copies of each organ. - Christopher Moore's Island of the Sequined Love Nun has two Big Bads convincing an island full of people that they are the personification of the local Cargo Cult gods. It turns out they have a database composed of the natives' medical information and are running an on-demand black organ market, harvesting (among other things) kidneys, hearts, and corneas. - In Kea's Flight, this has been known to happen to women who go to back-alley abortionists. - Larry Niven's Known Space series is the Trope Maker. Prior to the invention of cloned organs to replace failed ones, the demand for replacement organs is so high that lawmakers make more and more crimes punishable by death penalty, with the organs of the punished being harvested for use. Naturally, such a high demand makes it a high profit item, which attacts criminals who become as "organleggers" who are even less picky than the legal system about whose organs are harvested. Eyes in particular are noted to be in high demand, for criminals who wish to fool retina scanners. - Kronk has roving "Bounty Hunters" who harvest the bodies of anyone who can't fight back and resell the organs to hospitals. - In the Legends of Dune prequels it is claimed that the Bene Tleilaxu were originally slavers and organ dealers. They claimed that the organs were cloned but during the Butlerian Jihad the vats couldn't meet demand so they ripped most of them from captured slaves too injured to work. - In the English sci-fi drama Never Let Me Go, \|\|the protagonist and her fellow students willingly submit to having their organs removed — they're all cloned humans created for the specific purpose of organ harvesting\|\|. - Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast has Lazarus Long mention how he'd never engage in killing people to strip them of their organs, but, he knows of several planets where you could point someone out, and a thug would quote you a price and ask which parts you want and "when and where did you want them delivered?" (He's giving the explanation to point out that there are some places where you can buy anything). - A government version occurs in A Planet Named Shayol by Cordwainer Smith, in which criminals are made to grow extra limbs and organs for harvesting and use in transplants. - The novel Raylan by Elmore Leonard features a couple crooks doing this, but in a variation they're not selling the organs to others, but essentially holding them hostage for money from the person they were taken from, bypassing the whole comparability issue. - Unwind exaggerates this in the most horrific way possible — not only is the process legal, it's used as a way to get rid of unwanted children and supported and run by the government. - Technically yes, although more reminiscent of the trope are the Parts Pirates, who capture kids not specifically marked for unwinding, basically kidnapping them and shipping them to private unwind facilities. It's stated that in China, they don't even take all of you at once, which the lead Parts Pirate in North America finds revolting. - The dictator assassinated in the opening scene of Use of Weapons has used off-world technology to make himself young. There's a mention that his current heart once belonged to a young female anarchist, implying that dissidents executed by the state are being harvested. - In The Wandering, the "murders" on Neshi's homeworld are all for the sake of supplying the government with organs, and not just for organ replacements, as Neshi finds out. - In World War Z, Fernando Oliveira describes his participation in the transplant of a black market heart obtained from a "donor" in China. Unbeknownst to the recipient and the transplant team, China happened to be in the early stages of a Zombie Apocalypse at the time. The doctor goes on to suggest that this was the cause of many other Solanum outbreaks outside of China at the time. - Angel: Wolfram & Hart's subsidiary health care operation, the Fairfield Clinic, operates a body parts bank where organs are harvested from still-living prisoners. As magic is involved, this naturally leads to an Evil Hand plot. - The Aquabats! Super Show! features the "in transit" variant: the Aquabats are assigned to transport a replacement brain to Governor Robot, and the villainous Silver Skull is trying to steal it from them - with Governor Robot incapacitated, Silver Skull will be able to usurp his authority. \|\|In a twist, he succeeds by impersonating the very general who gave the Aquabats the job in the first place.\|\| - Blake's 7: In "Powerplay", Cally and Vila are picked up by a hospital spacecraft from the neutral planet of Chenga, rescuing survivors from the battle against the Andromedans. Chengan society split into two factions, the Primitives who wanted to live the simple life, and the High-Techs who embrace it. Unfortunately, the Primitives are being hunted and captured by bounty hunters so their organs can be used for Human Resources, and it turns out the hospital ship isn't missing the opportunity provided by the wide-ranging battle. Only a last-minute Teleportation Rescue saves our heroes from being dissected. - Variant on Bones, where bone and other tissues were being stolen from corpses. Unfortunately one of those corpses had cancer, and Booth's boss was not amused when his daughter contracted said cancer from one of said grafts. - A later episode had this as the suspected motive for a murder, as a body missing several organs was discovered. Turns out \|\|the victim was killed in a blind rage; the killer felt guilty but couldn't bring him back to life, thus brought his body to an "organ dealer" so he could possibly save someone else's life\|\|. They do explore the organ black market, but the organs there are either purchased from living but desperate people or taken from corpses at a funeral home. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Gentlemen from "Hush" need to steal seven human hearts for reasons that are never explained. In order to harvest the organs they take the voices of the entire population of Sunnydale so their victims can't scream for help. - Shows up from time to time on Charmed (1998). - In its classic form, one episode features a doctor gaining the sisters' powers via blood transfusion and losing his mind because of it. He uses the newfound powers to steal organs from criminals who had been treated at his hospital. - Wendigoes are formed when one person steals and eats another's heart. They then transform into monsters on the "three nights of the full moon" to continue eating hearts. - In possibly the weirdest (and least explained) version, the succubus kills men in order to drain them of their testosterone. - The Teaser of the CI5: The New Professionals episode "Choice Cuts" played the Urban Legend version entirely straight. The villains left the hotel room telephone right next to the ice-filled bathtub along with a note: Call 911 or you will die!, but the victim (an FBI agent) dies anyway thanks to having both kidneys removed. - Criminal Minds likes this trope and its variations. - There's Frank Breitkopf in Season Two, whose entire MO is sedating his victims and removing their organs while they were still alive, getting off on the fear on their faces as this was happening. It's unclear what he does with the rest of the organs once his victim is dead, but it is known that Breitkopf takes a rib from each of his victims to make a wind chime for his love interest. - "Blood Hungry" has a killer taking organs which he believes house the human soul. He (or possibly his mother) returns one of the organs to the crime scene in a Tupperware container. The victims were already dead when he took the organs, and he keeps them to eat (or maybe just to admire them), not to transplant. He's more than a little crazy. - Then there was the man stealing his victims' eyes to use in taxidermy. - Another episode features a Jack the Ripoff who is said to have taken the kidney from a victim, just like Jack himself. - "God Complex" comes closest to the Urban Legend described in the trope (in Criminal Minds classic, at least), only it's not internal organs the unsub is stealing — it's legs. The first victim is left in a motel with his leg stolen, but no ice bath or note. The second victim gets a note, but is dropped off just outside the ER. He's the one who dies, because the UnSub amputated his leg, sewed the wound closed (poorly), then opened it back up to attach the first victim's stolen leg. The UnSub at least has a sterile(-ish) facility to perform the... operations. - There was also a variation, where instead of stealing the organs himself, one man started killing organ donors in the hopes that his daughter would get a liver. It nicely sidesteps the issue of transport and removal (he even dropped one victim off at the hospital and called 911 before committing the other murders so EMTs would get there on time), but it still didn't work out how he wanted. - Each of the spin-offs has had its own take on the trope as well. - Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior had an episode where a man was attempting to harvest women's skin to graft onto his daughter's face. The team pointed out how futile this idea was, but he wasn't exactly stable. - The Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders episode "Harvested" plays out the Urban Legend from the description, with a healthy dose of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, in that the victim dies. \|\|The killer wasn't even concerned about the organs' viability. His dead father had his liver, corneas, and heart donated (properly, by doctors in a hospital setting) and he believed he needed to replace them so that his father could be complete in the afterlife.\|\| - CSI: - Organ-legging is mentioned in "Justice is Served" after a jogger turns up dead with his liver and a couple other organs removed. At the end of the episode, \|\|it turns out that the killer took the most blood-rich organs to make into a health elixir, convinced that that it's the only thing preventing her from becoming sick\|\|. - Another episode has organs being taken from dead bodies that were processed in a specific crematorium. - In the CSI Trilogy crossover storyline, young women were abducted and smuggled cross-country by a network of criminal truckers. While most were forced into prostitution, those girls who fought back against their captors became salable body parts. - Yet another case involved two brains stolen from cadavers. The first was that of a boxer who'd committed suicide due to neurological damage from repeated head trauma, and who'd asked that his brain be examined posthumously to diagnose this. The second was swiped from a freshly-entombed corpse to exchange it for the first brain, by a trainer who didn't want the boxer's brain tested for steroids. - CSI: Cyber: In "Fit-and-Run," the motivation for a series of kidnappings and murder turns out to be a father and a husband desperate to find a replacement kidney for a dying woman. - CSI: NY: - An episode had an organ being stolen after it was legitimately removed, with a murder or two in the process. It turned out \|\|the transplant surgeon at the recipient's hospital\|\| was behind the theft because his wife was dying and needed it. - Yet another episode had a corrupt ex-coroner who'd been stealing organs and tissues for a different reason - to process them for the drugs they contained; the victims were all dead drug addicts from cases that came through his morgue. - On Desperate Housewives, Katherine thought she'd found the perfect guy until she found out he'd been to prison for doing this. Of course, every adult living on Wisteria Lane has committed multiple felonies, but this was the one crime that was too much for them to accept. - Doctor Who: "The Brain of Morbius" is about a Mad Scientist trying to steal the Doctor's head, which he wants to finish off his Frankenstein's Monster. - The Firefly episode "The Message" turns out to be about this. Tracy has to pretend to be dead to transport (and incubate) some super-viscera, and despite the stated cost of the organs, the guys who go to recollect shoot to kill. In a way, Tracy kind of does this to himself, because the way he's smuggling the organs is that he had all of his replaced. Then he decided to go for a better offer, forgetting that the other people STILL had his original organs. - Forever Knight had an episode with an organ theft ring. The first body was found dead in a dumpster, and later, Natalie almost ends up getting her heart stolen when she goes in for knee surgery by a desperate surgeon whose daughter was dying. Averts some of the problems with this trope, but not the compatibility one. - In the Fringe episode "Marionette", the villain of the week is stealing back the donated organs of a girl he's obsessed with in an attempt to bring her Back from the Dead. The villain is actually something of an Apologetic Attacker who makes attempts to leave his victims alive long enough for emergency services to stabilize them once he's finished harvesting the organs. - In one episode of Grimm ("Organ Grinder"), teenage runaways are kidnapped and their organs harvested to sell on the black market, as human organs are used to make illegal drugs for wesen. - An episode of Hannibal has the Behavioural Sciences Unit hunting someone who is taking organs to sell on the black market and doing a dodgy job of keeping his victims alive. They initially think it might be the work of the Chesapeake Ripper, a notorious Serial Killer who removes organs from his victims before killing and mutilating them, but we already know who the Ripper really is and what he's doing with the organs. The Ripper winds up using the organ harvester's activities as a smokescreen to do some, ehem, grocery shopping. - The Haven episode "The Farmer" had Harry Nix. His Trouble is that he suffers from progressive organ failure, so he must regularly steal organs to replace his own. He can sprout a tentacle that can suck the victim's organs out of their body and absorb it. He is aware of the problem with organ compatibility, so he targets his illegitimate children from when he donated to a sperm bank. To make matters worse, his children run the risk of developing the same condition and being forced to harvest organs as well. - On Heroes, Claire jokes that she has used her regeneration powers to sell a kidney for quick cash. - Human Giant: A hypno-therapist steals Aziz's kidney while he's under. Then the paramedic who finds him knocks him out and steals his hair (for wigs). Then the the cop who finds him after that knocks him out and steals his ice from the bathtub and his right testicle. - Done slightly more realistically with the witness of the week on In Plain Sight. It was a doctor removing kidneys from gastric bypass patients, since they are operating in the same area and the patient is likely to write off any problems caused by loss of kidney to complications from surgery. - Jessica Jones (2015): When Kilgrave got badly injured in a car accident on the night Jessica broke free of his control over her, he was left with crush syndrome where one of his kidneys was badly damaged. He wanted to be made whole again, so he made the ambulance driver give up his kidneys and ordered the transplant surgeon at the hospital to falsify a death certificate and give Kilgrave the new kidneys. The original donor had a stroke and is now confined to his home where he's hooked up to a dialysis machine (and writes out "KILL ME" when Jessica stops by to interview him), while Jessica learns from the transplant surgeon that Kilgrave will have to harvest a new set of kidneys in a couple of years. - Iron Fist (2017): It's not outright organ theft, but a subtle hint that Joy Meachum is actually not quite as straight arrow as she seems is when her idea of convincing a businessman to sell a pier to Rand Enterprises is to bribe him by showing him a dying kid whose liver will be transplanted to the businessman's nephew and completely bypass the national donor list. - On Justified a group of criminals sell organs on the black market. However, they primarily harvest the organs from the recent corpses of people who died in prison rather than then by stealing them from living people. They have access to the prisoners' medical records and use people trained in this type of operation. The one time they operate on a live person \|\|it is a ruse to make the victim think that they took his kidneys so he will steal for them. All they did was make a couple cuts and sutured them up.\|\| - An episode of Las Vegas had a guest at the Montecito claim this had happened to him. He had a fresh scar and X-rays revealed he was short one kidney. It turns out that he'd already sold the kidney in an under-the-table deal with an ailing celebrity, and was trying to extort money from the casino for additional profit. - Played straight on Law & Order, which may actually have helped disseminate the "kidney theft" urban legend ( Snopes speculates that the plot, which Word of God claims a friend saw in a newspaper, was based on a false allegation published in the Daily Telegraph in 1989). SVU's Captain Cragen (who appeared in the episode) later dismissed such stories as urban legends. - A more realistic variant shows up in Law & Order: SVU, where a pediatric surgeon is revealed to illegally harvest organs from her braindead patients without their parents' consent. It's done in a hospital setting with all the proper staffing and equipment; the only thing missing is a signature on a form. - Leverage features a bizarre version in that a heart is stolen in transit for a rich businessman who is dying. As it was stolen from its intended recipient, a 15-year-old kid, Nate commits everything to stealing it back. - The Magician: In "The Illusion of the Deadly Conglomerate", Tony initially believes believes the homeless men being abducted are being used as involuntary organ donors for illegal transplants. They are actually to abduct to provide corpse to an organisation that specialises in helping rich criminals to fake their deaths. - The Crapsack World of Max Headroom has "body banks" which will pay for organs — or whole bodies — with no questions asked. - Nip/Tuck has an entire story arc dedicate to an organ thieves, beginning in "Shari Noble" where Liz falls for a The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction when going to a lesbian bar and getting the attention of what she considers a "10" and tragically, the Head-Turning Beauty woman turns out to be a Honey Trap who only brings Liz to her home in order to steal her kidney. - Happens in the NUMB3RS episode "Harvest". Four Indian girls come into the US each intending to sell a kidney willingly on the black market to get money for their families. But when one of the girls dies from a surgical error, the doctor running the organ ring figures he's already crossed the Moral Event Horizon and decides to kill the two he has left (one of the surviving girls ran and hid inside another part of the hotel basement when the first surgery got botched and was taken into FBI protective custody) in order to harvest all their organs for the money and to get rid of any potential witnesses. One of the girls is killed, but fortunately, the FBI interrupts just before the procedure on the second girl begins, and she is rescued unharmed. - Red Dwarf features an episode where Lister and the Cat are captured and restrained by an apparently rogue medi-droid. After being rescued, Lister wakes up in medbay and is told by Kryten that his kidneys have been stolen. \|\|He ultimately ends up going back in time to steal his kidneys from his past self, which is why they had gone missing in the first place\|\|. - Riverdale: In Season 3, it is eventually revealed that \|\|Edgar Evernever runs a cult where he eventually harvests his followers organs to sell on the black market.\|\| - The RoboCop: The Series episode "What Money Can't Buy" deals with this as Murphy goes against a black market organ ring when two people steal a pair of lungs meant to save a boy Murphy helped rescue in the prior episode ("Officer Down") after his body started to reject the lungs he was given in an earlier operation. \|\|The duo and their boss stole the lungs for a crime boss, and the boy's earlier lungs came from the same criminal ring and were taken from someone who died from tuberculosis.\|\| - One episode of The Rockford Files featured an insane doctor who arranged "accidental" deaths in order to obtain and sell the victims' organs for his wealthy clients. He tended to target victims with rare blood types. - Scrubs had one of JD's daydreams parodying the kidney theft legend. - What appears to be a people smuggling operation turns out to be this idea in Sea Patrol. The Big Bad of the episode wastes the only kidney aboard which matches a current order in the process of capturing two of the crew. One of them is the right blood type... - Gerry Anderson's Space Precinct had criminals engaged in organlegging. - In Squid Game, Loser Protagonist Gi-hun was strongarmed by his Loan Shark into signing away his physical rights, with the threat of losing a kidney and eye should he miss another payment. After he joins the Deadly Game in the hopes of using the prize money to repay his debts, it's revealed that a group of the guards overseeing them was secretly harvesting the organs of dead players and selling them to the Chinese for extra money on the side, with the help of a player who was a former doctor. - Star Trek: The Original Series has an example, in the infamous episode "Spock's Brain", with the autonomic brain functions that regulate breathing and blood circulation being used to circulate air, heat and water through an Underground City. - Star Trek: Voyager: The Vidiians. Only that this is not so much organ theft as organ hijacking: they literally take away an organ from a person by teleporting it. When this happens to Neelix in "Phage", the Doctor gives him Hard Light lungs until they can be replaced. In this case, the fact it's a cross-species theft raises serious Fridge Logic issues, as there's no reason why medicine that's advanced enough to perform xenografts couldn't turn to non-sentient animals as donors instead. The "urban legend" aspect does come up in conversation between Janeway and Chakotay. - Star Trek: Picard has this as a plot point in "Stardust City Rag", in which it is revealed that former Borg drones are targeted so that their Borg components can be harvested and sold on the black market. \|\|Icheb, one of the children rescued from the Borg by Voyager, was abducted and killed by such a group.\|\| - White Collar had a multimillion dollar corporation involved in a conspiracy to sell body parts purchased in foreign countries to needy transplant patients, circumventing the organ transplant system and pocketing the "donations" from the grateful patients. Neal and Peter take them down, of course, when they try to sell to June's young granddaughter. - Space: 1999: In "Mission of the Darians", a Generation Ship suffered a radiation overload, and only fourteen crewmembers survived uncontaminated while the others eventually formed a primitive society that forgot its origins. The fourteen extend their lifespans via this trope, believing it's Necessarily Evil to get their spacecraft and its genetic bank to a new planet where their race can start anew. They use God Guise to convince the primitive outside to hand over sacrifices that get used for their organ bank. - The X-Files: Aside from several organ-eating monsters, which variously stalk victims for their livers, body fat, brains, pituitary glands, and even cancer tumors, the episode "Hell Money" features a Tong-controlled Organ Gambling Ring in which destitute Chinese laborers bet their body parts for the chance at a monetary prize. The operation is disrupted — at least, for that particular city — when the canister of tokens is tipped over, revealing that the game is rigged and all the tokens mark the contestant for death by heart extraction. - According to the old Gorillaz website, Murdoc had most of his internal organs surgically exchanged with 2D's. - The second part of the That Handsome Devil song "Viva Discordia" has the 'stolen kidney' variation happening to a woman named Mona. - In the Andes region, there's the story of the Pishtaco, a cadaverous humanoid who murders people to steal their body fat and organs. What it does with the fat depends on the story; in some versions it eats the fat, while in others it sells the fat to corporations to use as machine lubricant. While the fat-stealing aspects are old, the idea about the Pishtaco stealing organs and working with corporations is new; folklorists attribute this to locals's beliefs that factories from the USA and other developed countries are exploiting them. This myth is more dangerous than it sounds; visitors to the regions have actually gotten killed because the locals thought they were one of them. - According to a Cherokee legend, the shapeshifting cannibal ogress known as U'tlun'ta (or "Spearfinger") used her knife-like right forefinger to extract the livers out of her prey; her victims didn't notice until they rapidly sickened and died a few days later. - Disturbingly, organ thieves appear in two Dilbert stories: - Cyberpunk 2020 has rules for selling organs, limbs included, to the Organ Banks. Officially you need the deceased donor card in order to donate the organs and get the reward, but in practice the paperwork can be easily faked and there's a thriving black market of spare parts, whose clients include corporates. There is also mention of a Organ lottery that runs in Night City. - It is stated in Cyberpunk RED that such activity has ceased to be profitable, as advances in cloning technology has allowed lost or damaged body parts to be regrown easily. That said harvesting of cybernetic parts is another thing. - GURPS: Bio-Tech has a template for a freelance organlegger. The Evisceration spell from Magic is made for this exact purpose. - Rifts. While natural organs are generally not bandied about, it is mentioned that cyber-snatchers are a problem in crime-ridden areas, murdering people for their expensive cybernetic implants. - Shadowrun. Tamanous is a criminal syndicate that deals in organlegging. They kidnap and murder the homeless and will pay for recently-dead bodies, and among other things are known for stripping dead bodies of their cyberware to sell on the black market. Street doctors have been known to engage in Organ Theft as well, including patients who can't pay their medical bills. Tamanous even has a way to get rid of the leftovers once all the saleable parts are gone - they sell them to ghouls. - Warhammer 40,000: - Ork rippadoks from the universe tend to do this to their patients as a form of 'payment' for their services. Orks, however, don't usually miss the stolen organs (being Orks), nor is comparability usually an issue (they can accept whole "donated" heads, for instance). - Chaos Space Marines frequently raid their loyalist counterparts for gene-seed, as their own have been mutated beyond recovery by the Warp. How this is done tends to differ depending on the writer; either the Chaos Marines harvest the corpses of everyone on the battlefield, or they will make a raid on one of the genetic labs found on a Chapter Homeworld or a Forge World tasked with storage of gene-seed tithes. - Crypt of the NecroDancer opens with the villain stealing Cadence's heart after she takes a fatal tumble. He then resurrects her, and she sets out to learn what happened and find some way of breaking the curse. - Cyberpunk 2077 features the Scavengers, a gang that specializes in kidnapping people and harvesting their organs, both biological and cybernetic, for sale on the black market. Victims of this are often never found, because Scavs will strip everything that can be sold off from them before dumping, burning, or leaving what's left for the rats in Night City's sewers. They are the one gang in Night City that everyone despises and no-one in the game has a kind word to say about them; even V, who's mostly a live-and-let-live sort, hates Scavs with a passion, especially since it's revealed that they also make and distribute XBDs (basically this universe's version of the Snuff Film), something only one other gang (the Tyger Claws that answer to Jotaro Shobo) deals in. - In Dead Rising 3, the Psychopath Albert Contiello is a greedy Mad Doctor who sees the Zombie Apocalypse as an opportunity to abduct survivors and harvest their organs for the Black Market. To make it even more horrific, he just straps them down and extracts the organs without using anesthetic, though he does sometimes inject them with hallucinogens, more for his own twisted amusement than to ease their pain. - Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Harvester gang in Hengsha operate very similarly to this and have the same terrifying reputation. Just swap "augmented parts" for "internal organs". - Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth: One case involves a criminal organization of humans and Digimon selling "ultra-realistic dolls" that serve the customers, but the customers have to agree that they mustn't leave their room ever. It turns out that while the customers' minds are actually in EDEN, the criminals kidnap their real bodies and steal their organs to sell them. While the customers live their lives unknowingly in the virtual world, they can't return to their original bodies. The organizations earn their profit not only from selling organs, but also with their dolls. - Fallout: - A weird example from the Fallout 3 expansion Point Lookout: after (unknowingly and involuntarily) undergoing trepanning, your character wakes up with a chunk of brain missing. This wasn't sold on a black market or anything, but put in a jar and kept as some sort of souvenir by your surgeon. You can actually recover your bottled Lump of Brain, though looking at the item fills you with "a terrible sense of loss." - The Fallout: New Vegas expansion Old World Blues goes even farther, with the Think Tank removing your entire brain, along with your spinal column and heart and replacing them with cybernetic components. It's up to the player whether to put your original organs back or keep the robotics (both options offer their own stat buffs). - In Grand Theft Auto IV, in order to get rid of the bodies of two people Elizabeta shot to death, Niko takes them to a back alley doctor who harvests organs. The doctor complains that she shot one of them in the eye, because he would've liked to have taken it. - Headhunter is set in a world where the organ market is very profitable. Weapons are designed so they don't damage the target's precious organs. There was a massive black market of organs. The player gets to explore the cargo-ship which is the centre of the operation. - Killer7 has organ theft as part of its fourth chapter's plot (Encounter). Made even creepier because the organs are taken from immigrant children and children abducted from a creepy theme park. Plus the things Curtis Blackburn did with the bodies of the girls he killed. - In a Bad Moon run of Kingdom of Loathing, you can get your kidney stolen by a unicorn, and you can buy it back from the Black Market. - The Lost Experience has a side-plot involving sold organs. It doesn't have much to do with anything other than adding to the general corruptness of the Hanso Foundation and providing Product Placement for Jeep. It also ties into Locke's backstory in Lost: his father, who he'd never known, found him and struck up a relationship for the sole purpose of getting him to donate a kidney, then tossed him out again. - An assignment in Mass Effect requires the player to bring to justice (or just kill) a Back-Alley Doctor who manages a business of this sort... with a horrible, horrible twist: he pays homeless people to grow extra cloned organs inside their own bodies, with nightmarish medical implications. He then harvests the extra organs... if they grow properly. Otherwise, he just leaves them to die a terrible and painful death with two stomachs. - In Max Payne 3, it turns out that \|\|the Cracha Preto and the UFE are working together to abduct the poor of Sao Paulo in order to murder them and harvest their organs for the black market\|\|. The revelation enrages Max to a degree that not even the murder of his family could match, and his rampage escalates rapidly. - In Policenauts, you eventually stumble upon \|\|a secret facility where hundreds of people are kept brain-dead, but otherwise still alive, so that their organs can be harvested whenever the organ traffickers need\|\|. - RimWorld allows player to harvest organs like kidneys or hearts from prisoners and your fellow colonists. Organs can be used for replacing unhealthy organs, or making money by selling them. - Crops up in The Secret World Halloween mission "The Organ Smugglers." Here, it's revealed that the Orochi Group have been singling out unique individuals for organ harvesting, using their contacts among the CDC to isolate the donors and provide the medical service. Most of the cliches inherent to the urban legend are lampshaded during Marianne Chen's confession, and are only fulfilled on explicit orders from the harvesters - apparently for no other reason than to further the legend. For good measure, Bong Cha warns Dragon players to avoid getting captured by the harvesters after you run into a pack of them, noting that with your abilities, they could harvest you for a virtual eternity. \|\|A visit to Orochi headquarters reveals that one unfortunate Bee has already been subjected to this.\|\| - Sleeping Dogs: One of the Police side missions ends up uncovering an organ harvesting ring preying on members of the Sun On Yee Triad, being run by their rivals, the 18K Triads. Sun On Yee foot soldiers are kidnapped off the streets and delivered to a surgeon on 18K's payroll, who harvests their organs and transplants them into 18K's paying customers, while the abducted gangster's corpse is dumped into the harbour. The 18K make a tidy profit while literally killing off their competition in the process, and since the victims are exclusively triad footsoldiers, the cops' apathy over the deaths of a few gangsters and thugs ensures the operation stays under the radar. - The Medic from Team Fortress 2 apparently lost his medical license after stealing a patient's skeleton. He also seem to deal in non-human organs as well, as we can only imagine what a "Mega Baboon" is supposed to be. - In The Thrill Of Combat this is what you do for a living. Using a helicopter, stun beam and a rappelling surgeon to get the sweet, sweet organs and points. - Happens twice in asdfmovie. One gag has someone stealing another's lungs after tricking him to look up at the ceiling. Another has a Disproportionate Retribution Laser-Guided Karma hit a man who was being sarcastic over liking another's hat by having his face stolen. - Used in the Twist Ending of Charlie the Unicorn. - He gets it back (or at least manages to find it again) in the third installment. - This received a Shout-Out in Kingdom of Loathing, where a Bad Moon adventure leads to you getting your kidney stolen by unicorns. - Homestar Runner: - In "Bug in Mouth Disease", Bubs tries to sell Homestar a new pancreas, which is kept in a cooler marked "EXHIBIT B", implying Bubs was caught up in organ trafficking. - In episode 2 of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, a puzzle involves convincing Strong Sad he has "acute aphasic pretendicitis" so he'll get his "pretendix" taken out, which Strong Bad will then steal and sell to Bubs in exchange for a Plot Coupon. - In "Marzipan's Answering Machne 17.2", Bubs leaves a message announcing that, in response to Marzipan's demand for more "organic stuff" at the Concession Stand, he's now selling goods "pertaining to the illegal selling and trade of human organs". Bubs: I got ice packs, little Igloo coolers, scalpels, discounts on hotel rooms, bathtubs fulla ice, chloroform, and fifteen pass Econoline vans pre-lined with plastic sheeting! So come on down to Bubs' Organic Concession Stand! Where we're keepin' that one urban legend alive! You know the one I'm talkin' about? - Some The Slender Man Mythos stories involve the titular character doing this. Although most of the time, it's organ stealing and haphazardly replacing with an extra item or two. - Used humorously in an episode of Weebl & Bob, in which Bob goes to France and ends up having his kidney stolen by a French stripper named Kevin. According to the voiceover at the end of the episode, "the French are notorious kidney thieves". - Lynn Tailor nearly lost her eggs (and more than likely her ovaries as well) due to a faulty Auto Doc in Data Chasers. A REAL doctor showed up and turned it off. - Right after The Big Damn Kiss of Nick and Ki in General Protection Fault when they reach Ki's apartment, their friend and colleague Fooker calls her to explain he is in Mexico right now and ... would she know someone with a kidney to spare? - In He Is a Good Boy, Crange (who is an acorn, and came from a tree that also had organs) dreams that he's taking a hot bath, but is woken up by remembering the tree he came from being murdered, and finds himself in a tub full of ice, with a hole in his torso and all of his organs gone. Before he sees the hole, he finds a note taped to his stalk that reads "Sorry we got a little carried away XOXO". Surprisingly, he finds that his organs weren't stolen by the Mad Doctor/Artist spider that had been using organs as a medium. - Gets played with in the Space plotline of Irregular Webcomic! Some of the crew get mugged and their organs stolen. So what do they do? Take the organs from their future selves who failed at going back in time and preventing their organs from being removed, and then later find their original organs and get those implanted inside themselves so that when their future selves get their organs removed, they'll have a spare set. - In this Kevin & Kell strip, a rhino wakes up in a bath of ice with his horn missing. - In SomethingPositive, Pepito did this to a guy to get the money for English lessons. - In Super Stupor, Claw-Frog doesn't bother with keeping his target alive. Then again, he's not selling it for transplant either... - Super Effective: Red blacks out after all his Pokémon are KO'd, and wakes up in ice with a pair of scars. - Inverted in this xkcd, where a guy's ice* is stolen and he wakes up in a bath full of KIDNEYS. - Subverted in American Dad!, Roger was planning to do this to Steve so he could sell the kidney for 50 million dollars to buy Dolly Land, but Steve woke up before he could and pointed out that Roger wouldn't get that much for a kidney. Roger gave up on the idea then. - Roger once had an operating room in his attic that looked like he was going to use it to harvest Hayley and Jeff's organs; it was actually to remove his own, but he couldn't sell them because there wasn't a market for alien organs. When he collapses without them, his organs (which are autonomous) reinsert themselves anally. - On an episode of Drawn Together, Wooldoor does this to Toot. - This was one of the Urban Legends used in Freaky Stories, although they moved it into the future in an attempt to slightly reduce the Squick factor. In this version the guy's entire body got stolen, leaving him a disembodied head connected to a portable life support unit. - In a Family Guy Valentine's Day Episode, Meg's date turns out to be a black market dealer who takes her kidney. After spending the day together, they kiss and he gives the kidney back to her in a jar. - Futurama: - Spoofed in "My Three Suns". A sleazy street vendor offers Fry some (supposedly) ill-gotten organs and almost operates on him ("I take lungs now. Gills come next week.") before Leela stops him. - In "Anthology of Interest II", when Leela comes to after the Professor knocks her out pulling a lever on the What If machine, it's revealed that he planned to harvest her organs while she was out cold, but she woke up before he could, much to his disappointment. Hermes insists that he can try again next year. - Spoofed again in "Spanish Fry" Fry loses his nose to alien poachers because "human horn" is considered an aphrodisiac. He gets it back, only for Bender to tell the aliens that, logically, they should want his "lower horn." - Richard Nixon threatened to sell children's organs to zoos once. - In "Murder on the Planet Express", Fry suspected Bender of using his toothbrush to polish his ass so he put up a camera in their apartment. Instead he caught Bender and a team of surgeons harvesting his kidney while he slept. Then Leela accidentally ate Fry's kidney after Bender stashed it in Hermes' lunch cooler, and the Professor got a manwich in place of a kidney transplant. - Invader Zim has an entire episode about this, entitled "Dark Harvest". In the episode, Zim is afraid of being revealed as an alien by medical science, and decides that the solution to this issue is to pack his torso with human organs from the children at the school and replace the stolen parts with random nearby objects. Oddly, this generally only seems to cause discomfort and severe fatigue, but it leaves Zim a grotesquely obese sack of organs. In the end, this plan somehow works. - The Loud House: In "Garage Banned" Lisa tries to take Lincoln's kidney for an experiment. Lincoln: Lori, tell Lisa she can't have my kidneys! Lisa: Tell Lincoln he only needs one! Lori: Lisa, you already took out his appendix. Don't be greedy. - Men in Black: The Series: - The first episode dealing with Alpha involved him stealing a Sintillian heart. The victim didn't die as his species has two hearts and can live just fine with one, leading J to think that there's no problem. K quickly corrects him: K: You have ten toes. You wake up one morning with one missing, how would you feel? - Organ Theft is basically Alpha's hat. In his first appearances he had multiple alien body parts grafted to his body using Applied Phlebotinum. Notably the alien parts included heads which were still fully conscious, if under Alpha's control. He lost those in a Shapeshifter Swan Song, then reappeared with a completely new set that coincided with an animation change. By the time the series ended Alpha didn't even resemble anything human, although by then he'd moved on to robot parts. - A Robot Chicken sketch involved a woman falling victim to this, and waking up just as the thief was leaving. She just laughs and points to the mirror, where she wrote "Welcome to the AIDS club!" They both have a chuckle over it. note : The possiblity that the victim has a disease is one reason why this doesn't occur too often in real life. "Good luck selling that organ!" - Another sketch has a Troll doll steal the belly-button gem from a Treasure Troll in this fashion. - One episode of Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century had an organ trafficking ring that turned out to be cloning their products... and cloning is considered illegal due to Clone Degeneration. - The Simpsons: In "Homer Simpson in: Kidney Trouble", Grampa's kidneys burst when Homer refuses to stop and let him use the bathroom, so Homer decides to give Grampa one of his kidneys. However, upon finding out from Moe that people with one kidney can't drink beer as well as people with two kidneys, Homer is reluctant to give his kidney to Grampa. Near the end of the episode, the operation is about to go underway, but Homer escapes before it can happen. However, he gets hit by a car that falls on top of him from Hans Moleman's car carrier trailer, and since he wasn't going to give up the kidney willingly, Dr. Hibbert took it from him and gave it to Grampa while nursing Homer back to his normal self. - In the South Park episode "Cherokee Hair Tampons", Kyle became sick and needed a kidney, but the only person with his bloodtype was Cartman, who naturally refused to give up one of his. Stan and Kenny break into his house one night to try to steal the kidney, only to find Cartman had anticipated this and donned a 'Kidney Blocker 2000.' They later \|\|tricked Cartman into thinking that\|\| they had somehow bypassed the thing and took a kidney from him, and when he demanded that it be put back and willingly entered the operating room, \|\|the doctors removed a kidney for real and gave it to Kyle.\|\| - Transformers: Animated: Organ Theft among Mechanical Lifeforms is pretty common. How else can you explain Lockdown? He's in it for the upgrades, and seems especially fond of parts that come from another Transformer's body. Lockdown: "But don't worry... I got everything I wanted from you long ago." - Transformers: Prime: - The Venture Bros. used the kidney theft variant in the episode "Dia De Los Dangerous." Better justified than many examples, since we know it was being done by a relatively poor doctor that Dr. Venture was going out of his way to be an ass toward. Yes, even more than usual. - Largely averted in reality, as stealing organs from unwilling sources is a great way to infect your intended recipients with HIV, hepatitis, or other ailments. Illegal and/or for-profit kidney sales do happen in reality, but generally with the donors' willing participation (see Dirty Pretty Things, above). - The urban legend also fails on two facts that would make this implausible at best. First off, the stolen organ has to match sizes and be compatible to the donor, something you can't control with a randomly picked victim. Second, the large loss of blood from removing a kidney would make death of the victim a much more likely outcome. Another problem with this legend, though less a medical than a practical one, is that it would be much simpler to outright kill the victim and remove all their organs. They would then be unable to bear witness to the police, especially if their now much lighter body was disposed of permanently... And how do you even get enough ice cubes into a hotel room to fill a bathtub without drawing attention to yourself? Furthermore, the typical kidney theft urban legend is highly unlikely because motel rooms (or wherever the theft takes place) lack the sterility to conduct surgery. Although that doesn't necessarily make much difference, as any back-alley "plastic surgeon" worth the title can tell you. - There has been documented kidney theft among various poor people in India, who were then paid afterwards with "hush money" or threatened with death (Indian Victims Relate Horror of Kidney Theft -- ABC News). - Chinese government: - They are believed to harvest organs from prisoners executed in the colorfully named "death vans" that provide capital punishment services to outlying regions. - The Chinese government also executes Falun Gong prisoners (who are detained without trial) whenever wealthy foreign tourists place a demand for an organ transplant. - All this could never be factually proven by anybody, although some time ago the government issued a statement that "they didn't perform that practice anymore." - As of late 2019, these allegations are back in the news, this time regarding the Chinese government's mass imprisonment of Uyghur Muslims. - The allegations were investigated and proven true in a 2019 Tribunal (link provided here). - In South Korea, loan sharks are known to strongarm debt defaulters into selling their organs to make up for missed payments. - There are urban legends regarding this trope, doctors, and malpractice. While these are generally true, there have been some cases of supposedly brain dead patients waking up right before their organs were to be removed. - In one variant, if a registered organ donor's life is ever in jeopardy, then they will be murdered by doctors through substandard medical treatment, except doctors in the United States don't check donor status until an individual has been declared dead. Furthermore, the doctors treating the living and the transplant teams work independently from one another. And where are all the medical malpractice lawsuits alleging this urban legend? If it were true, then litigation lawyers would have fortunes to make. The usual variant goes thus: "If you have to go the ER, the doctors will not try as hard to save you if you are a donor. They don't consciously choose to do it, they just do." Aside from being an insult to doctors, it always fails to explain just how would the doctors treating you know that you are a donor. (And if you say, "By your driver's license or ID, of course!" — remember, they don't actually see that). - This is also said of doctors treating patients in persistent vegetative states, which is probably similarly untrue; there have been cases where doctors have put pressure on relatives of someone in that condition to discontinue treatment, occasionally to the point of asking for a court order, but that's only done when the patient's chances of recovery are nonexistent and they are to all intents and purposes dead. This stems from the fact that those in permanent vegetative states make very practical organ donors, as the organs can be harvested in a very controlled setting rather than relying on the chance of an otherwise healthy organ donor dying. While no ethical doctor would pressure a family to end the life of a loved one simply for the organs, no ethical doctor would let someone in such a state die without bringing up organ donation, given that literally dozens of lives may depend on it. In fact, vacillating relatives uncomfortable with the notion of withdrawing a brain-dead loved one's life support are often the ones who ask doctors about this option, feeling that organ donation will let the patient's passing be a worthwhile one, and/or that permitting organ recovery will help the survivors come to terms with the necessity of terminating support. - There is a story of an American missionary who went down to Nicaragua once, only to be confronted with rumors of him trying to kill children and harvest their organs. Locals responded by beating him into a persistent vegetative state. Similar stories exist of aid workers, tourists, and military personnel being attacked for the same reason. Verifying their authenticity is difficult. - The Israeli military was accused of killing Palestinian prisoners for their organs. Regardless of the accusation's validity, the Israeli military did admit to taking corneas, arteries and other tissue from dead Palestinians. This is not the same as executing prisoners for their organs, and the practice was discontinued over ten years previous. Dead Israelis were also "harvested." - Israel has a chronic problem with a shortage of organs, as for whatever reason Israelis have a surprisingly low rate of organ donation (8% of Israelis are registered donors, while in most Western countries the level's closer to 35%). It's not entirely clear why. Unfortunately, people who don't like Israel or Jewish people have played this up when given the chance, and still more unfortunately, a small number of Jewish people have given them ammunition by engaging in organ trafficking (which is to say, taking legitimately donated organs and then selling them rather than providing them free of charge) to Israel. The most famous incident is probably the 2009 bust of a ring in New Jersey which included five rabbis, three mayors, the Deputy Mayor of Jersey City, and two NJ State Assemblymen. Naturally, when this ring was exposed, many portrayed it as stealing kidneys, when in fact what they did, while reprehensible and illegal, was not nearly as bad as that. note : Technically, they did "steal" the kidneys—but since the kidneys had been freely donated, the theft was from the organization that tries to match organs to patients (with which the members of this ring had high-level connections), not from the donors. No ice baths or back-alley doctors were involved. It was more like organ embezzlement than organ theft, which is why it got broken up as part of a corruption investigation. - There have been allegations of the Kosovo Liberation Army murdering prisoners, and murders occurring along the US-Mexico border, for the purpose of organ theft. However, there has been no evidence to support either allegation. - However, in case of the organ trafficking in Kosovo, the Dick Marty report has been endorsed by the Council of Europe and the EULEX and there's a lot of evidence to back it up. It should also be noted that Albanian authorities have denied any cooperation. - In some countries, organ-harvesting is practiced under a policy of presumed consent, meaning that a deceased person's recoverable organs will be salvaged unless their survivors object and/or there's documentation saying that they didn't want it done. It's not "theft" because it's perfectly legal, but it can look like this to people from countries where lack of consent is the default assumption. - Not strictly an organ, but back before they could synthesise erythropoietin, East Germany would allegedly kill people to harvest their natural EPO and feed it to athletes, thus stimulating their bone marrow to produce extra red cells and enhance performance. This is probably just another urban legend, as you could get exactly the same performance advantage by blood-doping with ordinary donor blood and/or by sending your athletes for a few months of high-altitude training. Plus, erythropoietin from most other mammals is identical to that of humans, so they could get it more cheaply from sheep. Please take a moment to fill out your organ donor cards.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrganTheft
Organized Crime Tropes - TV Tropes Michael Corleone: My father is no different than any powerful man, any man who's responsible for a lot of people, like a senator or a president. Kay Adams: Do you know how naïve you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don't have men killed! Michael Corleone: Oh. Who's being naïve, Kay? Nice wiki you got here, it'd be a real shame if something bad happened to it. We represent all sorts of legitimate businesses, from youth clubs to international interests, if you know what I mean. What? You want in on The Con? How do you know about that? Have you been comparing with Terrorism Tropes or contrasting with Cops and Detectives? ## Tropes: <!—index—> Criminal groups (by ethnic/national origin) - The Cartel: Latin American gangsters and mobsters, who are usually specialized in drug trafficking. - Gangbangers: At least in the United States, these guys are often (though not always) depicted as being black or (mestizo) Hispanic note : (in other countries, just substitute them for any local ethnic group that is mostly concentrated in poor urban ghettos). Unless they're white (see below). - Generic Ethnic Crime Gang: Criminal groups tend to be mostly or entirely comprised of people from the same ethnic background. - The Irish Mob: Irish gangsters and mobsters. - Kosher Nostra: Jewish gangsters and mobsters. - London Gangster: British gangsters and mobsters. - The Mafia: Italian gangsters and mobsters. - The Mafiya: Gangsters and mobsters from Russia (or other nations of the former Soviet Union). - Metro-Specific Underworld: Certain types of gangs tend to dominate the local underworld in particular geographic regions. - Ruthless Foreign Gangsters: Newcomer immigrant criminals who are more fearsome than the preestablished local crooks. - Those Wacky Nazis: Neo-Nazi skinheads and other white supremacist prison/street gangs. - The Triads and the Tongs: Chinese gangsters and mobsters. - White Gangbangers: Street gangsters of (non-Hispanic) white European descent, often depicted in contrast to gangbangers of color. - Yakuza: Japanese gangsters and mobsters. - The Yardies: Jamaican gangsters and mobsters. Criminal groups (other types) Individual criminals (and other characters) - Arms Dealer: A black market merchant who sells illegally smuggled weapons to the criminal underworld. - Bantering Baddie Buddies: A pair of hired guns engaging in witty banter while committing crimes. - The Consigliere: The Don's closest advisor and second-in-command. - The Don: A crime lord, gang leader, or mob boss. This man is the head honcho of any particular criminal organization. - Friend in the Black Market: Someone who has direct connections to the black market, whether as a merchant or deliveryman of illegal goods. - From Camouflage to Criminal: An ex-military veteran who became a professional criminal. Their combat training or wartime experiences tend to make them very deadly and effective for gang warfare. - Gayngster: LGBT gangsters and mobsters. - The Informant: A criminal who feeds confidential information about his accomplices' activities to the authorities. - King of Thieves: A crime lord who's so influential and powerful, that all other local crooks in the area are expected to submit to him. - Loan Shark: Mob-affiliated moneylenders who charge predatory loans to their clients. Failure to repay one's debts to them will likely result in a very painful punishment. - Mafia Princess: A mobster's daughter, niece, sister, wife or girlfriend; who's spoiled and pampered thanks to all the ill-gotten wealth she's been gifted with. - The Mob Boss Is Scarier: A crime lord who's very well-feared by other criminals. - Mumbling Brando: A lot of mob bosses are parodies of Marlon Brando's portrayal of Vito Corleone from The Godfather. - Professional Killer: Hired assassins, contract killers, or hitmen. These guys are often paid by the mob to eliminate specific people whom they really want dead. - The Queenpin: A female mob boss. - The Rat: A character whose criminal dealings make them a valuable source of information... for the right price. - The Stool Pigeon: A character who sells out their associates to the authorities. - Super Mob Boss: A crime lord who's (physically) powerful enough to also be described as a supervillain. - Tattooed Crook: Many criminals have skin tattoos, which often display their membership in a particular gang. - Venturous Smuggler: Someone who makes a living by covertly transporting various illegal goods for sale on the black market, such as drugs or weapons. Other tropes <!—/index—> - Assassination Attempt: A specific individual (such as a high-ranking mobster) gets targeted for murder. - Black Market: A term referring to various types of illegitimate underground businesses, in which criminals engage in the sale and trade of illegal products or services. - Cement Shoes: A method of murder/body-disposal occasionally used by gangsters, in which a (live or dead) victim gets tied up with concrete so that they'll sink down to the bottom of water. - Criminal Convention: A social gathering for gangsters or other criminals. - Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!: Organized crime is fun and exciting! - External Combustion: Car bombs are occasionally used by gangsters to try and blow up their enemies into smithereens. - Fell Off the Back of a Truck: A common excuse for explaining possession of illicit goods. - Gang Initiation Fight: A gang requires its new recruits to prove themselves through physical combat. - Gangland Drive-By: Gunmen riding in a motor vehicle pull up in front of their target to spray bullets at them. - Gangsterland: Many major cities in the United States are stereotyped as crime-ridden, gang-infested hellholes. - Honor Among Thieves: Gangsters tend to expect loyalty from fellow members of their organization and are always ready to kill those suspected of being snitches or traitors. - Illegal Gambling Den: An underground casino that is owned and operated by the mob. - In Love with the Gangster's Girl: Falling in love with someone who's already dating a dangerous criminal. - Just a Gangster: A gangster or member of a criminal organization who resists attempts to go go legit or have their organization do so. - Mob-Boss Suit Fitting: An important person (e.g., a mob boss) continues conducting his business while being fitted for a suit. - Mob War: When violent armed conflict erupts between two or more rival criminal factions. - No Honor Among Thieves: On the other hand, being a gangster is an inherently dishonest profession, so you can't really expect their claims of honor and loyalty to really mean much. - An Offer You Can't Refuse: When the consequences of refusing are worse than just giving the villain what they want. - Prison Riot: Many (though not all) prison riots manifest in the form of rival inmate gangs fighting with each other. - Protection Racket: A classic extortion method, in which gangsters force local businesses to pay money to "protect" them from thieves (i.e., the racketeers themselves). - Real Stitches for Fake Snitches: When a criminal gets attacked after being falsely accused of being a dirty little tattletale. - "Rise and Fall" Gangster Arc: A story arc that depicts a gangster rising to, and then falling from, power. - Robbing the Mob Bank: A thief doesn't realize that the person they robbed is part of a criminal syndicate. - Shame If Something Happened: A villain subtly threatens a victim's loved ones or livelihood to get what they want. - Thieves' Cant: Code words used by criminals whenever they discuss their business with each other. - Totalitarian Gangsterism: Life in a gang-controlled neighborhood is harsh and oppressive for law-abiding people who reside there. - Trapped by Gambling Debts: If you bet too much money here, then expect bad consequences if you fail to give back however much is owed. - Yubitsume: Yakuza members who dishonor themselves and/or their superiors are expected to cut off one of their own fingers as punishment.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrganizedCrimeTropes
Orientalism - TV Tropes A Royal Palace in Morocco by by Benjamin Jean Joseph Constant The Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire. ... The Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined. On this stage will appear the figures whose role it is to represent the larger whole from which they emanate. The Orient then seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe. — Edward Said The so-called Orient: Stretching from Morocco to Japan and including everything in-between. Seen through classic European glasses as being one single entity - one of mystery and adventure, where white men can display their superiority and masculinity over the decadent and feminized "orientals". The development of this ethnocentric vision of "the Orient" preceded imperialism and colonialism but it remained in place even after conquest and discovery of new lands and people, even after finding new and fresh sources of information to correct earlier interactions and even after being removed and thrown out by decolonization movements. After a time, people simply used the same stock of stereotypes repeatedly to refer to the same land as if they couldn't bother changing or correcting their first impressions, and thanks to Pop-Cultural Osmosis, those collection of first impressions still remains most people's idea of "the East". Orientalism is a particular set of overarching stock stereotypes about everything and anything east of Greece. Orientialism also relates to the idea of the East being an exotic locale, a place where Suspension of Disbelief is a little easier for Western audiences. Just as an example, the original Green Lantern found his magic ring and lantern in Chinatown. Why not Little Italy? There are plenty of stories of European magicians and daemons, but the Chinatown shop serves as a jumping off point for something mysterious, anachronistic, and magical in a modern setting. Hence, Orientalism. Compare and contrast "Arabian Nights" Days (and its modern successor Qurac), Mystical India, and Far East. In recent years, people have used the concept of Orientalism which originally applied to "the Levant" and the Middle East, to the cultures of the Sinophone and extended it to refer to regions that are not Asian (such as Africa, South America and Polynesian tribes). For a slightly different type of comparison see the concept of Ruritania, which has been interpreted as an Orientalizing take on parts of the world which are otherwise explicitly European. See also the other wiki. ## Tropes heavily connected to orientalism: <!—index—> <!—/index—> Tropes that commonly appear in conjunction with orientalism, but are not in themselves part of it: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Individual works famous for orientalism: Comic Books - Habibi: Was described by him as being self-consciously Orientalist in Edward Said's phrase. It tells an "Arabian Nights" Days story but the point is to pull a Decon-Recon Switch by both showing how those tropes as used conventionally are wrong while noting that it can be used to more positive ends with better research. - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Features Captain Nemo, presented as Jules Verne portrayed him in The Mysterious Island, as Prince Dakkar of Bundelkhand, veteran of the 1857 Mutiny. The comics highlight the racism and imperialism of Victorian Britain but also highlight how complex Captain Nemo is, since he has Majored in Western Hypocrisy but been shown to dislike the English or otherwise be standoffish. He's also shown, fittingly as an Indian aristocrat of the era, to have caste/race/religious and gender prejudice. He's shown to be stern and ruthless but also unexpectedly humane and generous, someone who doesn't really fit the stereotypes of the East, either positively or negatively. - Tintin: The early volumes contain some very stereotypical (and often unflattering) depictions of non-European cultures. To Hergé's credit, he eventually became aware of this and sought to tone it down, starting with The Blue Lotus. The later volume Tintin in Tibet, which is widely regarded as the best entry in the series, was so well researched that it received an award from the 14th Dalai Lama. Film - Alexander: Both played straight and subverted. Told largely from a western perspective, it strongly emphasizes the Ancient Greek perception of the Persians as exotic and decadent "barbarians". Yet it also shows Alexander's genuine respect and admiration for the culture; plus, the sheer number of locations the Macedonian army travels through shows how "Asia" is not nearly as homogeneous as some Greeks may think. - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: The film was famously mocked and derided in India for its bafflingly inaccurate depiction of that country, full of Anachronism Stew and just plain weirdness; mixing parts of Hinduism with bits from Aztec and Polynesian culture, as well as Voodoo and the filmmakers' own weirdness all for the sake of fantasy. Literature - Naked Lunch is orientalist to a T, centered mostly around the strange and outright bizarre North African port city of "Interzone." Though considering the book's background and author, it's more influenced by copious amounts of heroin than any kind of exoticism. - Orientalism: Edward Said's book is the Trope Namer. The book, as Said has admitted, largely focuses on the Orientalism of the Middle East, the Levant and "the Bible Lands" owing to the author's background as a Palestinian Christian raised in Egypt. He also notes that the Orientalism towards the Far East, towards India and other cultures could be its own separate kind. - Rudyard Kipling's stories naturally came to be seen as possessing this. Especially Kim, The Man Who Would be King. He also wrote a poem talking about the White Man's Burden. Even at the time it was highly criticized, with response poems titled The Brown Man's Burden, The Black Man's Burden etc being penned and political cartoons satirized this with showing people of color carrying white colonizers on their backs (i.e. the real burden in play). Video Games - After the End: A Post-Apocalyptic America: Deliberately done with the Orientalist faith, described in-game as a "distorted version of Islam". Though they read the Koran (rendered as "Alcoran" by them), they're actually descended from non-Muslims looking for something to cling to After the End. Their traditions are cobbled together from Shriner lore, Arabian Nights, the influence of nearby Disneyland, and "Arabian Nights" Days in general. Those descended from actual pre-Event Muslim communities acknowledge them as technically a new, extremely peculiar sect. - Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness: The homelands of the Rillow are a Fantasy Counterpart Culture version, They're mostly based on "Arabian Nights" Days being a desert and the Rillow themselves being created by a Demigod level Genie, but the Rillow themselves are vaguely Indian elephant people and have a Silk Road equivalent.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Orientalism
Orgasmic Combat - TV Tropes "I simply LOVE this sensual feeling!" Sometimes, when a combat scene becomes a bit too vocal and noisy... it stops sounding like fighting. The grunts and yelps and groans start to sound less like hostility and more like rough sex. Related to Cat Fight (and the possible cause of the related Fanservice). Of course, if you have a character that's Too Kinky to Torture, the moans may be genuine pleasure. While in some cases this may be deliberate, interviews with actual voice actresses and vocal directors indicate that many seemingly clear cases of this are actually a case of Pareidolia, as the voice actress was nether directed to give such an impression nor actually trying to do so. For those occasions when the characters actually are getting turned on, see Sex Is Violence, Combat Sadomasochist, and Interplay of Sex and Violence. ## Examples: - There are several episodes of the English dubbed Angelic Layer that if you just black out the screen you would not believe it's a kids' anime. Especially since all the actors deliver their lines somewhat suggestively. Hilarity Ensues. (It doesn't help that there's actually a dominatrix doll complete with electro-whip.) - Grell Sutcliffe of Black Butler during her battle with Sebastian. - Creed of Black Cat. - Revy in Black Lagoon tends to enjoy gunfighting a bit too much... - Get Backers: Takuma Fudou tends to have this, but only when he fights with Ban. - Gonna Be the Twin-Tail!!: Tail Yellow is an exhibitionist whose attacks involve losing pieces of her armor. It gets extreme enough to make one wonder how the show actually managed to pull a TV-14 rating in the US. - Fasalina of GUN×SWORD has a tendency to moan and get excited as if having an orgasm while piloting her Humongous Mecha Dalia of Wednesday by dancing on a stripper pole. - The Impaled with Extreme Prejudice defeat of Rip Van Winkle in Hellsing is even worse in the OVA version, in which Maaya Sakamoto (perhaps deliberately) lets out a series of orgasmic moans. This gives the whole scene a soundtrack well suited for a hentai with imagery that's anything but sexy. The English dub (and Kari Wahlgren) opted not to go this route. - High School Of The Dead makes it clear that Saeko isn't "all there" when she gleefully recounts how she'd once beaten a would-be rapist within an inch of his life. Except it had nothing to do with him trying to rape her — she just liked the feeling of beating the ever-living crap out of someone with a wooden sword. Taken to its extreme, she literally achieves orgasm from it. Which is seen near the end of episode 9, where she gets off from Takashi crushing her breast and his 'take charge' attitude, which causes her to arch her back and moan. Then she hits the big "O" after cutting down a wave of zombies note : complete with a line of Kanji that translates as: "I'M GETTING WET!". - The Tokyo Pop release of the Ikki Tousen manga ( Battle Vixens) added this as Dub Text for the Fighters. - In the anime, Hakufu's first fight with Ryomou involves a certain chokehold that makes this, um, literal. - Maken-ki!: Yan-Min activates her "Reilii" by summoning her Jingu, which takes the form of a twin-tailed lash, then having both ends of it enter her body. The process causes her to arch her back and moan as if she's getting off from it, while Takeru gets a nosebleed watching it happen. - Naruto: Hidan is a literal sadist. His religion does encourage it to the utmost because its main commandment is total carnage and he has to ask Jashin for forgiveness when he isn't allowed to kill an opponent. It's strongly implied that he has an orgasm when he impales himself to finish off Asuma. - Negima! Magister Negi Magi gives us Tsukuyomi. Seriously, you could take the dialogue from the fight scene with Setsuna and replace it with porn and no one would know the difference. - Queen's Blade: Taken to literal extremes with Nyx, who allows her sentient staff, Funikura, to tentacle rape her in exchange for magical power. During which, it forces one of its tendrils into her mouth and makes her swallow several large mouthfuls of what appears to be semen. She's usually mortified once the effect has worn off, but definitely seems to enjoy it as it's happening. - Reborn! (2004): Belphegor, during his battle with Gokudera. - In the DiC English dub of Sailor Moon R when Serena is fighting Wise Man with the Silver Crystal. - One of the reasons why Witchblade has such a fantastic dub is because the English VAs made the combat scenes sound even more orgasmic and sexual, which is impressive considering what Mamiko Noto gets up to in some of her other roles. Of course, the Japanese version comes across merely as not unequivocably blatant. It's still far past "subtle". - In the French movie 8 Women, Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant get into a Cat Fight, and roll on the floor trying to pin each other down. Before long they aren't so much fighting as fondling one another. - In the first film adaptation of Carrie (1976), Margaret White's moans and cries as she is crucified with a lot of carving knives by her own vengeful daughter sounds like she's either having one hell of an orgasm or experiencing religious rapture. Both possibilities were probably completely on purpose, considering her character. - In District 9, the first sign that something is seriously wrong with Koobus is the breathy laughter and orgasmic sigh he lets out when he shoots an alien point-blank. - Fight Club. The film plays constantly with the suggestion that the club members are lusting after each other, getting off on the fighting in a sexual way, and possibly even screwing offscreen. Most of the fight scenes are heavily sexual, and there are some scenes between the two main characters which are rather racy, in a combative way. (cough the gun cough) - James Bond: - Never Say Never Again. Fatima gets a little too excited by killing, especially Bond's assistant. - GoldenEye. On the other hand, Xenia Onatopp is downright overt about it, calling deadly combat "foreplay". A notable example is when she blows away an entire roomful of technicians and officers at Severnaya with an automatic weapon, moaning with pleasure while doing so (crosscut with Natalya's panicked breathing), as seen here. Note the truly great Eye Take from General Ouromov. - Just watch this Rush Hour 3 sequence... - Undercover Brother has the Cat Fight in the shower between Sista Girl and White She Devil. - In the Doctor Who story "The Evil of the Daleks", the Daleks shove Victoria into a body scanner to check her health. This appears to be a painful experience for her at first, but her expressions slowly change◊... - Rod and Tara's duels in Double the Fist invoke this to build up the Unresolved Sexual Tension between them. Their ridiculously brutal over-the-top duels are the only scenes where they show respect and genuine affection for each other, and both seem to enjoy it entirely too much whenever the other lays them out with a particularly badass move. - A somewhat stomach-turning variation occurs in an episode of Jonathan Creek, where it turns out that a close-up video of a woman's face in apparent sexual rapture was actually a recording of \|\|her murder, with a pitchfork as the weapon no less\|\|. - One episode of The Nanny has Fran and Maxwell playing orgasmic ping pong. (And no, this is not a euphemism for something.) - In Rome, Titus Pullo and Gaia perform this trope in the kitchen... - During the Smallville Season 8 finale, Lois Lane gets into a Designated Girl Fight with resident Dark Action Girl Tess Mercer. They end up wrestling on a desk, their bodies pressed firmly against each other, and grunting in precisely the sexy-sounding way that this page's opening text describes. The fact that this was the culmination of an entire season's worth of Homoerotic Subtext and Foe Romance Subtext (well, at least on Tess's part) just made it fit this trope even more. When Season 9 premiered a few months later, Tess actually lampshades this, noting that "Things did get a little physical," wiggling her shoulders suggestively...and then she asks Lois whether she'd like to "pick up where we left off." Lois declines. - In the Supernatural episode "Devil May Care" (S09, Ep02), sounds of moaning and grunting come from a rocking van while Tracy beheads a vampire inside the van. - The fight scene in the Kiss Kiss Bang Bang episode of Torchwood, between Jack and John. - In Samsas Traum's "Der Froschkönig", the screaming while the frog king is killed by wolfes also sounds like... something else. - WWE is particularly bad when it comes to its Diva matches. - Male example: Bubba Ray of the Dudley Boyz was often said to have a 'euphoric look' in his eyes by the commentators after dropping a victim through a table (that was kind of the team's thing in the WWE). He didn't discriminate much about what gender the person was, either. - Certain human enemies in the Tales Series, usually bosses, make grunts that may sound at least slightly sexual. The player characters do this too. - In Tekken 3 (not sure about the others), Nina sometimes sounds like she's doing something other than fighting after being hit by an opponent. It's more noticeable in end-of-round/match replays which occur in slow-mo, thus distorting the sound somewhat and drawing it out. - In Tekken 4, Christie Monteiro exhibits this trope, particularly her loud moans after being defeated. - All deaths of female characters in TimeSplitters. - Unreal Tournament 2004 had an announcer that was In Love with Your Carnage up to the point that she was having an Immodest Orgasm if you managed to score a Monster Kill. - In Warhammer Online, some people find the women's screaming in combat is rather disturbingly similar to The Immodest Orgasm. - Go fight a female Vrykul in World of Warcraft. - Not to mention Paletress. - Male human NPCs also sound a smidge too relieved when they die. - Maiden of Virtue - The Succubus, of course. Particular their death cries. - We can probably add the Dryads here as well, sadly as enemies they are very rare, and appear only in a few places, such as Maraudon and the Nexus. - Many, many characters on the English voice track of Yggdra Union. May or may not be because either the voice acting or the voice directing was really, really bad, as the Japanese voices don't sound anywhere near as sexual. - Bit of a meta example in the case of RWBY. The crew acknowledges that while the girls are recording their yells and grunts for battle there's two ways they can sound: Like they're having sex or like they're taking a poo. - Blake in particular tends to be pretty vocal when she's fighting, especially in the "Black" trailer, and it definitely sounds like this trope. - Batman: The Animated Series: - Roxy Rocket does this a lot. It's her whole purpose, actually. - In a bit of a Meta-example, Andrea Beaumont in Batman: Mask of the Phantasm was named after voice director Andrea Romano due to Kevin Conroy's deliberate invoking of this trope by ending a recording of a series of grunts and moans of Batman getting beaten up, with a moan of "Oh, Andrea!" - In Code Lyoko, some of the grunting and other fight audio for the Lyoko Warriors, especially Yumi and Aelita, (d)evolves into this after a while. - Drawn Together: Clara and Foxxy do this in the first episode. - X-Men: The Animated Series has Jean Grey, who is surprisingly very useless, and is often getting knocked around, leading to lots and LOTS of moaning and grunting and other strange sounds.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrgasmicCombat
Orgasmatron - TV Tropes A device or power, whether magical or technological, which induces sexual pleasure in a person, often skipping straight to an orgasm. If involuntary, it can be one example of the cause of a Forced Orgasm. May involve Electric Instant Gratification. ## Examples: - Ayakashi Triangle: Lippy is an embodiment of desire and pleasure, and one of her powers is "Love Wave", which makes people so sexually-sensitive they'll collapse in ecstasy without any other stimulation. Matsuri could barely even stand to pull her phone out of her pocket. - This is the special power of the titular character in the Hentai series Demi the Demoness. She can fire a bolt that makes the target orgasm so hard that they explode. - Larcade from Fairy Tail has the magic power to inflict copious amounts of pleasure on his victims, all but stated to be the sexual kind. Those subjected to it long enough will have their bodies and minds overloaded until they die. The most basic form of this is a widespread spell that only affects those who are heavily implied to have had sex already, though if he bothers to focus it on one person he can induce a similar effect whether they've "tasted the forbidden fruit" or not. - In Torako, Anmari Kowashicha Dame da yo, Megumu Udou's nickname, Bullet, comes from the fact that she has a vibrator inserted in her at almost all times. Takano holds the switch and turns it on for her from time to time, though sometimes forgets to turn it off, such as in chapter two when doing so nearly causes Bullet to stumble into traffic. - XXXenophile character Orgasm Lass is essentially a living version of this. By touching someone, she can generate intense pleasure in them, triggering an orgasm in any being capable of experiencing one. - In one issue of Manhunter, Kate Spencer's tech guy brags that he could reconfigure her suit to put her in a state of perpetual orgasm if she wanted him to. She declines. - The French comic Yiu has Yiu's Mission Control guy use the implants in her brain to give her a mini-orgasm in the middle of a delicate mission. Yiu is not amused. - Click! is a series of erotic Italian comic books written and illustrated by comic book creator Milo Manara. The first volume features an attractive but passionless woman, Ms. Claudia Cristiani, who is married to an older, rich man. After she is abducted by a scientist and a remote-controlled device is surgically implanted into her brain, its activation makes her become sexually insatiable. The three sequels roughly follow a similar story. There was an entire series on Cinemax back in the '90s loosely based on this story. - Fuji from Stormwatch is an Energy Being who's kept in a containment suit so that he doesn't dissipate into nothingness. Due to the conditions of his suit and the constant buffeting of his nervous system by his own energy, he has an orgasm every five minutes. No wonder he's so happy. - In the movie Sleeper, an elevator-like machine is used to make people have orgasms. Another device, an orb, gives orgasmic sensations to whoever holds it. - Barbarella: The "Excessive Machine" is a device which induces orgasm upon orgasm in its victim until they die of pleasure. Except for Barbarella, who burns it out with her insatiable sexuality. - The title character of Bruce Almighty has all of God's powers, which he uses to this effect on his unsuspecting girlfriend. - Similarly, the main character of Modern Problems has telekinetic powers, which he uses to cause his girlfriend to orgasm her brains out. Repeatedly. - Orgazmo features the main character acting as a movie character who has an orgasm-inducing ray gun. The actor's friend then produces a real one, with which he fights crime. - Pretty Cool - The original film features the main character using his mind control powers to make his sister's friends orgasm whenever they hear the word "now". - Then in the sequel, Pretty Cool Too, the new main character uses his mind control phone to make one girl orgasm whenever she hears the word "in". Another girl is also made to orgasm by the phone's own AI. - Inverted in The Holy Mountain where a "Love Machine" is produced. Rather than inducing an orgasm, its purpose is to be stimulated by humans into an orgasm, and "the skill of the spectator will determine the machine's ability to reach a climax". - In The Matrix Reloaded, the Merovingian, while expounding on cause and effect, directs the characters' attention to a blonde lady having a piece of cake that he claims is a program he wrote. She becomes distracted and glassy-eyed, and then the view morphs to "Matrix Raining Code-vision" to show an explosion between her legs. - The Ugly Truth: Katherine Heigl's character receives a pair of remote-controlled vibrator panties, but has the misfortune to lose the remote. A kid finds it while she's at a business meeting, and she finds herself trying very hard to act casual. - In The Lonely Guy Larry (the eponymous Lonely Guy) talks Iris into believing that when he sneezes, she orgasms. She later leaves another man because she realizes that when he sneezes she doesn't orgasm. - Demolition Man. When Huxley offers to have sex with John Spartan, they put on devices that connect their minds into an erotic virtual reality. Spartan stops the procedure before it reaches its conclusion. When he suggests doing it "the old-fashioned way" instead, she is not pleased. - The 2017 film The Black Room features an Incubus using his powers to cause orgasms to a waitress who spurred his advances. - In Sex and the Single Alien the main character gains the ability to cause women to orgasm just by staring at them. - Teen Warlock has the title character commanding a girl to "come", as in "walk over to me". His powers misinterpret this and give her a spontaneous orgasm. - In From Beyond, while Crawford's invention, the resonator's, intended purpose is to stimulate the pineal gland, it also comes with a side effect which stimulates something else. Bubba comments on having gotten a hard-on when the machine was turned on, and upon activating it herself, Dr. McMichaels very forcefully kisses Crawford and later dons a leather corset to mount him while he's sleeping. - Makes an obligatory appearance in the Sex Trek porn parodies. Alien babe: Those are obedience collars you wear, and as long as you wear them, you will do what I say. Captain Quirk: Or what? Alien babe: Or this! [presses Super Wrist-Gadget, making Quirk convulse] Dr. McJoy: Jim, what is it? What has she done?! Captain Quirk: It's... the collar... I can't stop... ejaculating! Dr. McJoy: Stop it, you're killing him with pleasure! Or at the least ruining a good pair of space trousers ! - Animorphs: Tobias gets hooked up to a machine that stimulates his brain's pain and pleasure regions (in this case, he remembers happy memories like being on a trampoline or eating ice cream). He's able to avoid the worst of it by hiding behind his hawk body's instincts, but was very close to breaking when rescued. - The '70s pulp series The Baroness opened with a plot involving a drug that made you orgasm. The villain behind it also has followers addicted to Electric Instant Gratification, and plans to get world leaders hooked on his drugs and devices so he can Take Over the World. - In Ringworld, a device called a "tasp" can remotely stimulate the pleasure centers of a being's brain. It is very addictive and use of it on someone without their consent is highly illegal. While it does not explicitly cause orgasm, Nessus (a manipulative alien) uses it to make Prill (a humanoid whose help the protagonists need) addicted to sex with Louis Wu. It is also compared to sex when the narrative muses that "all women have a tasp" that they use to manipulate men to do their bidding. - In The Gap Cycle, zone implants are capable of giving orgasms to those in whom they are implanted. Surprisingly, Angus Thermopyle never uses this function on his victim, Morn Hyland, preferring to just render her inert whenever he rapes her. - Boyd Upchurch's 1971 Sex and the High Command centers around one. A heavy-handed satire on feminism, it has a female scientist (who is also running for President) inventing an herbal compound called Vita-Lerp. Normally used as a rejuvenating skin cream, when encapsulated and then vaginally inserted, it not only brings about an intense orgasm but also induces pregnancy. Since this makes men intimately obsolete, women decide to overthrow society and run things themselves. The horror! - A new device in A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers allows people to experience the dreams of others, including sexual ones. - In The Armstrong and Miller Show, one sketch features a place called "Pleasure Planet", with hand-held devices that have this effect on the people who hold them. - Episode 1 of the short-lived series Valentine had the Goddess Aphrodite prove herself to a human woman by giving her a "straight shot of unconditional love". - Doom Patrol (2019): Flex Mentallo, whose superpowers let him cause a wide variety of different effects by flexing various muscles, accidentally causes orgasms for everyone on Danny Street (and the street themselves) by flexing the wrong one. - One episode of The Drew Carey Show has Mimi receiving a pair of remote-controlled vibrating panties as part of her and Steve's efforts to conceive a child. Much to her horror, Drew gets his hands on the remote control and uses it on her. - A virtual reality "game" from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Game" stimulates pleasure centers in the humanoid brain, making the device addictive to the point of even sounding orgasmic. Worse, it also renders the Enterprise crew too euphoric to mind being boarded and overrun by the K'tarians that designed the game. - Lampshaded in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Scooby Gang capture a taser blaster from the Initiative and try to figure out how it works. Willow suggests just pushing buttons to see what happens, but Xander replies that since they're fiddling with a "blaster," randomly hitting buttons is not high on his agenda. He then adds that if it were called the "Orgasminator" that would, in fact, be his desired approach. - Hawkwind wrote and performed a song, "Orgone Accumulator", in homage to Dr Reich's marvelous machine. - Motörhead actually did a song titled "Orgasmatron". - The Simon & Garfunkel song "The Big Bright Green Pleasure machine" has the titular device all but said to do this for people who can't get sex in the ordinary way, as a satire of advertising/consumerism. - GURPS Magic has the Ecstasy spell. If the subject of the spell fails a Will save, this spell can addict them. - In Mass Effect 2 a side conversation between a friend-zoned turian and an oblivious quarian introduces a quarian suit program that is apparently a masturbatory aid. The Shadow Broker's dossier for your quarian teammate Tali says she installed and uninstalled it in her own suit half a dozen times, before buying the deluxe version. - One Cyanide and Happiness strip introduced a superhero whose power was "Having sex with women just by looking at them." Another man is astounded that he can bring women to orgasm at a glance, and he clarifies that he's the only one who actually experiences it, otherwise everyone would know his secret. The other man tells him that ejaculating every time he sees a woman doesn't qualify as a superpower.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Orgasmatron
Original Character Tournament - TV Tropes An Original Character Tournament, often abbreviated OCT, is a type of competition that is popular on art websites like DeviantArt. Basically, it's just what it sounds like: A tournament between artists where they battle their completely original characters through artistic expression. Usually, this is through comics, but occasionally has included animation and literature. The usual progression of events goes something like this... Somebody figures they have a great idea for a tournament, and they decide they're going to host one. They find other people willing to judge, create prizes (it helps to either have artistic talent or to have good friends who do), and hammer out the setting, the Story Arc, maybe an NPC or two. Either during and/or after this stage, they hold auditions. Auditioners are usually expected to create a character, a reference sheet for said character, and an audition to introduce the character and explain why they've become involved in the tournament. Once the judges have filled all slots in the tournament, auditions are closed, and the actual tournament begins. Characters are matched up against each other randomly, and the artists have until the first round deadline to create an entry for the first round. At the end of the round, the judges decide which artist continue to the next round. This process continues until only one artist is left. That last artist's plotline then become canon, and he or she is named the winner. Entries are usually in comic style; there have been exceptions, but it's difficult to progress far using other mediums. There are several variations on the basic round that have been used to spice things up: themes for individual rounds, boss rounds, etc. These tournaments, like everything else on the internet, may vary in quality, but some of the more notable ones have yielded stories one could indeed label awesome. An attempt to collect all of the DeviantArt tournaments in one place can be found here. ## Common tropes include: - Aborted Arc: Likely to happen since OCTs can take place over several months and artists either lose interest or become too busy to continue further in their entries. You'll rarely find an OCT where all the participants stay on through the entirety of the tournament's length without someone forfeiting because they couldn't get their entry done on time. - Alternate Continuity: Essentially entries in OCT are how the artist's interpretation of events will go down. Sometimes they may continue on from another entries previous story or bout. But more likely then not, they'll skew away into something different then likely intended. - Art Shift: Between different artists' interpretations of the characters. - Bonus Material: Usually in the form of Spectator or Special Entries that occur outside of the rounds. - Breakout Character: Most tournaments have at least one or two, and some have a fandom that even extend outside the OCT community. - Canon Discontinuity: Although some eliminated artists try to finish their story or work their character into the overall tournament plot, many just let the story drop as soon as they lose. - Climactic Battle Resurrection: Very likely, since some finalists tend to gather a group of defeated contestants (known as tagalongs) during the course of the tournament. - Cooking Duel: Strictly speaking, an OCT needs not necessarily be a fighting tournament. Also seen tourneys that allow more creativity, where fighting is not necessarily the only way to win. When done badly pretty much anything (up to and including "I sprayed mud on him while driving by" and similar nonsensical victories) can become a win. There are usually limitations in the rules to avoid this, eg. stating that the opponent must be incapacitated or otherwise unable to continue the battle. - Deleted Scene: Non-canonical entries might be treated like this. - Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Happens at the end of most Tournaments with very powerful Big Bads. - Excuse Plot: Most OCT's do not have any real story at all. They are usually multi-verse wide battles that have very little internal logic, but that does not make them always terrible. - Elseworld: Competitors often use characters that first appeared in their other works, so characters are adjusted to better fit the setting without compromising the main story. That's how you can have a street urchin from Victorian London fighting a futuristic bipolar cyborg in a crazy steampunk city. - Follow the Leader: There are exceptions, but about half the tournaments use this tried-and-true premise: you have your character transported to a strange and possibly supernatural realm where you fight each other to win some sort of wish. (Most often used for practical reasons: this can fit pretty much any type of character: even those who aren't natural fighters can not leave until the tournament is finished.) - Missing Episode: Sadly very common due to artists deleting their work or profiles leaving the story incomplete. - New Media - Not Just a Tournament: VERY prevalent in many of those. Most of them turn out to be ruses for the Big Bads (usually the judge characters) to obtain power, and the competitors (including the defeated ones) will usually have to work together to stop The Plan. - Schedule Slip: Though rounds have a set deadline, most tournament managers don't mind giving a little extra time when competitors run behind. - Sequel Hook: Some of the better tournaments find a way to start a second tournament, and may even let previous competitors return for that contest. - Sturgeon's Law: OCTs that do not filter their auditioners usually end up with lots of subpar auditions full of generally weaker art. - Story Arc: Each OCT either has one to start out or develops one during its run with rare exceptions. - Tournament Arc: Many of them are actual tournament settings. - The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Many OCTs fall into this, especially if its more of an Intercontinuity Crossover rather than a Elseworld. - Unnecessary Roughness: It's not uncommon for a friendly round of competition to end with a horrific death. ## Examples: <!—index—> <!—/index—>	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalCharacterTournament
Original Flavour - TV Tropes Said of a Fanfic that attempts to emulate the tone, atmosphere and style of its inspiration as closely as possible. The goal of the Original Flavour fic is to seem as though the original production team could have thought it up. Even if it heads off into previously unknown and unexplored territory for that property, the story will emphasize the use of existing gimmicks and devices rather than introducing totally foreign ones. If you are writing an Original Flavour fic, you (usually) don't introduce or kill core characters, revise continuity, or do anything that is non-canon beyond the events of your story. To an extent, it is possible to pull these off and still maintain this trope, but only if it's in a way that the canon itself could have evolved (as opposed to anything drastic). Original Flavor is exactly like writing a spec script you could submit to the showrunner, but not necessarily in script form. Note that some fandoms, especially those with looser story arcs, are easier to write in Original Flavour than others. It's also more popular for works with a distinctive style of writing and/or dialogue, as this is a particularly easy element to imitate. If the original work was Cut Short, anyone would be glad to read how the rest of the series could have played out if a fanfiction continuation assumes this trope. Original Flavour has been the direct polar opposite of most other Fan Fic types at one time or another. Because of the widespread prevalence of labyrinthine Fix Fic and florid Shipping, Original Flavor can be incredibly rare. Fun is also found in a self-imposed challenge to see how far a writer can go out of the lines without technically deviating from "canon", without becoming an overt Elseworld. For when this treatment is done for individual characters rather than entire stories, see Sailor Earth. For fanfics that take this up a notch, see Script Fic. Frequently overlaps with Pseudo-Canonical Fic. Cousin trope of Spiritual Licensee, in which a brand new work or franchise attempts to emulate an existing one, due to appreciation for what the latter was as a whole, and could be considered a symbolic installment for that franchise. ## Examples: - Future Reunion is a fan comic based on the manga Sailor Moon. The artist's style in both artwork and storytelling ability is near identical to the original work. - It has been commented on that the the alternate versions of the non-Arc-V characters that show up in Arc-Ved Protagonists make perfect since for how they exist in an Arc-V setting and that they are still true to their original selves despite the new settings they are put in. - Death Note has If It's Not Me, It's You, a Gen Fic that has been praised for it's very canon-like plot, mind games and excellent, IC characterization. - In Manga-ish form, the french comic, Magical Fami fanfic of Ojamajo Doremi, by Alexandre JBOMagical follows the exact same formula as the original counterpart. It is to a point that it has enough material and is so close to the original it could be adapted into a ~26 episode sequel of the original and most wouldn't notice. - Iron Touch closely mimics the tone and plot structure of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, specifically Part 3 and Part 5. The author often refers to it as a fan part rather than a straight fanfiction for this reason. - Rob "Kenko" Haynie's Girl Days is an excellent Original Flavour Ranma ½ fic. - Neon Genesis Evangelion RE-TAKE has the same sort of occasionally Mind Screw-ey plot as the original Evangelion, the art is as good or BETTER than the canon source, the characters are all perfect, and the \|\|eventually happy\|\| ending is completely believable, taking into account the characters and the situation. Asuka fans consider it to be the true continuation and ending of End of Evangelion, while others feel conflicted about the plot direction it takes, particularly some very graphic sex scenes (in the unedited version) and plot details towards the ending. Original Flavour may not always be a good thing, especially when it's based on an already divisive series. - Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, while not a Doujinshi like ReTake, is also an alternate universe fic which shows an impressive attention to detail on the part of the author. It is written as a Alternate Universe continuation that picks up where Episode 24 left off, but going in a different direction than Episode 25 and 26, and The End of Evangelion, and is essentially written as the second season of the show that never was. The writer has also commented that he even deliberately attempted to be vague on some of the same elements that the show was (such as the more metaphysical stuff). - The White Dog for an Inuyasha Original Flavour fic. - Talya Firedancer's Gravitation fanfics were explicitly written to read like a typical script taken from the anime. - Online Fan Fic pioneer Ryan Mathews once participated in a hoax wherein an unfinished Dirty Pair fanfiction was released on Usenet as the purported "transcript" of a lost OVA. Apparently, it was Original Flavour enough for those who read it — the record shows some of the readers engaged in several weeks of frantic research. - The Haruhi Suzumiya fanfic entitled The Love Affair of Nagato Yuki (whose title doesn't prepare you for the various surprises inside—well, except one), received various praises comparing it with both the series and the novels. - Neko Love Hina is a take on the Love Hina franchise by Kytranis that aims for humor with every chapter. - Dragon Ball Multiverse is a webcomic with an art style in the tournament chapters very similar to official art from Dragon Ball, Akira Toriyama. However, later chapters have been drawn by several different artists, each putting their own spin on certain facial expressions. - The Hetalia: Axis Powers fic An Incident and Jerusalem/Increments of Jerusalem play out (for the most part) like a classic Sherlock Holmes story, going so far as to capture Sir Arthur C. Doyle's narrative style. This stays consistent all throughout, even as \|\|Arthur casually outwits Holmes.\|\| - This Pendent Heart is a Princess Tutu fanfic stunningly similar to the tone of the original show, even despite being overtly shippy at times (it helps that the anime is, after all, a Shōjo work). It also ties together and expands on a few plot threads, while continuing to develop the characters. - The Elemental Chess Trilogy, a series of Fullmetal Alchemist fanfics, was intended to be this. It apparently succeeded, since a few reviewers questioned whether the author was really Hiromu Arakawa writing under a fake name. - Spreading Their Wings and Another New World are two Robotech fanfics that follow the style and canon of the series. - Mado of Stone Mil is a great Haibane Renmei original flavour that takes place a little after the events of the anime. - Of Science and Magics is one for the A Certain Magical Index franchise, with Touma becoming childhood friends with Mikoto. - Meet Nadeshiko, a Shugo Chara! fanfic. It starts out as a generic rimahiko fanfic, but as the story progresses, it becomes a great sequel to the series. - bebop-aria's ''Left Eye'' is a brilliant Cowboy Bebop fic assembled from still photos in the anime series. It is a mature, detailed outline of Spike, Vicious, and Julia's lives pre-Bebop that ties together some of the series' unresolved plot points, and provides a deeper look into the trio's characters. - There were several light novels based on JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, with one of them being commissioned by Hirohiko Araki himself, but by far the most popular one for its faithfulness would be Purple Haze Feedback, which serves as an epilogue to Part 5 whilst also tying it back to previous parts and expanding on loose plot threads that were left open to interpretation. Readers have praised the novel for retaining the wacky, yet comprehensive narrative that JoJo is known for, to the point of having some kickass action scenes described in words only. It also helps that it focuses on Pannacotta Fugo, whom Araki regrets not having done more with, and although he didn't write it, Araki contributed some really nice art to PHF. - A Cluster of Stars. Especially recommended for people who want more of what Lucky Star itself could have offered. - Unlucky Black Holes, about what kinds of Witches the Lucky Star girls would become if they were fallen Magical Girls in Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Despite being not only a crossover, but only one by borrowing the concept of witches from Madoka-verse, it does a fine job capturing the essence of witches. One reviewer even commented that it would be interesting to see everything described in each Witch's profile in the spinoff game Grief Syndrome. - Warrior's Secret reads like a somewhat darker, but still true-to-canon continuation of the Kirby anime. Unsurprising, because the author was also the main translator for the anime's fansub, and thus knows the canon quite well. - This is one of the main goals of Kirby of the Stars: The After Story for the Kirby series. Since this story is a crossover of the games and the anime, both the anime and the game canons are taken into account, and the chapters read very much like anime episodes (albeit with more lengthy story arcs in mind as opposed to being episodic). - Despite being a case of Rule 34, one particular Gintama H-doujin kept all the hallmarks of the series without a break in character. It's even done in a Two Shorts format like earlier seasons of the anime; the iconic shot of the Odd Jobs building is used as a faux-Sexy Discretion Shot while Gintoki and Kagura yell dirty phrases to get the reader away, Shinpachi chastises the pair for making the audience read that, and the pair do a small spiel on how the words matter more than the actions as a coverup for being lazy. The second part involves a wave of "dick slasher" cases in Kabuki-cho, to which Gintoki and Shinpachi turn to Kyuubei to protect them from the perp. - Life with Fumi: A Yo-kai Watch AU is a Yo-Kai Watch fic based on the episode where Whisper enters an Alternate Universe where Katie received the Yo-kai Watch instead of Nate. In it, Whisper ends up back in the universe and must work with Katie (known by her Japanese name "Fumi") now. - Pokémon: - The main draw of Pokémon Story: Sinnoh Journey. It reads like an actual Pokémon Contest episode from start to finish. \|\|The extra chapters deviate from canon when Tobias and Darkrai are Adapted Out, but even then, it still reads a like logical, unofficial conclusion to Ash's Sinnoh conference without them\|\|. - The sequel, Pokémon: Nova and Antica, continues the trend to an impressive degree. It's your standard travel-to-a-new-region story following Ash as the protagonist, but with many twists, alongside an overarching Myth Arc, that lives up to its aim of combining the new with the old. The Tenla Region and its Pokémon sound like stuff from the games. - Revenge of the Old Queen is a cleverly written fanfic for the The Rocky Horror Picture Show. - The Joker Blogs. Barring the Mythology Gags, everything is as Original Flavor to The Dark Knight Trilogy as can be. This is multiplied to the nth degree considering the Joker's characterization, and his performance is so good that a lot of commenters jokingly(?) think that Heath Ledger has come back from the dead. - The Disney fanfic Lost Tales of Fantasia, despite being deliberately darker than a typical Disney movie, still imitates the usual Disney format by excluding swearing and sex and having regular musical numbers. - San Tropez by Breakinglight11 is a Cabin Pressure fan fic designed to be like just another episode of the series. Not only does it fit in with the continuity, the voices of the characters and the style of humor are a very close imitation of how original author John Finnemore writes them. San Tropez is even written in audio drama script format. - Eleutherophobia sticks as close to K. A. Applegate's writing style and tone as possible, mimicking Animorphs' balance of the hilarious, heart-wrenching, and horrifying. - Not He Who Tells, an original short story written in the style of Stephen King. The author is G. Norman Lippert, who has also written a Harry Potter continuation series. - Alice Through the Needle's Eye is a Fan Sequel to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that perfectly mimics Carroll's style. - Peter Pan and the Only Children is a Fan Sequel to J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, that perfectly mimics Barrie's style - Rich Drushel added to Bored of the Rings parodies of The Lord of the Rings's Appendix A and Scouring of the Shire. The latter is intended to be fitted into the text between the final two chapters. - Emperor's Ward: A Ciaphas Cain Story captures the style of the Ciaphas Cain yarns nigh-perfectly. - Though it starts out roughly, The Clone Wars: Commando's Dirge winds up having several readers proclaiming it not only tastes just like Karen Traviss' Republic Commando Series (without all the Jedi-bashing, too), it seamlessly brushes against a chapter of Triple Zero, without changing the scene at all. - Astrokath has a particularly good take on the events shortly after Dragonsdawn in Dragon Days. - In which Frank Herbert's ellipses are severely abused: Good Surprises. - The Ollivander Children attempts to write in the style of the later Harry Potter books, or that failing, some of the best fanfiction—such as seen Harry Potter and the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus and Interwoven. - The North Remembers for A Song of Ice and Fire, so much that many of the reviewers were claiming that the author Silverblood was George R. R. Martin himself. - A.A. Pessimal's work in the Discworld and Good Omens fanfic universes is essentially Original Flavour fan fiction. Even when introducing and elaborating on concepts which have not yet appeared in the canon, Pessimal is at pains to explain they are firmly rooted there and will show his working. For instance, "Rimwards Howondaland"—a Discworld expy of South Africa—is kind of there in the canon, as he collated eight or nine clear hints in the published books that point to its existence. Terry Pratchett just hasn't developed it past those few hints and throwaway jokes. Noting, not unreasonably, that originally the Discworld Australia was no more than three or four throwaway gags which paved the way for its later introduction, Pessimal felt at liberty to introduce Southern Africa to the Discworld. The author also focuses on bit-part players and incidental characters in the canon, some of whom have not even had one line yet, as so much more can be creatively done with them. - Word of God is that Pessimal thought he was taking a big liberty by introducing the land of Aceria (with its Eagleland-like Lower States) to the Disc, as Pratchett had famously decreed that no part of the Disc should evoke any part of North America. And then, the posthumously published The Compleat Discworld Atlas introduced the Discworld's Canada/USA, called "The Great Outdoors"— exactly in the blank space on the Mapp where Pessimal put his Aceria... - Averted with the Screwtape Letters fanfic Screwtape's New Secretary (which is Rule 34 and therefore NSFW), but a review of the fic fits the trope. My dear Snaremouth, When that fool Blargrot allowed his patient to get his hands on thirty-one of the letters I had written to the idiot Wormwood, it was a serious intelligence fiasco . Imagine my elation, then, to learn that you got your own patient to write porn of it. It is a clear sign that your patient has completely missed the point . That said, did you really need to include ME in it? Your affectionate mentor, Screwtape - General consensus in the Worm fandom is that very, very few fics are able to successfully emulate the tone and style of canon. Cenotaph is one of the few considered to succeed, and is among the most celebrated and notable because of it. - Diary of a Wimpy Kid has an entire genre of original flavour fics thanks to the r/LodedDiper subreddit, called "Looks Like Books" (L.L.B.s for short). Like the title implies, they take great pains to make their fanfics look like the original books, down to the text, journal paper, and art style. - Geraldine Brooks's March is a Pulitzer Prize-winning take on Little Women from the perspective of patriarch Mr. March, who is offscreen for most of the original novel. The whole book is written in a sort of 19th-century style meant to emulate Alcott. - The one-shot The Road Built in Hope doesn't stray that far from Land of Oz canon, aside from some references to romance (lesbian romance, at that) and American politics that you wouldn't normally see in the series. - The Animorphs fanfic The Wheel reads just like one of K. A. Applegate's books, accurately channeling Marco's POV. - The Ace Attorney sprite comic Kristoph Gavin: Ace Attorney does a very good job of emulating the original's style. - The longer the Super Mario World romhacking scene sticks around, the more its participants rely on different graphics, new music, and unusual game mechanics in order to make their creations stand out from the pack. Return to Dinosaur Land, on the other hand, is a hack consisting almost entirely of levels that could have been in the original game. These sort of hacks are usually referred to as "vanilla" hacks by other members of the scene. - The Oswald Adventures are direct spiritual successors to the Epic Mickey series. - Screennameless's Gears of War fanfic Reconnoiter is praised for its borderline obsessive maintenance of the canon character's personalities even as new characters are introduced. - The whole purpose of the Tomb Raider Level Editor project Back to Basics 2009 — all levels must be built with only the resources given when the editor was released to the public nine years ago. - Silent Hill: Promise attempts to faithfully create a full Silent Hill game as an interactive web comic. - Neutronium Dragon's Sojourn would make a dark (and relatively short) installment of Quest for Glory, but as a story, it would fit right in — out-of-left-field goofy moments included. - Til the Sun Grows Cold and the Stars Grow Old is written with this trope in mind; it was intended to be so close to canon that it could be read almost as a novelization of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. - The Joy of Battle: Historical Espionage Action is a Metal Gear Solid 3 fanfic that presents the adventures of the Cobra Unit in a similar style to a Metal Gear game. The story does not change any of the existing canon and includes the Once Per Game torture scene as well as a prison escape, dramatic "ultimate weapon" reveal, and quirky villains. The main break from the style of the Metal Gear games is a non-linear plot. - Between Minds by 3theCaptain is one for the Half-Life and Portal universe. "If all goes according to plan, this story will not interfere at all with the canon material." - Pokémon: - Edan R. wrote a series known as Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Legendary & Ancient Discoveries. - While a number of Pokémon hacks shoot for ambitious story telling, changes to the overall badge collecting formula, or otherwise veer off the very narrow design concept of the main series, the Emerald and FireRed hacks Altair, Sirius, and Vega are designed to mirror the main games in every way, from the stat spreads of their new Pokémon down to the style of music, trainers, and towns. About the only thing that's out of place from the typical games is the last of the three hacks' extreme difficulty, and their choice of an eighth Gym Leader. - Tales From Tamriel does this with Skyrim. - There's a short one for CLANNAD: Whenever You're Ready by InfinityOrNone. Despite being about the Official Couple having their first night of marital bliss, it manages to be rated T. - Hitman Miami is an unusual example, as it is a text fanfiction of a video game and attempts to convey the feeling of actually playing a Hitman game. It is written like a walkthrough, with each chapter being a different mission, the plot being advanced in "cutscenes". - Night of the Vent: A Tale of Weirdness does its best to capture some of the fear and paranoia of Five Nights at Freddy's 3. However, in this case the guard didn't realize there wasn't very much to be upset about in this situation. - Interstitium is filled with scenes that easily fit within Mass Effect 2, and the flashbacks and Character Focus just as easily fit in the Mass Effect setting as a whole. - Many of the Game Mods for the original 1993 Doom are "episode replacements", level packs which emulate the look and feel of one of the original game's episodes. - Some Touhou Project fanfics fall into this: - Touhou Tonari: Does this in the attempt to shed some light on Yuyukos backstory. - The same applies to Though the Wind Cries but focusing on Suwako, Kanako and Sanae. - Diamond in the Rough (Touhou) provides an absolute Deconstruction of the Gappy Stu archetype simply by using nothing else than Touhou canon. - This original soundtrack is designed to capture the essence of the MSX Gradius games' soundtracks. - Mario & Luigi: Cleanup Crew: The artist has claimed that the comic is actually his concept of a game for the Mario & Luigi series. - The Elder Scrolls: - Tamriel Rebuilt, a massive Game Mod for Morrowind, seeks to recreate the rest of the province of Morrowind (despite Morrowind's title, it restricts the action to the island of Vvardenfell), while adhering as closely to the official lore as possible (or more accurately, official lore around the time of Morrowind, to stick closer to the style and feel of Morrowind and not have to worry about integrating retcons from later games), aiming to feel more like an official Expansion Pack, than a game mod. The associated Project Tamriel mods aim to create other Tamrielic provinces in the same spirit, although the "around the time of Morrowind" clause can obscure it for people familiar with the Cyrodiil of Oblivion and the Skyrim of Skyrim. - In a similar vein to Tamriel Rebuilt, there is also the massive multi-team Game Mod, Beyond Skyrim for Skyrim, which seeks to recreate most of the continent of Tamriel, (and even a few places beyond) for the player to explore. Like Tamriel Rebuilt, developers of the different mods have it as their stated goal to stick as closely as possible both to to the official lore and the style of Skyrim to ensure that the mods integrate more or less seamlessly with the base game and appear like they could be official DLC. One of the project's stated tenets is also to not make or introduce any significant changes to Skyrim's core gameplay, but keep it as close to vanilla as possible. - Resident Evil: The Progenitor Chronicles sticks very close to the themes of the games. The finales of the first 2 volumes are straight survival horror. The finale of the third volume is way more action-focused, which ironically mirrors the evolution of the series from 1 to 6. - Heroes of Might and Magic III: One of the Horn of the Abyss Game Mod's main selling points is closely sticking to the aesthetic and lore of the original game while still adding tonnes of new content. The first new town, Cove, is a Pirate faction that fits well into the Fantasy Kitchen Sink world. Story-wise, it represents the island nation of Regna, which could only previously be shown as the unfitting Castle or the equally unfitting Stronghold. The second town, Factory, is a recontextualizing of the scrapped sci-fi Forge, instead going for a Cattle Punk theme that fits into the game better. It adopts the lore of a faction discovering super-advanced tech, but instead of cyborgs and laser guns it's steampunk and revolvers. - There are many, many Homestuck-derivative fanworks. However, probably the most Original Flavor of them all is Housetrapped, which carefully copies the art style of the original with different characters, and which is being used as the basis for a fan-game. - Secret Agent Men strives for this in its approach to the series that inspired it, Niels. - In A Shadow of the Titans, a Jackie Chan Adventures and Teen Titans crossover, and a part of the collection of fics referred to as Project Dark Jade, it has been commented that both Jade and the TT characters are kept very much in character. - Avatar: The Last Airbender has Lost in Translation, which makes up a fairly realistic origin myth that all the four nations would know... and then creates a new version for the fire nation under Fire Lord Ozai's rule. - Some of the later works of JBERGES in the Futurama Fan Fic community read exactly like a canon episode, only with the science and math gags turned up to 11. Of Mice and Mensans is probably the best-written example, despite being Script Fic. - Though she dislikes being recognized for only this, The Illustrious Crackpot did one of the best Phineas and Ferb fanfics in the entire fandom: The Great Danville Cold Wars. - The Stepbrother Sitch and all its follow-up stories are as close to Kim Possible and Phineas and Ferb as possible, with plenty of Lampshade Hanging, Continuity Nods (possibly bordering on Continuity Porn at times), and some thoughts on various pieces of Canon Fodder. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fics tend to try to follow series formula: - Most Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers fanfics try for something close to this, but remove the 80s cartoon censorship. - The Ben 10 Hero High Series pretty much reflects the first episode but then goes off in an entirely new story line with strong character development and stories. - Ezra Lost, a Star Wars Rebels fanfiction. It doesn't hug to canon completely, as it was in the progress of being written before the second season began to air, but the alternate things that occur rather than canon are relatively reasonable. - Although some could be interpreted as Fix Fic, this author tends to get the Scooby-Doo formula down pat. - Many feel that the Danny Phantom series Facing the Future Series fits the tone so good that they feel it's an unofficial fourth season. - The Meg's Family Series reads a lot like actual Family Guy episodes, minus the Meg bashing. - Young Justice: Darkness Falls. This is a tricky example, as it breaks so many rules of original flavor what with introducing new characters, tricked out plot twists that upends parts of Young Justice's premise and shifting character focuses. And YET, so many of the readers say that what was created would serve as a suitable conclusion to Greg Weisman's vision for the show with villain intrigue, tapping into the deeper DC universe, revised character origins and the same kind of espionage and tricks as the show but in different ways. - Unlike many Kim Possible fanfics which like to ramp up the drama, The More Things Change Series has the feel of the actual series, with each story being like an actual episode. - Gets Wrecked is a Dark Fic of The Magic School Bus that reads more like an Unexpectedly Dark Episode. In it, the bus gets into a car crash while coming back from a field trip and Ms. Frizzle gets Identity Amnesia. - Though Mortal Man tackles the unexpected subject matter of death, the story still feels a lot like an episode of the show, albeit a Very Special Episode. - Zootopia: A Tail of Two has been regarded as having the definite feel of the original Zootopia movie. - Being a continuation of the Beetlejuice cartoon, Cinderjuice and (to a slightly lesser extent) its sequels are intended to emulate the nonsense and color of the source material while also having a coherent plot. - Total Drama Legacy hews very close to the style and structure of the Total Drama series. Each chapter of the fic is structured like a TV episode, even having a designated point where the theme song would play. Several staples of the series, like the outhouse confessional, the marshmallow ceremony, alliances, and dangerous challenges, are all present. - The Simpsons: Team L.A.S.H., written by Total Drama Legacy co-author FlamingMercury5, also hews very close to its source material's style and structure with each chapter being analogous to an episode, but does Legacy one better by being a straight-up Script Fic. - Both A Dash of Logic and Marooned in Madagascar by WDGHK very much aim to recapture the comical tones and writing styles of SpongeBob SquarePants and All Hail King Julien respectively. - Child of the Storm, despite being a Mega Crossover is particularly noted for keeping many of the various characters very much in character (so long, that is, as their backgrounds remain broadly the same. Outside of canon Harry Potter and Avengers characters, there are few that haven't had a little spin put on them) while those chapters from the point of view Harry Dresden are regarded as being downright uncanny in their mimicking of the original author's Signature Style. - This author seems to have a taste for Original Flavour. Besides for a few quirks, most of the stories are obvious (but apparently highly effective) attempts at writing actual episodes. - The Man with No Name somehow manages to be Original Flavor to both Firefly and Doctor Who, despite the two series having widely varying tones (though granted, Doctor Who itself has widely varied its tone over the decades). - This is the entire point of the "Sbubby" meme (which has an entire sub dedicated to it on Reddit). Take a logo, poster, or box art and cleanly rearrange the letters so it looks like its saying something completely different (usually gibberish, though more coherent words phrases are just as common) while still visually resembling the original. - Fantasy of Utter Ridiculousness, a crossover between Megas XLR and Touhou Project, has been noted to fall into this category. One of the author's stated intentions when writing the story was to adhere as closely as possible to the source material for both series, evading most of the memes and fanon associated with Gensokyo and its residents. The end result looks as if it falls squarely into Megas's canon, while simultaneously having the feel of one of Touhou's supplementary manga. - A Peaceful Afterlife: The author does an impressive job of keeping the tone of both series than comprise it, namely Hazbin Hotel and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. The majority of the story keeps with the debauched, comical nature of Hazbin, but the fights manage to incorporate the Outside-the-Box Tactics and Indy Ploys of JoJo. - Somehow, Cross Cases manages to feel like a perfect combination of installments of both Supernatural and The Dresden Files at the same time. The sections written from Harry's POV align perfectly with his narrative voice in canon, and the plot is paced well and twisty enough to feel like an actual Dresden novel, with even the length, number of chapters, and timescale falling within normal range for the series. And on top of that, the sections from the perspective of any of the Supernatural-side characters hew closely to their canon characterizations and somehow manage to feel like an episode of Supernatural whose events slot in well with both the ending of Season 10 and the start of Season 11, without ever once feeling out-of-place with the sections mimicking a Dresden novel. There's only one OC of note- the main antagonist -and even they fit nicely into the canon of Dresden, complete with their history with the protagonist being something that could totally be present in canon. It's quite remarkable to see. - Though there are some things about the series that are different from the main canons that make up the crossover, the author of Tokimeki PokéLive! and TwinBee sticks as closely to the source material as possible regarding the battle mechanics, which follow those used in the Pokémon games closely as well as the overall tone of the series being just as dark as Pokémon media outside the anime can be at times like the games, Pokémon Origins and Pokémon Generations and as action packed and filled with Shocking Moments as a Shonen anime/manga while also keeping the general lighthearted atmosphere and focus on School Idols that Love Live! has normally as well as the romantic atmosphere of Tokimeki Memorial! - Equestria Girls: A Fairly Odd Friendship: The story is intended to be an authentic combination of both the moods and humor of EG and FOP. - The crossover fic My Hero School Adventure Is All Wrong As Expected is very original flavor for the the My Hero characters and even matches the original works Shout Outs to Star Wars. - The New Teen Titans Play The Muppet Show is written out like a normal episode of The Muppet Show, with the Teen Titans playing the part of the celebrity guests.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalFlavour
Anime First - TV Tropes The vast majority of anime is usually based on a preexisting material, be it Manga, Light Novels, Visual Novels or even video games and toys. These are the exceptions. Anime is risky for a lot a reasons, but mainly because it's very costly. Literature and manga will usually only have a small handful of people that are directly involved in its creation; yeah, you'll need a small team in order for it to actually get it onto shelves, but the work itself technically only needs a writer, some artists, and an editor. For anime, you need a team of dozens for the animation alone (to say nothing of composers, voice actors, and other vital roles) just to create a single episode or film. Animation also has the additional problem of demographics; while publishing has to deal with this as well, the lower costs means that it's much less of a financial risk to release a work that appeals to a niche audience. With animation, if you're spending millions on even the cheapest 12-Episode Anime, it better appeal to the widest demographic possible in other to recoup costs. note : Hence why most Anime First shows for youngsters are explicitly Merchandise-Driven. So naturally, anyone funding an anime is far more likely to cough up some cash if what's being created has already found success elsewhere; after all, you'll have a built-in fanbase and that preexisting material can serve as additional advertisement for the show and vice-versa, increasing revenue all around. The basic idea is certainly not unique to anime, as countless shows and films around the world —both animated and live-action— are based on preexisting properties for all these same reasons. But this tends to be far more common with anime than anything else, with a good 90% of programs released every year originating in another medium. Occasionally manga comes out after such an anime, but only as a limited run. Some manga run concurrently with a show, so divergences are common and accepted. You don't want them to be exactly alike or the audience will wonder why you're messing with the story. You also sometimes get a sort of Double Subversion where the manga comes out first, but the original project was conceived as an anime; the manga was primarily intended as advertisement. (The well-known example is Neon Genesis Evangelion.) Not to be confused with the common gripe that all of the anime examples on a trope page come first. (Seriously, guys, it's alphabetical. Either add in some examples from advertising, or let it go.) Compare All Musicals Are Adaptations, a trope that exists for much the same reasons as this one. ## Examples: <!—index—> <!—/index—> - The Anime no Chikara project aimed to create entirely original anime, although it ultimately produced just three of them. All of them aired in 2010: - 91 Days - Akahori Gedou Hour Lovege - Akiba Maid War - Akudama Drive - Aldnoah.Zero - Angel Beats! Notable because its creator is best known for Visual Novels. - Animation Runner Kuromi - Anime-Gataris - Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day - Appare-Ranman! - The Aquatope on White Sand - Argento Soma - Argevollen - Artiswitch - Ashita no Nadja - Ayaka - Ayane's High Kick - Basquash!. Mecha show and shameless Nike shoes advertisement. - Bee Train's girls with guns trilogy: - 8th Man - Best Student Council: While it does have a manga, it was mainly to promote the anime and it began only two months before the anime aired. - The Big O. The order went First Season -> Manga -> Second Season, so the Manga version goes off in a completely different direction from the show (particularly regarding Beck and the ending). Some ideas from the Manga made it into the Second Season, if somewhat obtusely. - ...which was followed by Manga (unreleased in the US) based on the Second Season. - Birdie Wing - Blood: The Last Vampire came out before the its manga adaptation. Same goes for its two other series: - Blood+. The quality of the manga actually suffers for it; they have a lot of action shots that look like freezeframes from the anime, and the dialogue is a little bit too simple and sparse. - Blood-C likewise. - Bloody Escape - BNA: Brand New Animal - Boruto, the first issues of the manga retell the story of Boruto: Naruto the Movie. - Brigadoon: Marin and Melan had a two-volume manga adaption. The manga's plot was somewhat simpler. - Bubblegum Crisis - Buddy Complex - Buddy Daddies - Burst Angel. The manga was also a prequel to the anime. - Candy☆Boy is an odd case. It was originally just an original net animation used to promote a music video. However, the concept for the show proved popular enough that more episodes were created. - Carole & Tuesday - Case File nº221: Kabukicho - [C] Control - Chargeman Ken! did have two manga based on it, though it was first conceived as an anime. The manga are often considered better than the anime, mainly due to them explaining more things and having fewer plotholes. - Charlotte - Chimimo - Classicaloid - Classroom Crisis - Code Geass is an original story. Several AU manga and video games were made as promotions/bonuses, but the anime is the original canon. - Concrete Revolutio: Choujin Gensou, one of those cases where the manga promotes and then runs concurrent to the anime. - Cowboy Bebop. Two manga series for this show do exist, but they were developed as promotional material for the anime. "Shooting Star", which came first, was more of an original Alternate Universe type story, and the second series was a direct tie-in. - Coyote Ragtime Show - Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!, which has the same case as Concrete Revolutio. However, the manga focuses on the Conquest Club while the anime (and most of the other stuff) focuses on the Defense Club. For the second season, the manga shifted its focus back to the Defense Club. - Cyber Team in Akihabara has a manga adaptation that was published in the shoujo magazine Nakayoshi a few months after it started airing. - Cybot Robotchi - Darker than Black - DARLING in the FRANXX had a 4-panel spinoff manga debut in the digital version of Shonen Jump the day after the anime premiered. A more serious adaptation followed not long after. - Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School note : Not to be confused with Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, which is a game that's part of its own saga is the Grand Finale of the Hope's Peak Academy saga and the first original Danganronpa anime, and the reason for that is that the series's writer thought that its story would be best expressed in anime format. - Day Break Illusion began as an anime, then got a manga adaption and a light novel prequel. - The Day I Became a God - Dead Leaves - Death Parade - Deca-Dence - Den-noh Coil - Devil Hunter Yohko - Di Gi Charat - Digimon Fusion. While the manga debuted first by around a fortnight, the anime was announced and presumably in production for months beforehand and the manga specifically adapts it, so it still qualifies for this trope. - Dog Days - Do It Yourself!! (though a manga adaption was co-produced with it) - Both Dragon Ball GT and Dragon Ball Super are cases of Anime First for the Dragon Ball franchise, in contrast to the first two series, though Super aired alongside its own manga. - Dragon Pilot: Hisone and Masotan - Eden of the East - El-Hazard: The Magnificent World - Endride - Endro~! - Engage Kiss - Ergo Proxy had the original 23 episode run, in addition to a manga Spin-Off - Eternal Boys - The Eureka Seven manga has a different ending to the anime, plus its own manga-only Prequel. - The sequel, Eureka Seven AO had the manga come out first - but since the anime was announced at around the same time and was released three months after the manga's first chapter, it's clear the manga is more of an advertisement, in the vein of Neon Genesis Evangelion. - Exception - Extreme Hearts - Fairy Gone - Fairy Ranmaru - Fanfare Of Adolescence - Fantasista Doll - Fantastic Children - Fena: Pirate Princess - Figure 17 Tsubasa & Hikaru - FLCL, with a two volume manga afterward. - Flip Flappers - Free! is a sequel to the light novel series High☆Speed! rather than an adaptation. - Galaxy Angel was supposed to be The Anime of the Game, but the game's release ended up being delayed so long that the anime couldn't really base itself on it. Galaxy Angel Party is the only manga adaptation set in the same Alternate Universe as the anime. - Ga-Rei -Zero-. This is an anime-original Prequel series to the Ga-Rei manga. - Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet: A manga adaptation began a few months before the anime first aired. - Getter Robo Contrary to popular belief, the 70's anime adaptation of Getter Robo was released 3 days before the manga. - Giant Beasts Of Ars - Gibiate - Girls und Panzer - The Girl Who Leapt Through Space. Mecha show? Check. It's even co-sponsored by model and garage kit maker Good Smile Company. - Glasslip. Manga and light novel adaptations came later. - Granbelm - Great Pretender. Manga adaptation currently being published. - Gregory Horror Show. Manga adaptation came later. - Guilty Crown - Every Gundam TV series ever, and ALMOST every OVA series with the exception of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, and to some extent, Char's Counterattack. (Both were previously released as novels; the latter was from the film's creator called Hi-Streamer) - Hanasaku Iroha - Healer Girl - Heat Guy J - Hell Girl. The anime and manga began releasing almost simultaneously, but the anime is the original work and the manga is the adaptation (anime has a longer lead time than manga). The manga's quite different, and lacks Hajime and Tsugumi except in omakes. - High Card' - High School Fleet - Himawari! - Housing Complex C - ID: Invaded, another case where the manga promotes, then runs concurrent with the anime. - I'm Gonna Be an Angel! - I My Me! Strawberry Eggs - Infinite Ryvius. The manga is a P.O.V. Sequel. - Innocent Venus - Iroduku: The World in Colors - Izetta: The Last Witch - Japan Sinks - Jellyfish Cant Swim In The Night - Joran: The Princess of Snow and Blood - Just Because! - K - the anime is the nucleus of the project, which incles over a dozen manga and novels that are prequels, side-stories, and AUs - including adaptations of the anime. - Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress - Kado: The Right Answer— it does have a novel and a manga, but the anime came out before either of them. - Kagewani - Kaginado is an anime-original crossover between multiple Key/Visual Arts works. - Kaina Of The Great Snow Sea - Kaleido Star - Kamichu! was probably a safer bet, as the animation style is derivative of Studio Ghibli and therefore an integral part of the series (not to mention guaranteeing a certain amount of fandom). - Kami Erabi God App - Key the Metal Idol - Anything by gímik. Which is really just Kiddy Grade and Uta∽Kata. Gigantic Formula also counts. - Kill la Kill. Interesting as the manga started a day afterwards. - Kiznaiver - KJ File - Knight Hunters - Kujibiki♡Unbalance was originally an entirely fictional manga series within Genshiken, which later spawned a fictional anime. When Genshiken got an anime adaptation, Kujibiki Unbalance got three real anime episodes, and then became a full-fledged anime series in real life—the manga was released alongside it. - Last Exile. The sequel series was weird here; the first episode technically predated the manga, as it was shown at a con. Most viewers were able to see a few chapters of the manga before airing began, though. - Legend of Himiko. The 12-Episode Anime ended the same month as the manga began its eight-year run. - In a strange inversion, most fans of Lilpri think that the anime adaptation came before the video games and manga, when the manga really came first. - Listeners - A Little Snow Fairy Sugar was adapted into a three-volume manga with the first volume released a couple months after the show's premiere. The manga followed the anime's plot pretty faithfully for the first two volumes then diverged significantly from it in the last one. - Little Witch Academia (2013)— had a film before an alternate universe manga was released, then predating the second film and the TV series. - Love Flops - Lupin III began as a manga series, and the first adaptation, "Green Jacket", was based directly on it and several of the manga chapters were adapted into episode plots. However, once the series got a Revival in the form of Red Jacket, it moved into fully original territory, and has continued on that route ever since. There have been manga made based off of The Castle of Cagliostro, The Secret of Mamo, and certain Green Jacket episodes. - Lycoris Recoil - Magic User's Club started with an OVA series. - Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's and StrikerS. What manga they had were supplementary material for the anime series. The first season isn't an example since it's (loosely) based on the Lyrical Nanoha mini-scenario of the Triangle Heart 3: Sweet Songs Forever fandisc, though most fans don't know that. - Magical Destroyers - Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi: While two manga adaptations began before the anime aired, they were mainly meant to promote the anime and there are some differences in plot between them. - The Magnificent Kotobuki - Majokko Shimai Yoyo To Nene - Mama Is a Fourth Grader: A manga adaptation was released a year after. - Makoto Shinkai's works. Most of the movies and shorts received novelizations afterwards. - Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms - The Marginal Service - Martian Successor Nadesico, which was shortly after adapted into a much different manga. - Metellica Rouge - Michiko & Hatchin - Mnemosyne was produced specifically to commemorate the anniversary of the anime channel it aired on. The light novel and the manga were just supplementary material. - Mononoke, although it was already proven popular as a part of the multi-story Ayakashi series. - My-HiME was an Anime First, but despite popular belief My-Otome could better be described as "Anime Simultaneously". The thing was the production teams for the anime and manga were both given the same settings and characters, but worked with them in entirely different ways. So despite what people think to the contrary, the manga isn't, nor could it have been, an adaptation. - My Life After I Became A Dummy Head Mic One Morning - My Neighbor Totoro: It saw a four-volume series of ani-manga books published a month after the film came out in theaters (in Japan); they were probably created around mid-production of the film. - Nagi-Asu: A Lull in the Sea - Najica Blitz Tactics - Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA-: Release order went: original defunct game → -UTENA- anime adaptation while the game's remake is still in pre-registration → the actual -UTENA- game. - Natsuiro Kiseki - Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a weird example wherein the manga was released first, but primarily to help the production of and promote the (anime) film. This example is further atypical in that the manga wound up being a major Adaptation Expansion, starting its run two years before the film ultimately came out... and finishing ten years after it, a total run of twelve years. (And unlike with Evangelion below, this had nothing to do with Schedule Slip.) - Neon Genesis Evangelion is an unusual example of a single show's popularity lasting over a decade due to careful merchandising which is still regularly released. Various spinoff manga exist, including the intermittently produced one that ran alongside the original show (see below). The success of the anime would become a game-changer for the industry, as it would inspire the creation of other similarly ambitious original anime projects in the years to come. - Even though the manga began publication before the anime began airing, it was made as a promotional tie-in for the anime series which was in production at the time, as with Nausicaa. Amusingly, the manga ended up running for 18 years...because of Schedule Slip. - Night World - Noein - Now and Then, Here and There - Odd Taxi, although a five volume manga adaptation between 2021-2022 was released before, simultaneously, and after the show's run. - Ojamajo Doremi, the (now second) longest-running Magical Girl show in existence. - Onipan! - Ookami Shonen Ken (lit. "Ken the Wolf Boy"), a mid-1960s black and white anime which was Toei Animation's first animated TV series, is believed to be the Ur-Example. - Opus COLORS - Overtake - The Orbital Children - Osomatsu-san first released its 2016 manga adaptation after the series' first cour aired. - Otaku no Video - Otogi Zoshi, although the anime appeared only a month before the manga. - Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt - Paranoia Agent - Penguindrum, similar to Utena (which was also by Ikuhara), has novels being released simultaneously. - A Place Further than the Universe has a manga adaptation that began before the anime aired, but it was meant to tie into the anime's promotion. - Plastic Memories - Please Teacher! and Please Twins!: The manga adaptations differ significantly from the anime plot toward the end. - Pokémon: The Series: Okay, Video Games First, but the anime did come before the manga it bears the most similarity to ( The Electric Tale of Pikachu); not always the case in the other manga continuities, however. - Pole Princess - Popin Q - Every installment of Pretty Cure, another Magical Girl show. Manga adaptations typically come out a few months after a season premieres. - The Price of Smiles - Princess Mononoke - Princess Nine, which gained a 3-volume companion manga. - Princess Tutu: The manga is notorious for removing many of the anime's original plot elements, pretty much screwing with the actual point of what the story was really aiming for. - Psycho-Pass. The 22-episode anime began airing on noitaminA in October 2012, while the manga began running in November. - Puella Magi Madoka Magica, with a three volume manga adaptation released concurrently with the anime (but after the anime aired the episodes depicted in each volume). It also has two manga Spin Offs: Puella Magi Kazumi Magica and Puella Magi Oriko Magica. Kazumi Magica began serialization while the anime aired and is still ongoing. Oriko Magica skipped serialization entirely and was released as a two-volume series shortly after the anime's conclusion. A (noncanon) anthology manga series was released several months after the anime ended. Another manga Spin Off was released alongside the Compilation Movie. - Pui Pui Molcar - RahXephon - Raideen - Rakugo Tennyo Oyui - Re:CREATORS - Re-Main - Revenger - Revolutionary Girl Utena: the anime and manga were made simultaneously. - Ride Your Wave - Rolling Girls: A manga began before the anime aired, but it was mainly meant to provide more backstory for the anime. - Rumble Garanndoll - Rymans Club - Saint October - Samurai Champloo. A two volume manga was published that was a series of mostly original side stories (the only adapted story was a shortened version of the first episode). - Samurai Pirates (A Magical Girl work despite the title) - Samurai 7. (Loosely) Based on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, though. - Sands of Destruction was originally conceived as a video game. Midway through production, they decided an anime would be a good way to promote the game, and so a second team split off to produce it. The anime was released before the game in both Japanese and US markets, despite being started later. It was later adapted into a manga as well. - Sarazanmai had its light novel and anime release days apart from each other, with its manga adaptation running just after the anime wrapped up. A spinoff manga, Reo & Mabu, was released before anything else of Sarazanmai, but it explicitly takes place in an Alternate Universe that has nothing to do with the main story. - Science Ninja Team Gatchaman and most other shows made by Tatsunoko Production (aside from very early stuff like Speed Racer). - Even then, the Mach GoGoGo manga was made primarily to generate interest for the anime. The anime diverted from the manga in many aspects. - s-CRY-ed. Despite what some people might claim, the manga came out second. - Seiren premiered as an anime, unlike its predecessors, Kimikiss, Amagami, and Photo Kano, which started out as video games that were later adapted into anime. - Serial Experiments Lain - selector infected WIXOSS and its sequels. The plot is original, but was made to promote the Wixoss card game from which it derives several characters. Various prequel manga were made before and after the series debuted that take place in the same continuity. - Seven of Seven: While a manga adaptation began before the anime aired, the manga was mainly meant to be promotional material for the anime. - Shine Post - Shinobi no Ittoki - Shirobako. There was a prequel manga. - Shounen Hollywood, primarily referring to the " HOLLY STAGE" series instead of the Prequel novel about Hiiragi. The series had a spinoff manga, and a serialized sequel novel after HOLLY STAGE FOR 50. - Sk8 the Infinity is a wholly original IP by Studio Bones. A comedy manga spin-off called "SK8 Chill Out!'' came shortly after the anime premiered, and a manga adaptation began in March 2021. - Simoun was primarily the anime series, with two manga and a light novel produced as alternate universe retellings of the main story. The creators attempted to recoup the costs via merchandise. - Sonny Boy - Space Battleship Yamato was the very first Anime First TV production. Its success paved the way for everything else on this page. - Space☆Dandy - Spirited Away: A bit of an odd example here in that it was not based on any manga or novel, nor were any of those things created after the film was released. Consider it a stand-alone. - Star Driver - Stars Align - Summer Ghost - Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry - Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and its sequels ( Macross Plus and Macross Zero are the exceptions to subsequent manga adaptations, being OVAs and all). - Super Milk Chan - Symphogear: A manga adaptation began before the first season aired, but it was mainly to promote the upcoming anime. - Tactical Roar - Tada Never Falls in Love - Tamako Market - Tamayura - Tenchi Muyo! - a manga was created in the gap in between the first and second OVAs and actually kept going despite the gap between OVA 2 and OVA 3. There was also a 6-issue American-made comic based off of Tenchi Universe. - Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: There was a direct manga adaptation, a School-AU spin-off, and a different AU-manga coming out. - Terror in Resonance - Tesagure! Bukatsu-mono - Texhnolyze - Tiger & Bunny - Time Bokan - Tokyo 24th Ward - All of the various Transformers anime series are original material, though most of them have accompanying manga (or sometimes an American comic) published concurrently in order to promote them. The nature of these manga varies; sometimes they offer supplemental side-stories set in the anime's continuity, and other times they act as an Alternate Continuity, with varying degrees of similarity to their animated counterparts; the Transformers Victory manga ended up being completely different due to being based on an unused early draft of the anime. - True Tears - Tsuritama - Tsuki ga Kirei - Turkey - Tweeny Witches - Uta∽Kata - Vampire in the Garden - Viper's Creed - The Vision of Escaflowne: Due to its Troubled Production, the TV show hit the screens after the very first manga adaptation appeared in stores, despite the latter being actually based entirely on preproduction materials for the former. Two more mangas and a movie adaptation have been produced after the show aired. Both are alternate re-tellings of the TV series, and if you were a fan of the television series before the film was released (2001 in Japan, 2003 in North America) and were upset with the drastic changes made in the latter, chances are you'll also be surprised and (quite possibly) upset with the differences in the manga series as well - assuming you haven't picked them up yet. - Visual Prison - Vividred Operation - Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song - Vlad Love - Waiting in the Summer - Wan Wan Celeb Soreyuke Tetsunoshi - A Whisker Away - Wizard Barristers - Wolf Children. A manga adaptation that expands on the ending was made later. - Wolf's Rain. There is a 2-volume manga adaptation, but the story (and especially the ending) has numerous differences. - Wonder Egg Priority - World Conquest Zvezda Plot - Xam'd: Lost Memories. - Yadamon - The manga of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, 5D's, and ARC-V all have the same characters, as well as some new ones, but totally different plots which bear no resemblance to the original ones. - Yuki Yuna is a Hero. It has an a prequel light novel running at the same time. - Yurei Deco - Yuri Kuma Arashi: While a manga began before the anime aired, it tells a very different story from the anime and some of the characters have different personalities. - Yuri!!! on Ice - Zombie Land Saga - In a weird instance for the Pretty Series, the anime adaptation of Kiratto Pri☆Chan is coming out first, with the game being released eleven days after it premieres.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalAnime
Bokukko - TV Tropes A Bokukko is, literally, a girl who uses the first-person Japanese Pronoun boku, primarily used by boys and young men. Even with Japanese speech patterns becoming more gender-neutral over the years, this would be considered unusual in real life; nonetheless, it is a common character quirk in anime and Japanese Video Games. Most bokukko are tomboys, but not all; sometimes it just indicates that the user is a Plucky Girl or unaware of social norms. In particular, a Farmer's Daughter or Fiery Redhead is likely to speak like this. Although none of this has to be reflected in her appearance, bokukko are usually either flat-chested, athletic, or extremely well-endowed. This speech pattern can also be used to keep a character's gender obscured — is that a boyish girl, or a girlish boy? A related but somewhat rarer character type is the Orekko (AKA Ore-onna), who refers to herself with the Hot-Blooded/macho ore — such characters are almost invariably The Lad-ette. The Gender Inverted version of this is a boy using extremely feminine pronouns like atashi or their own name, typically used to mark he's In Touch with His Feminine Side, clownish, Camp, or at worst, often a Sissy Villain. When a bokukko permanently switches to a more feminine pronoun, it's usually significant. When the show is dubbed, however, this will invariably lead to a Dub-Induced Plot Hole due to English first-person pronouns lacking such hints. The phenomenon of bokukko should not be confused with the tendency of female singers to use boku in their songs' lyrics. This usage is purely for metrical reasons, and does not indicate how they see themselves. See also Cute Bruiser and Shorttank. Since this trope is weird in real-life Japanese society, it may overlap with Asian Rudeness. Not to be confused with the manga Boku Girl, whose title is a pun on this phrase (which almost literally means " boku girl"), but (as detailed below) is not exactly a straight example. ## Examples: - Matsuri of Ayakashi Triangle still uses ore after being turned female, despite presenting himself at school as if he was always a girl. "She" pretty quickly becomes known as an orekko, which is said adoringly by Yayo, but his male classmates use as more of an insult. He tries some more "girly" speech (leaving out a pronoun and drawing out some vocalization) when in disguise, and the effect is conspicuously overplayed. - Sechs from Battle Angel Alita was at first a masculine woman than used ore, but then she actually become male. - In Bleach, while the tomboys tend to use the girlish atashi note : (Karin, Tatsuki) or uchi note : (Hiyori) pronouns, there are some genuine bokukkos: - Yoruichi's cat form is often mistaken as male because of the way she refers to herself/voice in anime. She uses the old sounding washi and the cat has a deep male voice. - Kuukaku Shiba has a rough personality that's emphasised by her use of ore when referring to herself. It goes with her masculine name. - Giselle Gewelle is a young woman who actually uses boku. She is accused by Yumichika of being a Creepy Crossdresser. While she doesn't outright confirm or deny it she identifies and presents herself as female, her girl friends treat her as one of them, and she is VERY angry with Yumichika for his accusations. (Plus, \|\|Mayuri\|\| refers to Giselle as female, and he should notice something going on.) - One of Giselle's aforementioned friends, Liltotto Lamperd, is a rude little girl who uses ore. - Hilariously inverted with Urahara, a male who actually uses... atashi to refer to himself. His use of it exaggerates his role of a 'humble' shopkeeper. In the flashbacks, however, he seems to have been more of a boku user. - Boku Girl: - The title is a play on the phrase in reference to Mizuki's various gender issues: He is a boy who uses boku, but he's so feminine-looking people assumed most of his life that he was female anyway. Then he is actually turned biologically female, but maintains his male identity. This leads characters with various knowledge of Mizuki's current and previous sex to assume he is a post-transition transgender boy or a closeted transgender girl. \|\|About halfway through, Mizuki is outed as biologically female and required to attend school as a girl. At the end, they spend some time biologically male again, but decide to become female in all respect (as Mizuki may have been a transgender girl from the beginning).\|\| Throughout all of this, Mizuki still uses boku, \|\|which ends up as one of her few outwardly masculine traits.\|\| - The manga's version of the Norse god Loki is female (and not just sometimes taking a female form), and specifically looks like a little girl. She still uses ore, which signifies her true age and power. - Priss didn't usually call herself "ore" in Bubblegum Crisis — she only started doing so in Bubblegum Crash, after Ryoko Tachikawa replaced Kinuko Oomori as her voice actress. - Case Closed: - Mayu from Cat God talks just like Yoruichi, right down to the use of washi. - In Change 123, the female protagonist has three alternate personalities. One of them, Hibiki is a very aggressive and tomboyish Blood Knight karateka and refers to herself as ore, but she can also be very gentle (and sexually very extroverted) to her Love Interest, and at times her emotional vulnerability can also be seen. - Likewise, Helena from Claymore both refers to herself as ore and speaks in an extremely masculine dialect. - Kanon and Shion Ozu from Coppelion both use ore and boku respectively. - Tsugumi Higashijuujou in Cyber Team in Akihabara is a 13-year-old girl who uses ore. - In Darker than Black: Ryuusei no Gemini, Suou Pavlichenko, the new female protagonist, uses boku. This doesn't help the fact that she looks almost the same as her twin brother if she is hiding her hair. - In DARLING in the FRANXX, Zero Two uses the first-person pronoun boku despite being a girl. While she does have some tomboy traits, her choice of pronoun seems to represent how she isn't fond of following the rules of society. \|\|Episode 15 reveals that she uses this pronoun because she heard Hiro use it to refer to himself when they first met.\|\| - Blond Launch in Dragon Ball uses ore, and is very ill-tempered and foul-mouthed compared to her demure blue-haired personality. - Fruits Basket: - \|\|Akito Sohma\|\| addresses herself as boku. This is largely because she was forcefully raised as a man by her mother, and acted like one until she was about 20. - Also Arisa Uotani, a former delinquent. - Tomokane from GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class does not use boku — she uses ore, among other things that would lead to Viewer Gender Confusion. - Hajime Ichinose from Gatchaman Crowds uses boku in addition to several other non-standard speech patterns. Unusually, Hajime is a very feminine character, so this probably isn't to sound masculine at all and instead highlight how odd her manner of speech is in general. - Gintama has a few female (or biologically female) characters who do not use feminine pronouns. - Yagyuu Kyuubei, born female, uses boku because they were raised as male (as the heir to the family). This is used to conceal their biological sex in their introduction arc; however, they continue to use it even after The Reveal. At first, it's because they're conflicted as to whether they should see themself as male or female. Eventually, they come to identify as neither and continues using boku presumably out of habit. - Tatsumi the firefighter uses ore and also refers to herself as onii-chan when speaking to children. It's likely that she adopted this way of speaking due to being raised in a very masculine environment; her adoptive father believes that women can't be firefighters, but Tatsumi still idolizes him and wants to follow in his footsteps. - In Good Luck Girl! we have Ranmaru. But instead of boku, she uses ore. - Itsuki from Heart Catch Pretty Cure because of her Wholesome Crossdresser situation. As Cure Sunshine, she uses watashi. - Hetalia: Axis Powers: - When Hungary was a young Cute Bruiser, she assumed that she would grow up to be a boy and that everyone eventually grew a penis. She eventually grew into a Ninja Maid Cool Big Sis, even marrying one of the two Team Dads in the cast, and while she switches to watashi once she's grown up, she remains badass nonetheless and is often considered to be one of the manliest characters in the cast. - Austria and the Holy Roman Empire thought Italy was one when he used to use boku to refer to himself in the days everyone thought he was a girl. note : It's hinted that Hungary either always knew or realized it by herself but kept her mouth shut. He has switched to ore since then. - Actually, the closest to a canon bokukko is... the very feminine Monaco, who is said to have speech patterns akin to an old man's. - The protagonist of Ice Revolution is an androgynous girl raised in a hypermasculine karate dojo who uses ore as a matter of course. She takes up figure skating as a way to reconcile her macho, hyper-competitive athleticism with her burgeoning but deeply buried femininity. - Makoto Kikuchi from The Idolmaster, who became an Idol Singer to get in touch with her feminine side. - The game has a dialogue choice of asking her age or gender, with the latter causing her to insist that she's a girl: " Boku wa onna no ko desu!" - There's also Subaru Nagayoshi from iDOLM@STER: Million Live who uses ore to fit with her tomboyish demeanor and appearance, however her voice is a bit higher than you'd expect. - Rindou from In the Heart of Kunoichi Tsubaki uses boku to refer to herself as a result of her previous village's upbringing, as they initially tried raising her as a man to make up for their low male population. When she eventually transfers to the Akane Class, an all-female ninja clan that has never once seen a man in their lives, her usage of boku causes a bit of confusion amongst them as they believed Rindou was a man until she proved otherwise. - Ririchiyo Shirakiin from Inu × Boku SS uses boku as referenced in the series' title. She's no tomboy, though; she's a feminine Ojou. - Kido of Kagerou Project refers to herself as ore and uses a though, guy-like speech pattern. She's actually not all that boyish in anything but appearance, and it's mostly just an act that she put on rather recently. She's even slipped up and called herself watashi once or twice. - Nui Harime from Kill la Kill is one. Unlike most examples, however, she's an adorable, pink-wearing Elegant Gothic Lolita, on top of being a remorseless psychopath. \|\|Kind of a plot point, too — because it's a masculine pronoun, no one suspects anything when she refers to herself as boku... while disguised as a male student.\|\| - Madoka Ayukawa from Kimagure Orange Road used to be a Bokukko as a child, so much that she's mistaken as a boy by \|\|a time-travelling Kyōsuke\|\|. As she grows up and has a Girliness Upgrade, she switches to Tsundere. - Salsa from Lapis Re:LiGHTs uses boku to refer to herself and also acts in very tomboyish manners, from her short, messy hair, to her love of sports, and her tendency to accidentally cause large amounts of property damage due to her supernatural strength. - Touhara Asuha from Lotte no Omocha, justified because she was raised by her single father. - Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: - Otto uses boku, adding to her Bifauxnen appearance and her crossdressing attitude, confusing not only the viewers but also her own sisters. - Miura Rinaldi as well. She's more or less a Tomboy and she's an ass kicking Cute Bruiser. - Harry Tribeca uses ore along with very masculine language. - In all of the opening theme songs plus insert songs, the singer, Nana Mizuki, uses boku. This is fairly common in singing or poetry because watashi can sometimes throw off the meter. - In MariaHolic, Creepy Crossdresser Mariya uses watashi for his demure feminine persona and ore when alone or with people who know she's a he. His Half Identical Twin Shizu uses boku when maintaining her Wholesome Crossdresser masquerade. - Medaka Box: Youka Naze \|\|AKA Kujira Kurokami, the titular heroine's older sister\|\|, uses ore, while Najimi Ajimu uses boku. - Minami-ke: - Lucoa from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid isn't exactly tomboyish, and would never be mistaken for a man. Rather, she uses boku in reference to the fact that she is a Gender Flip of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. - * Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury: Chuatury "Chuchu" Panlunch refers to herself with the Edo era first person pronoun asshi* (あっし), a slang version of watashi (わたし), the typical Japanese first person mostly used by girls. Asshi was mainly used by blue collar men, like the ones Chuchu spoke to on the phone in Episode 4. - When angered, she also calls people temē (てめえ), which literally means "you". However, it is a very hostile way to refer to someone and is primarily used by men. - Strangely for the sheer number of girls in the story, Negima! Magister Negi Magi doesn't seem to have one among the main cast. There is only the very minor character Fuka Narutaki, who is described by Akamatsu as being the tougher and more boyish of the Narutaki twins. - Akira Okuzaki of My-HiME uses ore, as she is pretending to be a boy. - Elliot Chandler of My-Otome 0~S.ifr~ uses boku on herself. - Oku-sama wa Mahou Shoujo has Chane speaking with like this. She, like her twin sister, also dresses in a Victorian boy's style. - One Piece: - Big Mom is an Ore Onna, and while she is very violent and often behaves like a barbarian, she's still an Evil Matriarch through and through, having given birth to 85 children and she's prominently wearing a pink dress. It is more or less appropriate for someone who aims to become Pirate King like her. - Atlas, one of Vegapunk's satellites, is also an Ore Onna. Fittingly, she represents the more violent aspects of Vegapunk's personality, and serves as a way for him to vent his anger while the rest of the satellites are working. - In Ouran High School Host Club, Haruhi (who poses as a boy at school) starts the series referring to herself as jibun. It makes sense since jibun is technically gender-neutral (though often used by men in the military), so is often used to "mask" a character's gender. After becoming a host club member, she refers to herself as boku. She also once considers referring to herself as ore in front of the guests. (In the English dub of the scene, she wonders, "Maybe I should call everyone 'bro' and 'dude' from now on?") Tamaki, who prefers her feminine side, is less than impressed with her wanting to use such "dirty" language. - Noise from PandoraHearts uses boku to differentiate her from her Split Personality Echo, who is a Third-Person Person. - Persona 4: The Animation has Wholesome Crossdresser \|\|Naoto Shirogane\|\| using the boku pronoun. - Beth from Petite Princess Yucie uses ore. She is one tough cookie, alright. - Miyuki Chitose from The Prince of Tennis. Tezuka even mistook her for a guy until she dropped her Signature Headgear and her Girlish Pigtails were revealed. - Salon Maiden Anabel/Tower Tycoon Reira in Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire also used boku to refer to herself in Japanese, and thanks to her Boyish Short Hair and androgynous clothing she was mistaken as a waifish boy in the beginning, even successfully fooling Brock. - Yellow from Pokémon Adventures started using boku when she disguised herself as a boy, and continued afterward. - Kaoru Matsubara/Powered Buttercup in Powerpuff Girls Z refers to herself with the aggressive-masculine pronoun ore. - Ranma ½: - Ukyō Kuonji uses ore to refer to herself. She's also the most boyish of the fiancées (i.e., she goes to school wearing the boys' uniform, whereas Akane uses the girls' one), but according to Ranma she's still the "cute one" among them. - Ranma himself uses ore even when in female form, which is one of the reasons "she" draws so much attention. - Akane Tendō is a subversion: she actually has rather girly speech patterns and tastes, specifically referring to herself with atashi, but almost everyone treats her as if she was a tomboy. Kunō even refers to her as "Akane-kun", which she really doesn't like. - Akane's sister Nabiki has been known to use washi on occasion, which makes her sound rather like a creepy Yakuza loan shark. - Lal Mirch from Reborn uses ore. This probably has something to do with her extreme badassery. - In Revolutionary Girl Utena, the titular girl who wants to be a prince uses boku. It conveys that she is not traditionally feminine, but not quite as masculine as some people assume either. - In Rozen Maiden, Souseiseki, the most boyish of the dolls, refers to herself as boku. - Sailor Moon: - JunJun of the Amazones Quartet refers to herself with ore. She is also the only member of the Quartet to wear pants (of course, this being the Amazones Quartet, the pants hardly count as pants and you'd be hard-pressed to find a guy who would want to wear them, but it still counts for something, right?) According to Naoko Takeuchi, she also talks like a yankee and is a biker chick. - Haruka AKA Sailor Uranus uses the boku pronoun. Between that and the fact she also wears a boys' school uniform and has masculine interests such as car racing, she's easily mistaken for male when not transformed. - The Seven Deadly Sins: - The giantess Diane uses boku. - The tomboyish knight woman Jericho uses ore. - Asa Shigure and her mom, Ama in SHUFFLE!. - Tomboy Yuzuru Nishimiya from A Silent Voice uses ore. Consequently, Shoya initially assumes she is a boy. - Yun from Simoun calls herself ore, and it's a significant plot point when she switches to atashi. - Symphogear GX introduces Elfnein and Carol. Elfnein being a homunculus with No Biological Sex, but is treated as a girl by the entire cast, she is this trope because of her boku. Carol, who is heavily hinted to be the original inspiration of her creation Elfnein, uses the tough and more masculine ore, fitting to her status as the determined Big Bad and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, even though she's very feminine. - Tomo from Tomo-chan Is a Girl! used the very masculine pronoun ore as a child, which was part of Jun's confusion over her gender. In the present day, she uses the more feminine pronoun atashi, though aside from that her speech patterns are still rather masculine. - Sheila from Tweeny Witches uses ore. - Ryuunosuke from Urusei Yatsura, when assumed to be male, often replies " Ore wa onna * da zo!", which is "I'm a woman!" said in the most masculine way possible. Lampshaded and made more ridiculous by the resident Ataru and Mendo trying to teach her to talk like a girl and showing themselves really proficient at it. - Variable Geo: Yuka Takeuchi and her best friend, Satomi Yajima, are a couple of combat waitresses who're cut from the same cloth. Yuka habitually refers to herself using the boku wa* pronoun, while Satomi uses ore wa and ore no instead. In the latter's case, it's partly a nod to the fact that she's a gender flip of Kyo Kusanagi. - Played with in Video Girl Ai. Lead female Ai Amano was supposed to be a Yamato Nadeshiko, but since her video was played in a broken VCR, she became a Tsundere-ish Bokukko. She refers to herself as ore, i.e. - \|\|Moemi Hayakawa\|\| invokes the trope when she cuts her hair short and starts acting and speaking more boyishly to make herself look more appealing to Youta. \|\|It doesn't work. In the end, she keeps her hair short but returns to her Yamato Nadeshiko self.\|\| - Reconstructed in Wandering Son: Takatsuki Yoshino is a pre-teen transgender boy, and everybody refers to him as "Takatsuki-kun". He went on town with his friend Nitori, a trans girl, and he noticed that she still uses boku when talking, even when wearing a dress. Yoshino says it suits her and says that he'll continue to use watashi despite dressing like a boy. - Hinagiku, aka Angel Daisy from Wedding Peach uses ore, even while wearing a pretty yellow wedding dress. - Momoe from Wonder Egg Priority is a Bifauxnen who uses boku to complete her boyish image. - In The World God Only Knows Yui Goudou starts using boku and begins dressing like a boy after she returns to her body. - Anna Kaboom/Kozuki from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL uses the hard-masculine ore pronoun to match her tough girl attitude. - Subverted in Zetsuai 1989. Kouji Nanjo thought that Izumi, the angry and tormented child he met and fell in love with as a 12-year-old kid, was a Bokukko... but "she" WAS a boy all along. Cue Gayngst when he finds out the truth several years later and realizes that yeah, he's still desperately in love with Izumi. In Kouji's defense, 'Izumi' is both a very common last name and a Gender-Blender Name (though mostly used by women) in Japan, and Takuto Izumi looked kinda girlish at the time. - True to her tomboyish nature, Luffy uses the super masculine ore to address herself in Sol Invictus. - Aiko Kudou from Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts uses boku to refer to herself, and she's a tomboyish girl with Boyish Short Hair. - Nagi in the Boogiepop Series often uses masculine forms of speech, being something of a Bifauxnen whenever she's on the prowl. - Kei, the more tomboyish half of the Dirty Pair, tends to devolve into this style of speaking whenever she gets particularly angry. In the anime Dirty Pair Flash, she even said " Ore wa onna da!" note : "I am a woman!" in masculine inflection at least once. - Fate/Apocrypha: Mordred, Knight of the Round Table, is female in this series much like Arthur. However, Mordred lived as a man in Camelot and always uses masculine speech, including "ore" as the first person pronoun. Mordred tends to get extremely angry if anyone ever refers to her as a girl. She also refers to King Arthur as "father", despite knowing full well that "Arthur" is in fact a woman. However, this has nothing to do with gender identity, and more to do with Mordred's complex about being seen as weak and unworthy of the throne, as she similarly dislikes being called a man. (Oddly, Artoria herself is never shown using masculine speech in any of her appearances, merely opting for formal, gender-neutral options.) - The Fruit of Evolution: Altaria Grem uses ore, which befits her brash and rough nature as a very strong adventurer. In a subversion, it's implied that this is mostly a front to keep people at bay due to being The Jinx and bringing misfortune to others, as once Seiichi cures her of her bad luck curse, she's shown to be very sensitive and kindhearted. - Ryougi Shiki from The Garden of Sinners uses ore \|\|after the car accident in order to imitate her lost male persona\|\|. At the end of the seventh movie, \|\|she switches back to watashi upon accepting the loss of her male persona\|\|. - In Haganai, Yozora Mikazuki used ore during her childhood days with Kodaka when she Used to Be a Tomboy. Along with her short hair and masculine clothing, this led Kodaka to think his friend "Sora" was a boy until years later when it's revealed "he" was actually Yozora. - In Haruhi Suzumiya, Sasaki is an interesting case; she uses male speech patterns with boys, but feminine speech with girls. It's currently unknown why she does this; Kyon's best guess is that she believes romance is a waste of time and tries to seem masculine around boys so they subconsciously think of her as One of the Boys and don't become attracted to her. - Alice from Heaven's Memo Pad use boku to addresses herself. - Hundred: The protagonist Hayato had a childhood friend named Emilia. When she reunites with him in high school, she has created a male persona named 'Emile', which included switching from watashi to boku, and she continues to use it after her true identity is exposed. The young scientist Charlotte also uses boku, and since she'd been taking care of Emilia, she's likely an influence. - Fino Bloodstone, daughter of the (late) Demon Overlord, from I Couldn't Become a Hero, So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job uses the over-the-top arrogant ore-sama. - Charlotte Dunois of Infinite Stratos addresses herself as boku, despite being the Proper Lady type. Justified \|\|as she was previously trained to be male by her father.\|\| - Tayune from Inukami!. Fitting as she's the token tomboy of Kaoru's harem. - Tomonori/Yuki/Maelstrom from * Is This A Zombie?. In fact, her speech patterns, not just the pronouns, are entirely like a boy's, so much such that initially, Ayumu mistook her for a guy. The reason why she's called Tomonori is that it's how you would read the kanji of her name, if it was a guy's name. - Kino from Kino's Journey* only uses atashi in flashbacks when she's still conflicted about her identity. It's an Establishing Character Moment when she switches to boku for good. - Ōkami-san's Ryoko Ōkami, who fits both the "masculine pronoun" and "tomboyish appearance" parts of the trope. - Re:Zero has the Witch of Greed Echidna who uses boku to refer to herself despite not being tomboyish at all. - Eve/Abe from Spice and Wolf refers to herself as ore. - Sword Art Online: Yuuki Konno uses boku to refer to herself. Funnily enough, when the story first makes reference to her as 'Zekken', most characters assume she must be a male, so she catches everyone (especially Asuna) by surprise when she reveals herself as a girl. - Evillious Chronicles: Michaela uses boku, which is kind of odd as she's otherwise a Girly Girl. Though, this is somewhat justified due to her originally being a genderless spirit \|\|and a male human prior to that.\|\| - Guest vocalist Michi Hirota growls the Japanese translations of the English lyrics in David Bowie's "It's No Game Part 1", using masculine forms of words including the first-person pronouns. - Hitomi Yoshizawa, from Morning Musume, does not use the masculine pronouns, but it's been noted by other members and persons in talk shows that the rest of her speech is quite masculine - La Roux: The name chosen by the the band's singer; a mixture of la rousse (redhead female) and le roux (redhead male). - The unnamed protagonist of the song "Revenge Syndrome". She refers to herself in the lyrics several times using the boku pronoun. Not much is known about her other than her unstable mental state and her tendency to be bullied by her peers. - Lead guitarist Mami Sasazaki of Scandal. - Advanced V.G.: Both Yuka and Satomi are tomboy types, with each using "boku" and "ore" respectively. They trained together at the Kyokushin Dojo and have been competing with each other since childhood. - Razzly from Chrono Cross refers to herself as boku, possibly because she's the closest thing the game has to a male fairy (who are all female). Kid uses ore while calling herself a "cute, frail girl" in one breath. - Susie from Deltarune uses "ore" in the Japanese localization, and generally speaks like a young hooligan. The only exception is when she meets Toriel, and, while trying extremely hard to be polite, switches to "atashi". - The Dept. Heaven series has a long-standing tradition of including at least one of these in every game: - Riviera: The Promised Land has Rose (which is supposed to obfuscate her gender) and Lina (who only uses this pronoun while introducing herself, as she's otherwise a Third-Person Person). - Yggdra Union, Blaze Union, and Yggdra Unison have Emilia, who otherwise uses feminine speech patterns. Given her background, she likely was never taught to use a different pronoun while growing up, and since her brother is now Emperor, no one's going to tell her not to speak the way she wants to. - Knights in the Nightmare has Oryza, the youngest of the knights. - Gungnir has Isabeli, who is just weird like that. - Gloria Union has Pinger, who actually uses keigo. Justified in that \|\|the person who raised her wanted her to be a marketable rarity, and may have trained her to have a weird speech pattern to increase her worth\|\|. - Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War: Tailtiu is a Tomboy Princess whose speech patterns are rougher than the other women in Sigurd's army. - Cagliostro of Granblue Fantasy uses the variant "ore-sama" to reflect that she has a pretty high opinion of herself as the founder of alchemy, which can strike most people as odd that such a petite and friendly little girl would use such an arrogant and manly pronoun... \|\|until you learn that Cagliostro was originally born male — and still retains a pretty large chunk of her masculine personality behind the facade she puts up to deceive others.\|\| - May from Guilty Gear is a Cute Bruiser pirate who uses "boku" as a reflection of her free spirit and tomboyishness. From the same game, the coarse and anti-social samurai Baiken uses the more masculine ore to refer to herself. - The Legend of Zelda: - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Under her Sheik disguise in the game, Zelda uses "boku". - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: It's explained that Ashei was raised by her widowed father, an exiled knight, who basically treated her as a boy. She's a really good warrior, and cute with a nice figure, but doesn't know much about social niceties and is a little self-conscious about it. - The Justice refers to herself as "boku" in the Japanese version of Magical Drop 3. Fittingly, she's a tomboyish Action Girl. - Material-L/Levi the Slasher, Fate's Evil Twin in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable, who overuses "boku" as part of her highly aggressive personality. - In Mitsumete Knight (one of the series' Spiritual Successors), Hanna Shawski is a Bokukko, while Gene Petromolla is a Ore-onna. - Kumatora from Mother 3 uses ore, and is very tomboyish, even being introduced (in the English fan translation) as "A strong, wise, and somewhat masculine girl." - Anna Hottenmeyer from Mr. Driller has a very tomboyish behavior and uses "boku". - In Neptunia, Shrinking Violet Idol Singer Lyrica/5pb. and Bifauxnen Kei use boku, and otherwise-not-overly-tomboyish factory worker Chian uses ore, as do Croire, Uzume, and \|\|Kurome\|\|. - O.N.G.E.K.I.'s Riku Yuuki, the tomboyish rocker, uses ore. - Panel de Pon: - Lip, the main protagonist, is a downplayed example. She uses the feminine atashi but otherwise has a relatively masculine way of speaking, such as using the plain copula da and ending her sentences with the masculine zo. - Sherbet is a more traditional example, being a tomboy with a somewhat boyish appearance. - \|\|Naoto Shirogane\|\| in Persona 4 pulls this trope off so well (in the game-verse at least) that \|\|everyone is convinced that she's actually a guy.\|\| - Arle from Puyo Puyo is a good example from the '90s, which accentuates her tomboyish nature compared to the peppy Amitie ("Atashi") and subdued Ringo ("Watashi"+keigo) in the modern games. This trope was not prevalent back in 1989, when she debuted in the first Madou Monogatari game. Her Bokkuko behavior caused a translation oversight in Puyo Puyo Fever, where Amitie refers to her with male pronouns. - In Sakura Wars, Leni Milchstraße from the second game, Coquelicot from the third, and Gemini Sunrise from the fifth game use "Boku" in the Japanese script. In addition, \|\|Gemini's twin sister/dual personality Geminine uses "Ore"\|\|. - Elh from Solatorobo. Her companions actually mistake her for a boy initially, which doesn't make as much sense in the translated version of the game, due to the lack of Japanese pronouns. - Cheldia Rouge, one of the female leads in Super Robot Wars K. - Touhou Project: - Wriggle Nightbug canonically uses watashi but, due to Viewer Gender Confusion around her first appearance, it became a popular meme to depict her as constantly mistaken for a man and sensitive about it. Such depictions tend to make her a bokukko to increase the confusion. - In Hidden Star in Four Seasons, Mai Teireida, one of the stage 5 bosses in the game, refers to herself with "boku", thus making her the first bokkuko in the entire series. - Momoyo Himemushi, the Extra boss of Unconnected Marketeers, is an all-around rough figure who refers to herself using "ore". - Rhyme from The World Ends with You. Not really obvious in the American version. - Margie/Marguerite from Xenogears. - Sakura from Da Capo uses Boku, despite only being slightly tomboyish and a lolita. - Danganronpa: - Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: - \|\|Junko Enoshima\|\| is a rather odd example. She normally uses the super-girlish atashi... but when she's revealed to be \|\|the mastermind\|\| as well as being such a Mood-Swinger that her entire voice and personality changes with her mood, her "punk" personality uses the very manly ore. - Chihiro Fujisaki rarely uses any first-person pronouns but uses boku when she does, which is kind of odd considering that she's a timid petite girl. \|\|Later subverted. Chihiro is actually a timid petit boy.\|\| - Akane Owari from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is The Lad-ette and uses "ore". - Miu Iruma from Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony uses the very arrogant "ore-sama". Sure, she wears a pink serafuku, but the way she likes to act and speak is far from feminine. - The very female Nya from Demonbane uses masculine speech. It's an early clue that she is not actually a woman... or even human, for that matter. \|\|"Nya" is not one of Nyarlathotep's more imaginative aliases.\|\| - Nagi from ef - a fairy tale of the two., claims to use Boku because it's easier to say than Watashi. Two syllables versus three. Go figure. - Higurashi: When They Cry: - Hanyuu and Rika Furude use "boku". This is despite the fact that neither fits the pattern for the trope at all, though in Rika's case, it's probably a habit acquired from Hanyuu. She also uses "watashi" whenever \|\|she's not Obfuscating Stupidity\|\|. Hanyuu, on the other hand, only uses boku because \|\|she's Really 700 Years Old and comes from a time when boys and girls apparently didn't use different pronouns\|\|. - The boyish Mion refers herself as "Oji San" or old man. - Ayu Tsukimiya from Kanon, although she's rather moe. Yuuichi tries to make her switch to the even more masculine ore. - In the original game, you get a choice of trying to switch her to the masculine ore, the gender-neutral watashi or the very girly atashi. - The Tokimeki Memorial series host a few of them. 1 has Nozomi Kiyokawa ; 2 has Akane Ichimonji ; and 4 has Itsuki Maeda. - Hazuki of Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito. Interestingly, she uses the more masculine "ore" in the manga version. - Tomboy catgirl Nekomata Okayu from hololive uses boku to refer to herself. - The voice actress Akeno Watanabe uses boku in real life. And voices many tomboys, too. - While it's very rare, some real Japanese girls do use masculine pronouns. Those who do so fall into four types — girls who use them as a feminist statement, those who are just plain tomboyish, those who do it to imitate anime and game characters to be cutesy, and very young (preschool-age) girls who haven't been trained to use traditionally feminine pronouns by societal expectations (the more cynical may think of it as "gender policing"). The Japanese page on this phenomenon on Wikipedia notes that this began as a late 20th-century thing. See also this case study on use of boku vs. use of watashi in young girls. - On a historical note, while Ore Onna characters exist prominently in some anime and manga, this trope is Older Than They Think: Ore was also actually used by women until late Edo period. It is still found in some dialects, mainly rural women in the Tohoku region.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OreOnna
Ordinary High-School Student - TV Tropes "I am Kenichi Shirahama, an extremely ordinary first-year high school student who loves reading books and growing flowers. But, for some reason now, I'm locked in a desperate battle on top of a speeding bus!" The most common protagonist of a show targeted at teenagers. They seem like a teenaged Everyman, but they have special powers. Whether or not they discover their Powers in the First Episode or merely receive a Call to Adventure that sends them on a quest for their true nature, it usually quickly becomes apparent they are anything but ordinary. Or even if they really are as ordinary as they seem, they won't stay ordinary for much longer. They're revealed to be reincarnated ancient heroes or alien princesses Raised by Humans. They suddenly find a use for the obscure skill or art they've been practicing since they could walk, or they discover their entire life has been a Secret Test of Character to prepare them for a great responsibility. They find out their Secret Legacy as heirs to a Badass Family of demon hunters, wizards, or Yakuza. They find an ancient mystical MacGuffin in their attic, buy one for a few coins from a junk dealer, or are given one by a mysterious stranger on their Dangerous 16th Birthday. They suddenly gain a Trickster Mentor or a Magical Girlfriend. They establish secret identities as a Henshin Hero or a Magical Girl Warrior, find a way to channel Ki Manipulation, summon a powerful Guardian Entity or fall into the cockpit of a Humongous Mecha. Sometimes, instead of gaining superpowers or Taking a Level in Badass, they merely become a Weirdness Magnet: for example, they gain something that makes the opposite sex flock to them, and possibly the odd member of their own, whether they want the attention or not. Or they are a Cosmic Plaything who frequently find themselves in the unenviable position of having to save the world without any special powers. Sometimes they're actually gods. And sometimes they are truly average joes who simply lead truly ordinary lives. Protagonists based on this trope are typically invoked to provide an Audience Surrogate. Considering the demographic works with these protagonists are generally aimed at, the Ordinary High School Student is someone every young person can easily relate to and place themselves into. By extension, such a character also appeals to older viewers for a similar reason. The character may additionally be The Everyman or a Ridiculously Average Guy. Look for the kid in the fully open button shirt over a T-shirt, jeans and Converse sneakers. If Japanese, an open blazer with slacks or a sailor fuku/gakuran will do. See Farm Boy for their rural counterpart. Many, MANY Japanese media live off this trope. For ordinary high school students doing ordinary things, you're better off looking for a Schoolgirl Series or a Slice of Life than one of these guys. ## Examples: - Subverted in Bleach. Main character Ichigo Kurosaki protests frequently in the beginning of the series that he's an Ordinary High School Student... who just happens to be able to see ghosts. This proves to be a crucial distinction. - Ichigo's more-ordinary friends do have an unusual tendency to turn out to be not so ordinary after all, including a girl whose hairpins can raise the dead, a huge foreigner with a demonic arm, the last remaining member of an ancient order of magical warriors, and the secret concealed by Ichigo's father's Obfuscating Stupidity: \|\|he's a Shinigami\|\|. - In later episodes, a random classmate developed the ability to sense the spirit world, after showing no such ability before. - Saya from Blood+ is an ordinary high school girl on the surface, but thanks to almost a lifetime's worth of amnesia, she has no idea of her vampiric abilities... until a Chiropteran shows up at her school and starts messing things up, and she's forced to kill it. - Buso Renkin: Kazuki was just a normal, if overly energetic, high school student until he got killed while trying to save a girl from a monster and was brought back to life by implanting a Kakugane into his chest as a replacement heart. - A Certain Magical Index: - Kamijou Touma's Imagine Breaker certainly makes him look like an ordinary student compared to people like his lightning-wielding Unknown Rival Mikoto under most circumstances. In their first onscreen confrontation, Touma protests to a sparking Mikoto that he's "just a Level 0" esper. Mikoto makes a compelling rebuttal in the form of a giant blast of (ineffectual) electricity. He's "Level 0" only because his power is impossible to quantify. - Like Touma, Kakeru Kamisato is an ordinary high school student \|\|who possesses World Rejecter and an entire Unwanted Harem of girls. Despite this, Kamisato continues to insist he's the kind of normal high school boy that can be found anywhere, accrediting all his achievements to World Rejecter\|\|. \|\|But in a subversion, prior to receiving World Rejecter, he really was just an ordinary student.\|\| - If you're looking for the truly normal students, there are Saten Ruiko, Hamazura Shiage and Wataru Kurozuma, who do not have the benefit of anti-magic or anything of the like, they really have no abilities. The latter two are Badass Normal, but even normals can outdo espers and mages where it counts. - Though even a Level 0 is technically an esper, emitting their own AIM fields and as well as experiencing harmful backlash if they attempt to use magic. It's just that their ability to bend reality is so insignificant it's practically nonexistent. The only people that could be truly called ordinary are those who have not gone through the power curriculum program. - Taken to extremes in Code Geass. Lelouch is an ordinary high school student... who is an outcast prince, genius military strategist chessmaster, and all around Magnificent Bastard (with freaky mind-control powers) biding his time to jump at a chance to destroy Britannia. Kallen and Suzaku are inversions, being ace mecha pilots (with inexplicably superhuman physical abilities, especially Suzaku) for their respective sides who in the first few episodes come back to high school. - This can also be said of fellow student Nina, who starts the series as an above-intelligent but otherwise normal student and ends up a Psycho Lesbian Gadgeteer Genius. Shirley and Milly are also fairly normal, but start to really get wrapped up in events later in the series... really, the only character in their group of friends who stays absolutely normal throughout the show's run is Rivalz. - A hilarious aversion in Daily Lives of High School Boys, where all the characters are indeed entirely ordinary highschool students. - Light Yagami from Death Note is a perfect example of this trope, until it's derailed by the fact that he's both incredibly smart and megomaniacally insane. Though all indications are that said insanity would never have manifested had not been granted the ability to kill anyone just by writing down their name; during a Memory Gambit he's legitimately horrified by the notion that he could be the infamous serial killer Kira. - The heroes of Dreamland are all this in real life and have special powers in their dreams. Especially Terrence. You can't be more ordinary than that. - Notable among these incarnations is Kazuki Yotsuga from Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure, who is also the Humongous Mecha Zinv. - Mikado, Masaomi, and Anri in Durarara!!. \|\|And yes, they're all hiding some pretty serious secrets or abilitieseven from each other.\|\| - A good quarter of the cast in El-Hazard: The Magnificent World (the ordinary Earthlings who develop extraordinary abilities). Well, Makoto Mizuhara and Nanami Jinnai were ordinary high school studnets, and Mr. Fujisawa an ordinary high school teacher. Katsuhiko Jinnai, on the other hand, was hardly "normal" when he was a high school student, given his tendency to start ranting upon any slight to him or breaking out into crazed, maniacal laughter. - Asanaga Shun is a completely normal high school student in Endride, but his Genki Guy nature sure helps when he gets Trapped in Another World where suddenly he has a magical sword and is on the run with a prince. He remains very ordinary regardless. - Saito Hiraga of The Familiar of Zero was one of these until he was summoned by Louise to her world. - Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: Illya is an ordinary elementary school student living an ordinary life when she gets a talking magical wand that tells her she needs to become a Magical Girl and collect the Class Cards. What makes this notable is that in Fate/Stay Night (below) she was very much not ordinary. She was a Master of the Holy Grail War, actually eighteen, and fully prepared to kill anyone besides her adopted brother Shirou (who didn't know they were related). Fate/Kaleid implies very strongly that the only reason Illya was able to live a normal life was because her parents slaughtered the rest of the family, who would have used her as a tool. - Fate/stay night: Emiya Shirou is sort of this. Sure, he's the adopted son of a magus and (unknowingly) possesses his own magic circuits, but his own magic isn't useful for anything other than fixing radios. Until such time as it makes him a candidate to summon Saber... - Kaname Chidori in Full Metal Panic!. And Sōsuke, being a militaristic nut. At least that's what she thought until it turned out that he's actually a mercenary working for an anti-terrorist organisation. His age made him a perfect candidate for being a bodyguard, even though he had no idea how an ordinary student behaves at all. - Miaka Yuuki, Yui Hongou, Suzuno Oosugi, Takiko Okuda and \|\|Mayo Sakaki\|\| of Fushigi Yuugi all started out as examples of this trope. - Mikan Sakura from Gakuen Alice who suddenly discovers she has a special ability called an alice and is admitted to the Alice Academy. Though she is younger than a high-school student at the time. - Kei Kurono and Masaru Katou (and, in fact, all high school-aged characters) in Gantz are bona fide Ordinary High School Students until they get hit by a train and resurrected to play the Gantz Game. They're still technically Ordinary High School Students after that, they just have super-powered combat suits and deadly weapons—and Kei is extremely good at using them. - Yasuhara of Ghost Hunt puts an unusual twist on this trope. He was a relatively normal high-school student until the rest of the main characters showed up and kind of absorbed him into their group. Out of the eight main characters, Yasuhara is one of only two characters who has no powers at all \|\|though the other "normal" character is actually just hiding his identity and amazing powers, though we don't find that out until the last episode\|\|. The twist? The series does not focus on him. In fact, he doesn't even show up until halfway through the series. He's there more to do the off-screen research for the group, which means that the assholish-yet-somehow-charming character who had been doing the research previously now gets more screentime. - Mai is a more typical example—she's the "normal" girl interested in ghost stories who gets involved with the ghost-hunting group and early on wonders what it would be like to have psychic/spiritual/etc powers. Turns out she has quite a few. - Girls Go Around: All of the characters seem like this at first, albeit with the power to create time-loops. - Kyon from Haruhi Suzumiya is certified as ordinary by Itsuki. If it weren't for Haruhi's liking him, he wouldn't be worth looking at twice. Some fans have different theories, and there is some support for them in the novels. - Ordinary or not, he has leashes on two of the most powerful beings in the area who can \|\|destroy the universe at will, one with merely a subconscious whim\|\|—or, rather, \|\|holds the keys to the molly guard over the nuke button, as it were\|\|. \|\|And the third girl trusts him to keep her secret from herself.\|\| - Ayase Yuuto, the male protagonist of Haruka Nogizaka's Secret, found out the female protagonist's secret and the two of them became friends because of this since he didn't look down on her for this. Her fans can't understand what she sees in him. - Hayate and Ayumu started off as this in Hayate the Combat Butler, the rest of the cast being between Child Prodigy and Teen Genius, and a few Ojou just to top off the cake. - Tomoki Sakurai from Heaven's Lost Property. He is just a completely normal high-school student who loves his ordinary life, but one day he becomes the master of an Angeloid who fell from the sky and his normal life seems to come to an end. - Takashi Komura, the main character of the anime/manga Highschool of the Dead, is a pretty ordinary average high school student, prone to skipping classes and accused by his childhood sweetheart of being lazy... that is, until \|\|the school's professors, then students, start being turned into zombies, and the aforementioned childhood sweetheart's current boyfriend starts turning into one. Takashi bashes his head in with a baseball bat\|\|. - Natsuki in the manga Houkago×Ponytail seems pretty normal, but she's a hardcore Shoujo-manga otaku, and got black belt in both karate and taekwondo. - Takumi from Initial D delivers tofu in an old beater; and in the process, has learned drifting techniques that racers take years to master. - Kagome Higurashi in Inuyasha. In fact, this trend was specifically mentioned in the Anime. "It's been a while now since this every day average school girl has been crossing back and forth between the warring states era and modern times!" Unlike many anime where this is eventually eliminated, Kagome retains most of her School Girl-ness, to the point of always wearing her school fuku in the warring states period of Japan. Like Sailor Moon's Usagi, her gifts are related to a jewel or crystal, she's the reincarnation of the powerful miko Kikyou, keeper of the Shikon Jewel, and her greatest strengths personality-wise are her kindness, love for others, and ability to make friends. This can bite her in the butt with such characters as Kouga the wolf prince who just doesn't take the hint, and Hojo, who like-wise can't take a hint. - Ayumu from * Is This A Zombie?* is a student killed by a Serial Killer before the start of the series and revived as a zombie. - Jotaro Kujo and Noriaki Kakyoin from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders. Jotaro was a genius student before developing Star Platinum and travelling the world to defeat Dio, and Kakyoin beecome embroiled in the plot after being controlled by Dio to kill the Joestar Group, but he later joins them following his defeat and removal of the mind-control. - Similarly, Josuke Higashikata, Okuyasu Nijimura, Koichi Hirose and Yukako Yamagishi from the next part JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, getting mixed up in the Stand business after Okuyasu's brother gave him, Koichi and Yukako their powers, and them later joining to thwart the Serial Killer rampaging in Morioh. They are mentored by Jotaro himself, now Older and Wiser. - Yashiro Isana of K, thinks he's this at the beginning of the series, even though he's already had his cat turn into a naked girl, and an anachronistic Bishōnen swordsman after him because he's been framed for a murder. \|\|He ends up being one of the more extreme cases of not-so-ordinary - a 90 year old immortal scientist, body-swapped and memory wiped. He's actually only been in school for under two weeks, and all of his memories before that are fake, courtesy of that psychic cat girl.\|\| Averted with everyone else - the few under-20 characters in the rest of the class aren't in school. \|\|Shiro himself ends up as a teacher\|\|. - Nanami from Kamisama Kiss starts out as one before being unwittingly turned into a Physical God before the end of episode one. Even after this she still tries to act like one and maintain the illusion that she is one. - Kenichi Shirahama in Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple is explicitly stated in the manga/anime to be completely ordinary and to have no talent for martial arts. His only talent is being a hard worker. Eventually, they're able to beat skill into him. - Hitohito Tadano from Komi Can't Communicate is so average that in a school full of weirdos, his weirdness is being smack dab in the middle of the bell curve in basically everything, even matching the national average in every fitness exam category. He makes a point of wanting to be normal and not draw attention to himself due to shame over his Chuunibyou phase in middle school, and his name is even a pun on his averageness, translating roughly to "just an average guy". This goal is quickly torpedoed when he ends up sitting next to and later befriending Komi Shouko, the prettiest, most popular girl in school. - Shibuya Yuuri, in the manga Kyo Kara Maoh! is an average high schooler, while he's suddenly \|\|summoned through a toilet seat to another world\|\| where he \|\|is the ruler of the whole thing.\|\| Again, average. - The title character of Lyrical Nanoha was an ordinary elementary school student, which shocked her students in the third season when they visited her home planet during the first Sound Stage and discovered that the legendary mage Nanoha had a completely unlegendary past and civilian life. Well, an unlegendary past before she was 9 years old. note : She does come from a family of samurai bodyguards, but has only received training in a single continuity. - Kouji Kabuto from Mazinger Z was an ordinary student sometimes skipped classes, drove bikes and took care of his little brother. Then he found out his grandfather had built a Humongous Mecha and wanted him piloting it to save the world of a Mad Scientist. His friend Boss also counts: before Kouji moved to his school, his life was completely normal. If we check the sequels, Tetsuya and Jun from Great Mazinger averted this trope, but Hikaru Makiba from UFO Robo Grendizer did not. She was a pretty normal high-school student lived in a ranch and loved riding horse... until she found out the cute boy worked at the ranch run by his father was an alien prince in disguise and a Humongous Mecha pilot. \|\|Maria Fleed\|\| believed she was an ordinary high-school student, raised by her grandfather... until her grandafather revealed to her that \|\|she was the last survivor—as far as he knew—of the royal family from planet Fleed\|\|. - Nanami Lucia in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, although she already had a Secret Identity—she just didn't know half her own secret. - Kira Yamato of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED averts this trope—he's actually a genetically-enhanced superhuman who wants to be a normal high school/college student. It's later revealed that he was designed to not just be genetically improved but genetically "perfect". - Tachibana Shingo from Musashi #9. Ultimate Blue agents often appear as such, but are anything but. - Nagasumi of My Bride is a Mermaid. Then, through a series of incidents, he was rescued and engaged to a mermaid Yakuza princess, whose family promptly takes over his school. Hilarity Ensues. - Izuku Midorya in My Hero Academia started as this. He was the only kid in his high school class without a quirk, or superpower. Then he meets his hero, All Might, and gets superpowers passed on to him just after graduating. Now hes going to superhero school as the only kid with no idea how to even control his new powers. At least in the early part. He gets better later on. - Almost all of the HiME from My-HiME start out at this stage (although a few of them are dead set on staying that way). Those that aren't (\|\|Midori and Sister Yukariko\|\|) were Ordinary High School Teachers. - Negima! Magister Negi Magi: - Negi thinks early on that he'll need to hide his being a Magister Magi from his class of ordinary middle school students... who just so happen to include an Anti-Magic-capable princess (\|\|Asuna\|\|), two Magistra Magi (Evangeline, \|\|Chao\|\|), a Magic Knight \|\|Half-Bird Tribe\|\| (Setsuna), two children of Magi (\|\|Konoka and Yuna\|\|), a Ministra Magi (\|\|Misora\|\|), a mercenary, former Ministra Magi, \|\|and half-demon\|\| (Mana), \|\|a full demon\|\| (Zazie), a vampire (Evangeline again), a time traveler (\|\|Chao again\|\|), a ghost (Sayo), a magic puppet/robot (Chachamaru), and a Ninja (Kaede); meaning that roughly a third his 31 students are already in on his secret or have one of their own. One can just imagine Haruhi Suzumiya kicking herself for not enrolling in Mahora Academy. - The animes didn't wait as long, being only one season each (compared to the Long Runner manga), and made all the Muggles abnormal in the season finale. - If you stop and think of it, there were only four Ordinary High School Students (Nodoka, Haruna, Misa, and Madoka) to start with, although exactly how involved they were varied greatly. Yue, for example, didn't know anything about magic but knew that Mana, Kaede and Ku Fei were some type of mercenaries who would be able to help fight monsters. - As of 34 volumes in, only \|\|two\|\| characters in his class are not supernatural, either due to the above list, training from another, or a pactio. - Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion is a very intentional Deconstruction. An ordinary student put in an extraordinary situation, Shinji faces a lot of issues and difficulties when facing off against the Angels, and because he suffers from a crippling lack of self-esteem and doesn't have any extraordinary abilities or skills, he's frequently out of his depth. - Nichijou literally means "my ordinary life" but the events that happen during that life are anything but... - Kaede of Ninja Nonsense was one of these. Until a Highly-Visible Ninja attempted to sneak into her room to steal her panties. - One of the ending themes to Nurse Angel Ririka SOS outright says that Ririka is an ordinary girl like any other (though in her case she is an elementary schooler). That is, until she puts on her Angel Cap and becomes a Magical Girl Warrior. - Mahiro Yasaka from Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! is one of these who just happens to be in a Love Dodecahedron, and lives with, a group of literal Lovecraftian horrors, without somehow going permanently insane. It's revealed early on that his mother is a part-time Evil God Slayer, and he inherited her skill with forks. \|\|The novels take it a step further, revealing that Mahiro can perceive and resist distortions in space-time, an extremely rare ability.\|\| - Ayumu Mikoshiba from Otasuke Miko Miko-chan was one before his mother passed down the title of Miko-chan onto him. He still is one, in many respects. - Ouran High School Host Clubs Haruhi, who is the subject of a reverse harem situation, for reasons she doesn't understand. The normal(-esque)commoner put in a school of rich kids with trope personalities. She just wants to study. Lampshaded by the fact that she is only revealed as a girl at the end of the first episode. - Sorata from The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, a pretty average boy, was first sent to the local Quirky Household for keeping a cat, then had the responsibility of looking after an Idiot Savant dumped on him... - As with most Magical Girl series, the main characters of Puella Magi Madoka Magica fall into this category (mostly in the Ordinary Middle School Student variant) before gaining supernatural powers. The Weasel Mascot, Kyubey, even mentions that it's strange \|\|how much karmic potential the Title Character seems to have, since girls who fall into this category really shouldn't be that significant\|\|. As with most typical genre tropes, \|\|the show brutally deconstructs this. It turns out that ordinary teenagers aren't the greatest fighters and actually tend to die horribly and/or be psychologically traumatized when forced to fight monsters- which is all part of Kyubeys plan to harvest despair for energy. Then reconstructed when one particularly ordinary student, who constantly berates herself for being ordinary, becomes a goddess and destroys Kyubeys system, followed by her friend/possible lover who destroys/enslaves Kyubey itself. Somewhat re-deconstructed when its shown that young girls may not be the best at running an entire universe..\|\|. - Re:Zero's protagonist, Subaru, is an ordinary student Trapped in Another World. One of the main Deconstructions of the series is actually to show how an ordinary person with no special abilities will struggle in a fantasy setting rather than thrive, and how they will cope with this realization. - Yukari Morita of Rocket Girls is an average student at a high-class girls' finishing school, whose exploits during her summer break find her suddenly becoming the world's youngest astronaut. She's initially pretty intent on going back to an ordinary life after fulfilling her deal with the space agency of making one trip to orbit, but even before circumstances force her into staying on board, it's implied that said trip is making her start to reconsider. - Tsukune from Rosario + Vampire is a normal high school student, at a distinctly not normal high school, with not normal high school friends. He eventually becomes not normal himself. - Shuji in Saikano. (One of the few examples on this page that doesn't have powers, and ultimately, is powerless to change anything.) - Sailor Moon: - Tsukino Usagi, junior high student and reincarnated moon princess. And indeed all the Sailor Senshi. - In particular, Tomeo Hotaru a.k.a. Sailor Saturn, who when introduced is a small sickly girl who made friends with Chibi-Usa, only for us to discover that not only is she the host for the Big Bad of the season, Mistress 9, but is also the as-of-yet unawakened Sailor Saturn, the senshi of destruction and rebirth that Rei had been having visions of destroying the world. In the manga she then is aged back to a baby and adopted by Sailors Pluto, Uranus and Neptune only to age at an incredible rate when their presence is later needed by Sailor Moon. - Lain in Serial Experiments Lain. She gets progressively less ordinary (along with the show), ending with The Reveal that \|\|shes basically God\|\|. - Sakai Yuuji of Shakugan no Shana. All extraordinary traits he has he owe to an artifact he received out of luck. Unusually, we never learn how long he's had it. \|\|Also unusually, he winds up fusing with the Big Bad Snake of the Festival and becomes Shanas opponent (and wins, but its not that horrible).\|\| - Rin Tsuchimi from SHUFFLE!, who just happens to be liked by five beautiful girls all at the same time. Two of which are princesses of worlds. Another two aren't exactly normal either. - Amu Hinamori from Shugo Chara!, though in elementary school, is a good example. After she obtains her guardian characters, she ends up with a couple of friends and a somewhat reluctant membership of the Seiyo Elementary Guardians. - Luluco of Space Patrol Luluco tried so hard to be this in the beginning of the show, and for the most part it worked. \|\|Her plea for normalcy isn't unfounded, since most of her childhood was her father and mother fighting 24/7.\|\| - Aoi Mitsukuni thinks he's an ordinary high school student until he learns his mother is really Space Pirate Mito. Which makes him both a Half-Human Hybrid and the Hidden Backup Prince of the entire galaxy. - Taken to its logical conclusion in Star Driver, where evidently every student of the Elaborate University High is an Ordinary High-School Student that's anything but ordinary. The new guy? He's The Chosen One. That girl he befriended on the first day? The Living MacGuffin. The resident adviser for the dorms? She's one of the villains. Same goes for the school bicycle , the head of the boxing club, and the Class Representative. As for the Drama Club, it turns out they're all in La Résistance... - Tenchi Masaki in any of the incarnations of Tenchi Muyo!. Turns out he's an alien prince, and his family never bothered to tell him. Then there's Sasami, who tries to become one of these in the manga volumes. Being that she is an alien princess (and, unlike Tenchi, knew all along), it doesn't quite work out. She should be glad that the goddess she's symbiotically fused with didn't decide to show up. - Ken Kaneki in Tokyo Ghoul is an Ordinary College Student who wants to go on a date with a cute girl. Then she turns out to be a ghoul and tries to eat him. One accident involving steel beams and an organ transplant later, and Kaneki is now a one-eyed ghoul- the most powerful kind of ghoul. He soon gets dragged into a turf war between an Anti-Human Alliance and a ghoul-hunting organization. However, unlike most examples of this trope, this is played for tragedy- poor Kaneki endures a horrifying Trauma Conga Line, and its frequently pointed out that all this horror is happening to an ordinary guy who just wanted a date. \|\|Furuta\|\| even confirms that Kaneki happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and was not personally a factor in his plans at all. Kaneki is less The Chosen One whos destined to save the world and more the Unlucky Everydude who undeservingly became the worlds punching bag. \|\|That being said, he does ultimately become the new One-Eyed King, defeats the villains, and saves the world, after taking a dozen levels in badass.\|\| - Rito from To Love Ru wishes he was still an unremarkable Ordinary High School Student instead of the center of a complicated Love Triangle with at least half a dozen points on it, including three or possibly four Alien Princesses—\|\|Lala, Run, Lala's little sister Momo, and maybe Momo's twin Nana\|\|. - The Tower of Druaga. As Kai said about her hero king husband who slew a god and united two warring nations under one rule: "Even Gil was just a ordinary boy in love." - Tohno Shiki in Tsukihime, whose attitude to mystic eyes that let him kill anything is to politely thank the person who gives him a Power Nullifier for them so he can go back to his normal life - and, for several years, succeeding. Arcueid even comments on it even lampshades it. The best thing about Arcueid: she's being completely earnest without a trace of irony. - Youko from The Twelve Kingdoms objects that she's just an ordinary high school student word-for-word during The Reveal. - Ataru Moroboshi of Urusei Yatsura started the series as one. Then he arrived at home and discovered he had to foil an alien invasion by chasing down and touching the horns of the cute daughter of the leader of the invasion force, and normality went down to the drain. - A later manga episode lampshaded it. When the principal organized a contest of physical prowess among the classes one student immediately protested that one class had an unfair advantage due to the presence of students with superhuman abilities. Ataru, Lum, Mendo and Ryunosuke agreed that those students had to be equalized... Only to realize too late they were speaking of themselves: Ataru was incredibly fast, Lum could fly (to be fair she's an alien, and on her planet it's normal), Mendo's arms were so strong he could break a bronze bell from the inside and Ryunosuke had Charles Atlas Superpowers! - An anime episode brought the trope Up to Eleven by adding Kenshiro Kasumi to the class rooster! - Emma Grayson of The Elysium Project is an ordinary teenage girl who happens to be the daughter of the creator of the eponymous Elysium formula, a Super Serum which grants people reality-bending powers, and as a result ends up getting exposed to the formula and targeted by the villains. - Spider-Man: - Peter Parker, which was revolutionary at the time. A sidekick-aged protagonist?! - Inverted in Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, however, in which Mary Jane—the protagonist—actually is an ordinary high-school student. - New Mutants: Doug Ramsey was a kid from suburban New York who was good at languages and didn't know any different until he was informed by an acquaintance from the odd boarding school nearby that he was in fact a mutant the with powers of... comprehending languages... and dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to come establish communications with a potentially-hostile alien. - The Runaways were all normal teenagers... who in the course of a night watched their parents kill a young woman, discovered superpowers/super gadgets/a telepathic dinosaur, fought off their parents, and ended up becoming runaways living in an underground mansion. - Jaime Reyes, the current Blue Beetle in The DCU. One day he's just hanging out with his friends, the next he gets bonded to an alien symbiote, helps Batman save infinite universes, and goes missing for a year, yet he still manages to come off as more of a normal kid than 90% of other teenage superheroes in comics. - For a while Tim Drake was this being just a regular, although brilliant, kid who through diligent detective work uncovered the secret identity of the first Robin and through him Batman and the second Robin. Even after taking up the mantle and becoming the third Robin he still fit the mold for a good portion of his career; his change didn't come until Identity Crisis led to his father's death. - Putri from an Indonesian comic Satu Atap is an ordinary human who lived with a demon, elf, forest fairy, a were-tiger, and a merman. - Dave Lizewski from Kick-Ass, supposedly. He makes it very clear in the beginning that there's nothing special about him that would lead him to become a superhero. He just does it because he's bored. But he makes the case that he's so ordinary by listing a bunch of things that normal high-schoolers do and then pointing out that he's ordinary because he doesn't do any of them. - Kamala Khan, the current Ms. Marvel, was a normal sixteen-year-old from Jersey City until an encounter with the Terrigen Mists. - Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) attempted this during its Dork Age by shoving Sonic, Bunnie and Rotor into a high school. It didn't last at all. - Justin is one in Kira Is Justice besides for the fact he is a Shrinking Violet and a little smarter than normal... until he receives the Death Note. - Mary Jane Watson of Ultimate Spider-Woman was an Ordinary College Student when she began to develop her bizarre superhuman abilities, and continues to be one even as she tries to juggle a superhero career along with it. - Jorge from The Secret Life of the Backyard Kids. Except he's not in high school, he's in middle school. - Fan fiction for The Lord of the Rings has a genre of stories about ordinary girls who fall into Middle-earth. Some stories use a high school student. Some stories are Self-Insert Fic by a high schooler. When a student arrives in Middle-earth, she no longer goes to school. - The Awkward Adventures of Meghan Whimblesby are about a nineteen-year-old high school student from South Carolina. Meghan was in class when she Fainted from the sight of blood and somehow woke in Middle-earth. - In How to Survive in Middle Earth When You're a Teenaged Girl, Priscilla is the teenaged girl of seventeen years from a cattle ranch near Magnolia, Texas. The story did not show Priscilla in school, but it was summer, when most schools have summer break. - In Time Will Tell, Jorryn is sixteen years old when she falls into the Shire. This happens, not during school, but during the summer holiday of 2001. Jorryn is only four feet and five inches, short, but taller than a hobbit. Other than that, Jorryn is a generic girl from some small town in the USA. - There are few of these floating around about these kinds of people being thrown into the world of RWBY. The fanfiction * RWBY: Reckoning* is considered by quite a few to be surprisingly well written. - In the Soul Eater prequel Soul Eater Zeta, Kami (the unseen mother of Maka Albarn in canon) starts out this way. - Suzaku in My Mirror, Sword and Shield is ordinary high school student making average grades who ends up time-travelling in his adoptive fathers time machine and ends up as an Ace Pilot for the Evil Empire warring with his native people. Despite the hints of Suzaku having his canonical relations and backstory, he retains his backstory of being a normal person and \|\|willingly goes back to normalcy in the end\|\|. - In Let Us Be Your Poison, Ruby Rose is a normal teenager who goes to Southtown High. After stopping a criminal, she's accepted into Beacon Academy, a prestigious huntsman academy, despite the fact she is two years too young and wasn't already enrolled in a huntsman school. - Superwomen of Eva: Legacies: True Blue: Well, junior high school student. Hikari is one of the few teenaged superwomen in the series to actually serve as an example of this trope, since most of the others were already mecha pilots, part Angel, child soldiers, child prodigies, or some combination thereof before ever getting superpowers. - Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse: Nabiki Tendo was originally just your ordinary everyday 17 year old high school girl. She worked out to keep her figure nice, she liked playing tennis and, okay, she was very greedy and an incorrigible scam artist, but still normal. Then she wound up in the Grand Line. For added contrast, most of her sailing companions are extremely unordinary high school students, being crazy skilled (and just plain crazy) practitioners of Supernatural Martial Arts. - In Turning Red, Mei was just an Ordinary Middle School Student until she discovered the women in her family gain the ability to turn into giant red pandas when they come of age. - The film and book of Stephen King's Carrie, and the film sequel, The Rage: Carrie 2. At the start of the story, Carrie is only notable for being one of the school outcasts. In reality, Carrie has supernatural powers that even she was not entirely aware of. - Transformers: Sam Witwicky was just an Ordinary High School Student until he bought his first car. Turns out it was an alien robot. Who knew? His special quality is just being the great-grandkid of the man who found Megatron. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The movie, unlike the show, starts with Buffy not even knowing about vampires and Slayers. - Clockstoppers features an Ordinary High School Student who stumbles upon a device that allows him to functionally stop time. - Carmen and Juni Cortez in Spy Kids. - The World of Kanako: The narrator starts out as just a normal high school boy with the wish to make a difference in his life, but he's weak and gets bullied constantly. When he meets Kanako, he falls in love on first sight and he wants to run away with her. Little does he know which pains are still in store for him... - Hal Beck of Adventures On Trains really is pretty ordinary - except for his talent for drawing. He knows it helps him think; soon it helps him solve crimes, too. It's a natural talent, but he works on getting faster and more accurate over the course of the series. He becomes very self-conscious if anyone claims he's special, though. - In the Alex Rider series, British teen spy Alex Rider gets a lot of flak from his teachers after spending too much time "off sick"—though the obliviousness of everyone else does stretch credulity after Alex, having used a school trip to investigate a GM facility, \|\|escapes by jumping onto the roof of the coach as it leaves the now-badly-damaged building. When he uses a toilet break as a way of getting on board properly, the teachers barely say a word\|\|. - The Animorphs. Ordinary middle/high school kids whose lives are changed forever when they decide to take a shortcut through a construction site. - The Eyes of Kid Midas (also by Neal Shusterman) stars an Ordinary Middle School Student. Close enough. - Inverted in Harry Potter, as everyone knows that he's special from the start— except him. - Subverted in Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series, in which the protagonist essentially becomes the heir to the House (the "epicenter of creation", the denizens of which give our universe about the same casual interest as a rather exciting zoo) simply because he almost died on the right day. That's right, kids. \|\|This kid essentially becomes God by nearly dying at the right time\|\|. - The Percy Jackson series does this. Although, to be fair, he is an Ordinary Middle School Student for most of the books. In fact, almost all the demigods fit into this trope. Why? Because most of them don't survive longer than that. Ouch. - Mia from The Princess Diaries is an Ordinary High School Student who turns out to be a princess of a minor European principality. - Kaylee in Soul Screamers until she realises she is a banshee. - Bella Swan in Twilight. Until she falls in love with a vampire—or, more to the point, the vampire falls for her. - In the lovely juvenile novel Wings by Bill Britain, the main character is an Ordinary High School Student who inexplicably develops a huge pair of fully-functional bat-like wings. - The DHIs in The Kingdom Keepers - Neal Shusterman's Scorpion Shards trilogy features a group of ordinary teenagers who turn out to be \|\|shards of a far-off star born as humans to eventually save the world\|\|. - Stuck's Tre Listman is also an Ordinary Middle School Student. At first, anyway. - Ben was this before he was Trapped on Draconica—and, in defiance of what almost always happens next, he stays ordinary. \|\|By the time he finds out that he has a unique power to travel between worlds, at the end of the story, Dronor says he has to take it away from him to make sure a villain never gets their hands on it again.\|\| - Tsuruhara Iori and Aragaki Koji in War and Snowflakes. \|\|Aragaki, it is revealed, is not so ordinary: he had been conscripted to be a titan pilot until a training accident made him unable to be a pilot, and left him with uncanny mechanical abilities.\|\| - The Exile's Violin: When the story begins, Jacquie is on her way home from school. The school itself is never seen because her life is blown up and she goes straight to vocational training, so to speak, under her foster father. Occasionally, she'll reflect back on this time with regret, thinking of lost opportunities. - David Rain from The Last Dragon Chronicles is an Ordinary College Student. \|\|For awhile.\|\| - Played with in Strength & Justice. The story starts with Jeremy Itsubishi's role as a law enforcement cadet with Improbable Aiming Skills as his superpower. It's only after that we find out he's a high school student as well. Then he's pulled into the main conflict, playing the trope straight. - Initially subverted, then played straight in Un Lun Dun. Zanna is said to be obviously special to all who see her, and she is the "Shwazzy", the prophesied savior of UnLondon. Until \|\|she is attacked and her memory of UnLondon is removed\|\|. Then her friend Deeba—the completely normal, non-prophesied high schooler—must save the city instead. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: True of the Scoobies (Xander, Willow, Cordelia, etc.), but not so much Buffy herself; she knows at the start of the series that she's the Slayer. - H₂O: Just Add Water: three ordinary teenage girls suddenly realize they have the ability to turn into mermaids whenever they're splashed with water, and this is accompanied by elemental powers. - Claire Bennet of Heroes. - iCarly on Nickelodeon has ordinary high school students hosting an internationally-popular hit webshow. - Joan of Arcadia talks to and does missions for God. - The opening narration of Kamen Rider Zi-O calls Sougo this trope verbatim until he graduates half way through the story. Ironically, school is usually out of picture, because most of Sougo's time is occupied by trying to prevent the future where he becomes an all-powerful, world wrecking tyrant. - Our Miss Brooks: Walter Denton and Harriet Conklin meet the bill, although Harriet's somewhat atypical in the fact her father is the high school principal. Neither are the program's protagonist, that honor goes to English teacher Miss Brooks. - Power Rangers: - The original Rangers were the trope namers for Recruit Teenagers with Attitude. By Turbo, the founders had all graduated, and by Space the high school concept was left behind. It wasn't revisited until Dino Thunder, which brought back an original Ranger as a teacher. - A good chunk of Ranger teams are implicitly in their early 20s - and in some cases, such as Power Rangers Time Force, are full-time heroes who only have to maintain a civilian identity for the purpose of blending in. - Roswell had this as the main hook for the series (and helped pioneer the genre). Max in particular strives to appear as "average" as possible. - Pete, Linda and Bronson in Round the Twist turn out to be Weirdness Magnets—a lot of the supernatural shenanigans they attract happen at their local school. - Sabrina from Sabrina the Teenage Witch was just a normal high school girl until her sixteenth birthday, when her witch half manifested itself. - Maria, Kelsey, Clyde and Rani from The Sarah Jane Adventures. Clyde and Rani do have distinct talents, however—Clyde's a splendid sketch artist and Rani has great journalism skills. Maria is more the average protagonist until actor Yasmin Paige's own academic life persuaded her to leave the show. Kelsey was just a pilot-only character who got a Second Episode Substitute in the form of Clyde because there were too many females in the cast... and she was a bit bratty, too. Luke and \|\|Sky\|\| don't fit this trope because they were created to be extraordinary. In fact, Luke ends up going right into college because of his high intelligence. - Alex from The Secret World of Alex Mack. She even says "I was just another average kid until an accident changed my life" in the opening credits. It's also worth noting that she wore a similar outfit to the one described above on the day she was soaked with the chemicals that gave her superpowers. - Spellbinder: the main character, Paul, gets trapped in a parallel world during a school field trip, and his arrival is a catalyst that causes political upheaval in the otherworldly society. His friends Alex and Katrina have to juggle school as they work to bring him back. - Scott McCall from Teen Wolf was an ordinary high school student (and asthmatic, no less, which severely curtailed his attempts to make the lacrosse team) until he was bitten by a werewolf. - Nickelodeon's The Troop plays this straight and hard with Jake. - The Vampire Diaries: Elena, Matt, Bonnie, Caroline, Tyler, Jeremy. This all changes when all of the characters start to develop their own individual identities. - Veronica Mars: a normal high school student... and a private eye. - Ben in Wayward Pines fits the trope remarkably well for a character whose parents are also major characters. - Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior - Hao Xuan, or so he claims, from School Shock when the school is over run with terrorists and he finds himself in a hostage situation, only to be saved by Liu Lu who's new mission (after defecting the terrorists) is to protect him as he is a "Child of Eden", something that a lot of dangerous people seem to be after. - Kyo Kusanagi in The King of Fighters, although as the series went on his high school student image was dropped entirely (it's also been implied that he never attends high school at all due to his constant fighting). And according to the Maximum Impact series, he's spent so much time fighting and training that he still hasn't graduated from high school. - Soma Cruz from Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. The game specifically says he is a high school student on a foreign exchange trip to Japan. He turns out to be \|\|the reincarnation of Dracula\|\|. - While just about everyone of the Raimon members in Inazuma Eleven can easily count, it is most notably Handa Shinichi's main gimmick. He's in fact so normal, that it has become a meme in the fandom. - Kazama Jin from Tekken started out somewhat ordinary, but things haven't been exactly going well since. Ling Xiaoyu is a milder example. The Tekken 5 ending for Kazama Asuka suggests she might be more than just a brawler, too. - Kasugano Sakura seems like a typical schoolgirl enamored with a rough famous fighter. Aside from the fact that instead of trying to date him, she prefers mirroring his moves as best she can. Including martial-arts fireballs. Everybody in Rival Schools. - Fei from Xenogears plays almost every part of this troupe. Yeah, he knew martial arts, but he thought it was just "normal" martial arts. Besides \|\|knowing martial arts that can destroy God and giant robots\|\|, he's also the only one that can pilot a special gears, which turns out to be the super-ultra-special one in the title. \|\|He is also secretly one of the most powerful beings in the game's universe, whom "God" gave his power to.\|\| While he is utterly oblivious to all or this at the beginning, \|\|he has several split personalities, one of which has shut himself off from the world, and another of which is an utter sociopath who makes full use of his godly power\|\|. - Many (though not all) recent Shin Megami Tensei games feature Ordinary High School Students as protagonists. Something usually happens to make them considerably less ordinary, such as finding a computer that can summon demons, learning to call forth entities from the inside of their mind, being forced to share their body with a Devil Summoner, or being turned into a demon after witnessing the end of the world. - The Persona series centers on Ordinary High School Students and the friends they make along the way dealing with paranormal phenomena and in general trying to protect the world from otherworldly entities. To wit: - Persona: A group of Ordinary High School Students test an urban legend, only to find the world around them thrown off-kilter as demons invade. - Persona 2: Ordinary High School Student Tatsuya Suou and his friends must get to the bottom of a strange force that causes rumors in Sumaru City to become reality. - Persona 3: A group of Ordinary High School Students (plus a dog, an android, and an Ordinary Elementary School Student) investigate a mysterious tower crawling with monsters that appears from beneath their school every night at midnight. - Persona 4: A group of Ordinary High School Students (plus a bear mascot) investigate an alternate dimension hidden within televisions, which a serial killer is using to conduct their murders. - Persona 5: A group of Ordinary High School Students (plus a talking cat, a shut-in and later a detective\|\| who is actually a criminal\|\| and \|\|a mockery of\|\| an accomplished gymnast) investigate an alternate dimension formed by the twisted desires of those who abuse their power. - Lan Hikari and Geo Stelar, but the latter fits better the description. None of them are high schoolers, but close enough. - Even Disgaea can't stay away from this one. Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten introduces Fuka Kazamatsuri, a human girl who thinks that her adventures in the Netherworld are just an elaborate dream, including the part where she's actually dead and supposed to be a Prinny. - Link and Zelda start out as students at a knight academy in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. - Valis heroine Yuko Ahso is an ordinary high school student in the human world who becomes a Valis warrior in a Magical Land. - A few protagonists are this in the Super Robot Wars series. Most notable is Touya Shun of Super Robot Wars Judgment who was an Ordinary High School student (who went to school with the protagonists of Mazinkaiser and Full Metal Panic!) until a Humongous Mecha crashed into his school. - Max in Life Is Strange comments on how she is "just some geek girl in a small town"- with the ability to rewind time. - Hyde Kido from Under Night In-Birth was just a normal 2nd-year high school student living alone when he ended up in the Hollow Night, an event which nearly saw him killed by the invisible entities known as the Voids. Saved by the timely intervention of the wandering Rebellious Princess Linne, Hyde was given a month's sword training (supplemented by what he remembers from the kendo training he did as a kid) and pledged to help Linne in her mission to end the Hollow Nights. In his appearance in Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, Hyde's relative inexperience and his youthful Trash Talker tendencies are highlighted against the other protagonists, especially against Ruby Rose - he offers a poorly-worded Declaration of Protection to her unaware (or forgetting) that Ruby grew up in the wilds of a world overrun by soul-eating horrors and has trained since early childhood to be a Huntress. - April Ryan from The Longest Journey starts out as an ordinary art student. Soon it turns out that she is a "shifter", meaning that she can travel between the two worlds: Start (our world) and Arcadia (a Medieval Fantasy world), making her The Chosen One to Save Both Worlds. - ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal: Amy is an ordinary teenager who is transported into a world of magic that she is prophesied to save from evil. - Hiroyuki in To Heart. - Played with in the Nasuverse, where Shiki and Shirou know they are not ordinary, yet fail to realize the full extent of how extraordinary they are. - Muv-Luv: Takeru is a typical harem protagonist \|\|who is dragged into an alternate crapsack universe\|\|. - Battler, from Umineko: When They Cry. All his powers to "fight" witches were granted by the witch herself, \|\|at least at first\|\|. The "student" part of him doesn't get much focus, though, as the story takes place on his off day, \|\|what with him getting killed and all\|\|. - Ethan Kairos in Time Hollow is completely ordinary. He just happens to be the latest in the line of his family to receive the power to adjust history via a special pen. - The English manual quotes this trope exactly, describing him as an "ordinary high school student". - Danganronpa: - Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: The Ultimate Luckster, Makoto Naegi, considered himself one, since he was picked to go to elite academy Hope's Peak by winning a lottery. His only outstanding trait is that he tends to be more optimistic than others. And while he can be said to be pretty lucky (except for the whole 'trapped in a killing game' bit), \|\|it's his optimism that helps defeat the Big Bad Monokuma/the Mastermind/Junko Enoshima/the True Ultimate Despair.\|\| - Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Hajime Hinata and Nagito Komaeda, \|\|at least initially. Despite Komaeda's title being the same as Naegi's and the fact that he got into Hope's Peak under the exact same circumstances (lottery), his luck is very real and present in his life, on top of being a rare villainous example, having a personality that is anything but ordinary. Hinata, however, is revealed to have no outstanding talent, and is actually an Ordinary High School Student from one of the reserve groups. At least, before his transformation that he underwent out of hatred for being ordinary\|\|. - Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls: Komaru Naegi tops them all: she's not even associated with Hope's Peak, thus making her the most truly ordinary protagonist in the series. Heck, she was supposed to have died with her parents in the beginning. Probably the only thing that makes her stand out from other targets is the fact that she's a Naegi, specifically the sister of original protagonist Makoto. Kanon from the Ultra Despair Hagakure spinoff also fits the mold, with her standout trait being she's related to one of the first game's students. - Akira from Spirit Hunter: NG is a little out of the norm, being a prized underground fighter for the Yakuza on top of a high school student, but he considers himself and his life to be average and boring until he's marked by a supernatural spirit. On top of that, he discovers at the end of the game \|\|that he's the son of the spiritualist that was keeping the Big Bad at bay for years\|\|. - Matt 'n' Dusty has Matt. No magic powers, no super-intelligence, no respect from anyone. - Darkbolt: The lead three characters (Naoko, Mariko, and Yun) start out as this before being force-bonded to demons trapped in small little orbs. - Megatokyo: Sonoda Yuki is actually a Magical Girl. - Kanzaki Kei from Circumstances of the Revenant Braves, more so than any other character. - Sarah from El Goonish Shive is, to her regret, the only member of her group of friends who isn't a shapeshifter, magic user, mad scientist, or martial artist of some kind. - For most of the first story arc, Elliot seems to be an ordinary student with a weird friend, but it's progressively revealed that he's far more unusual than that. - Catalina appears to be pretty normal, too. Her girlfriend Rhoda was normal until \|\|she got a magic mark that she doesn't know about\|\|. - Ash and Emily from Misfile, until Rumisiel got stoned while in charge of the Celestial Files. Wackiness Ensued. - Divided Sky, like so many other tropes, lampshades it. - Uma from Everyday Heroes. To everyone else, she's perfectly normal. - Iris Kolrick and Jacob Freeman from Shadownova. Iris is later revealed to be an ESPer with pyrokinesis, but Jacob is truly ordinary. - Girl Genius: Agatha Clay is an ordinary (if exceptionally clumsy) student at Transylvania U, raised by completely ordinary parents. Until it turns out her father is a famous hero, her mother is some kind of evil goddess, the most powerful man in Europa wants to imprison her (while his son would like to "form a mutual alliance" with her), and she might cause an apocalyptic disaster just by existing. She stops being "ordinary" pretty fast. - Hatsune Rondo of Mayonaka Densha, until her transportation back to Victorian London. - In Yokoka's Quest, Grace is an ordinary (aside from being a conspiracy theorist) student at the University of Las Vegas before she travels to Cisum. - Yuri Mikagami in the round-robin story Dark Heart High. A bit of a subversion as its revealed in the very first scene that her father is a retired Evil Overlord. (A nonhuman one at that!) - As far as Survival of the Fittest goes, it would be easier to list exceptions, since everyone in the entire cast is an Ordinary High School Student. For example, Johnathan Michaels of V2 was a world champion boxer and Renee Valenti of V3 a burgeoning movie star. In fact, this trope is actually encouraged when it comes to designing a character for the site. Most people feel that the more average a student is, the more interesting Character Development they'll have once the terrorists abduct their school. - Nick Reilly, Bill Wilson, Tony Chandler... a lot of the kids who become mutants and then go to Superhero School Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe. - Yu Jin of TAL. \|\|Partly subverted, however, when Ei Mae Tal tells him he likely is older than he thinks.\|\| - Amphibia: Main characters Anne, Sasha, and Marcy before they are transported to the titular world. - Terry McGinnis in Batman Beyond until he was chosen to become the new Batman when Bruce Wayne became too old and weak for it. - Ben 10: Ben was this, but was the star of the (apparently hugely popular for high school) soccer team at the end of the Time Skip. Well, he was the goalie anyway. - Code Lyoko: Every member of the group is an Ordinary Student. Jeremie is the only one who can use the supercomputer, Aelita is the only member who can deactivate towers, and the other three are her protectors. - Aelita's status is a lot more complicated; she didn't start out ordinary in any sense. - Oddly enough, William is an actual Ordinary Student until Season 3. Debate has been going on for quite some time on several fan forums as to whether he's still a Warrior or an Ordinary Student in the series finale. - Danny Phantom: Danny Phantom was one of these before gaining his powers, and during the brief periods he's Brought Down to Normal. - Lee Ping, protagonist of Detentionaire. He's a level-headed straight-A student who doesn't care much for the cliques that dominate his school and just tries to get by. However, this ends up being flipped on its head at the start of the series when he gets framed for pulling a massive prank and ends up getting a reputation as a rebellious troublemaker for it. - Freakazoid!'s Dexter Douglas—"nerd computer ace, when surfing on the internet he got zapped into cyber space! He turned into the Freakazoid! He's strong and super-quick!" is an excellent example, as Dexter didn't ask for his powers and Freakazoid is an entirely separate personality from Dexter. - Kim Possible... sort of. Right from the start she's insanely overachieving, even without the Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World stuff. Her sidekick Ron fits the trope a bit better. - Miraculous Ladybug: Both Marinette and Adrien were these until they were chosen to become Miraculous guardians Ladybug and Cat Noir. - In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Twilight Sparkle grew up a student studying in magic and friendship. In "Equestria Girls", however, she is sent on a mission to another world through a Magic Mirror, and the accompanying metamorphosis left her as a powerless human in high school. - Virgil from Static Shock, until the Big Bang gave him (and a bunch of other people) superpowers. - Bloom from Winx Club started out as this, until she discovered she's a fairy and eventually the princess of her true home realm Domino.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent
Meat Moss - TV Tropes "Like what the place has done with me?" "What the hell is that? It looks like the ground there is alive..." Usually occurring in sci-fi Body Horror works, Meat Moss is when an inorganic, usually mechanical, structure is overgrown with a thick fleshy biomass. The origin of this tissue can be the bodies of victims altered by The Virus or a particularly aggressive form of Alien Kudzu, or it could even be the "natural" state of a Living Ship. The end result is always, however, the disturbing architectural counterpart to the Cyborg. An excellent way of saying "This is The Virus's territory" or "The heroes are on a techno-organic spaceship", though it does raise questions as to how this biomass is sustaining itself, as well as its purpose other than as scary set decor. This, in turn, however, makes it also an excellent way to demonstrate that you're in an Eldritch Location or some other place where the usual rules of reality don't apply. The Rule of Scary and the Rule of Cool go a long way toward maintaining the suspension of disbelief. This tends to overlap with Wetware CPU, particularly in the case of the Living Ship variant, in this case the tissue itself being the wetware in question. In more benign settings, may involve a somewhat squicky Brain/Computer Interface. Frequently used for evil settings thanks to one of its parent tropes, Evil Is Visceral. When it's divine punishment, you have the Bloody Bowels of Hell. Sufficient amounts of meat moss can also result in a Womb Level. In the most unsettling and disorienting forms of Organic Technology or Worlds of Chaos, Meat Moss may be intertwined with Alien Geometries. Compare Festering Fungus, which displays the same traits in vegan form, and Transformation Horror, which can resemble this on a smaller scale, and ultimately lead to this if allowed to progress unchecked. Compare/Contrast Mordor, which may contain this sort of twisted lifeform, or none at all. A Sub-Trope of Body Horror. ## Example - All over the place in A.I.C.O. -Incarnation-, and integral to the premise. A large section of Tokyo has been evacuated and cordoned off due to an outbreak of "Malignant Matter", which is basically hostile, semi-intelligent Meat Moss that spreads like wildfire and can only be harmed with special weaponry. - Depending on how amiable they're feeling, the interior of more evil Living Ships in Lost Universe can suddenly shift from their normal ISO Standard Human Spaceship to sprouting squelching masses of tentacles. - Weaponized by Wu Gui in 3×3 Eyes: her powers allow her to create and manipulate flesh constructs from the people she stabs with her rod, but she can also stab the ground or a wall to generate a mass of rapidly-expanding flesh she can manipulate as she sees fit, usually by creating dragon heads to maul her opponents. - In Tokyo Ghoul, the secret entrance to a laboratory is an organic "wall" that had been painted to match the surrounding structure. Kaneki discovers it entirely by accident, when he strikes part of the wall with his kagune....and it reacts by revealing a fleshy tunnel. The others in his group mention that such "technology" is a trick ghouls have used to make the underground 24th Ward a labyrinth difficult for humans to navigate. Near the end of the series, a scouting party sent to the investigate the deepest parts of the 24th Ward discovers \|\|the ruins of the original Tokyo\|\|, covered in the petrified remains of an ancient biomass. - The Sandman (1989) has a particularly horrible incident in one of the early issues where rogue dreams have converted a still living man into this and draped him all over the walls of his dream-junkie daughter's apartment. - A heartwarming example in Stormwatch: a village is accidentally hit with a biochemical that can activate superpowers (or it's intended to, and at least radically alters the human body). When a team is sent to investigate, they find the church overgrown with this, with a fleshy beacon outlined with fingers. One of the team figures out that those affected by the biochemical evacuated the other villagers there and then covered them over as they mutated into Meat Moss, and pulls it away to reveal the survivors. - Wonder Woman (2011): When the First Born takes over Olympus he redecorates the place with a flesh and blood theme, some of which was donated unwillingly by Olympians he killed. - Carrying on the Body Horror-laden traditions of the original, Aliens features a particularly gruesome and memorable version when the marines are searching the infested colony on LV-426. Subverted in that it's not flesh, but some sort of hard resin. - Event Horizon: Some decorates the bridge of the eponymous ship, although a skull fragment amongst the gore is meant to imply that it's all that's left of the original crew. - The Orgoscope in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is an entire space station and corporate headquarters built from living tissue. While the inside is relatively sterile and has a more user-friendly appearance, the exterior is almost entirely flesh and skin. It even has giant eyes that act as security cameras. - Living Hell can be considered the ultimate example. The plot of the movie is about a viral corruption that feeds on energy to grow exponentially. It threatens to engulf the Earth if it is not stopped before the sun rises. - In the Pirates of the Caribbean series, many of Davy Jones' crew end up becoming literal parts of the ship, able to talk (sometimes) but not move. - In the tie-in novel BioShock: Rapture, this was the unfortunate result of one of Tennenbaum and Suchong's wilder genetic experiments. They had tried to give a man the powers of a sea creature; instead they gave him the power of being wallpaper. The description puts the Body Horror in the game proper to shame. - Greg Bear's 1985 novel Blood Music. - The Vord in Codex Alera, being Expies of the Zerg, live on a substance called croach, which has a waxy consistency. Its main purposes seem to be storage of nutrients (like beeswax) and to sustain within itself an atmosphere that the Vord find ideal. - In The Expanse, areas infected by the alien Protomolecule end up covered in this, absorbing anyone unlucky enough to be there at the time. It's not helped by organs and limbs still maintaining their shape and being used for the Protomolecule's purposes. - A rare benevolent example occurs in A Fire Upon the Deep; the Old One filled one of the rooms of the Skroderider's ship with this. \|\|It turns out to be a complex biotech weapon used to combat the Blight.\|\| - After the Polypond War in The Well Of Stars (a Great Ship novel), the outer hull of the Greatship was covered in the living ocean that made up the Polypond. In the short story Hatch, scavengers prowl above the now mindless ocean of the Polypond, hunting down the fantastic creatures that periodically spew out of it to extract the rare elements necessary to keep their isolated civilization afloat. - The buried tower in The Southern Reach Trilogy, which is made of living tissue. It's able to hide its true nature to a degree and appear as stone to the casual observer, but people who have been "contaminated" by Area X are able to see it as it truly is. - Red Weed in The War of the Worlds and one or two film adaptations thereof. - In the Battlestar Galactica reboot, the Cylon Basestar's landing bay Boomer delivers the nuke to (\|\|shortly before she shoots Adama\|\|) has this look. Justified in that Cylon Basestars of this type are implied to have major biological components, and their fighters are biologically controlled. The inside of their fighters looks like this as well, as seen when Starbuck crawls inside one she shot down in order to pilot it back to the fleet. - In the Doctor Who episode "The Witch's Familiar", it turns out that the sewers of Dalek cities are lined with Dalek tissue that's too decayed to be useful. They're also fully aware of this, and very angry with the living Daleks who put them there. - In the Helix episode "274," adding growth factor to a petri dish of monkey blood infected with The Virus results in an explosive growth of black biomass that coats and fills a small observation chamber and threatens to shatter it until veterinary pathologist Doreen releases Deadly Gas therein. - In Stranger Things, the Upsidedown is a dark version of our world filled with this. It's also prevalent around its portals. - Magic: The Gathering: - A carpet of rotting flesh covers the ground in Grixis. - In New Phyrexia, the interior of the completed Lumengrid is covered in pulsating, organic tissue. - In the Tharkold realm of the TORG RPG, Technodemons use alteration magic coupled with their reality's perverse World Laws to produce what they call pain sculptures and pain gardens: living beings melded together, with their responses to pain and pleasure magically reversed. The end result is a writhing mass of gibbering, screaming flesh which gains pleasure from receiving pain and inflicting it on others (including other bits of itself), but agony from doing biologically necessary things such as eating. - In Vampire: The Masquerade, many vampires of Clan Tzimisce use their magic fleshforming abilities (flesh and bones, actually) to sculpt humans or other vampires into screaming furniture and living decoration for their lairs, which results in this trope. - The Tzimisce Antediluvian itself is an example of this trope, having taken root and grown into a miles-long fleshmass infestation underneath New York. - Warhammer 40,000 has the Screaming Gallery, a carpet of living, screaming faces in the throne room of rebel primarch Konrad Curze. - In Saya no Uta, the protagonist sees the entire world covered with this, except \|\|if it actually is\|\|. In one of the endings, \|\|this is how the world ends up, though for the protagonist...well...\|\| - In Awful Hospital, most Parliamentary beings percieve the entire world around them to be coated in bright pink, putty-like flesh, \|\|and at the Burgrr counter, Miss tells Fern how she saw it on Earth during its last days, describing it as "ground beef kudzu."\|\| - Deep Rise takes it to the logical extreme in the form of Flesh Fields. - Troll nests from Stand Still, Stay Silent are like that. - In the Creepypasta titled The Dogscape, literally everything on Earth has turned into parts of dogs. Trees, fruit, oceans... everything. - Hamster's Paradise has the shroomors, a form of free-living cancer that functions similarly to a fungus and grows on decaying carrion. It descended from a virulent, Zombie Apocalypse-causing plague that drove a race of Always Chaotic Evil sapient hamsters (the Harmsters) to extinction, but with the extinction of its original host, it has now become far more benign and even serves to help decompose dead organic matter. Later on, some shroomor spores managed to find their way into the sub-Arcuterran cavern system where one strain develops a symbiotic relationship with chemosynthetic bacteria that allows it to become completely independent of animal carcasses and start growing on the walls of the cave like actual moss and being fed on by some of the native troglofauna. This new strain actually ends up being named meatmoss due to this lifestyle. - The Horror from the Vault has the titular creature create this, infesting a clearing in the woods it calls home with it. \|\|It's made from animals, all somehow still alive and trying to escape despite having all their bones and organs removed.\|\| It also creates pods of flesh-covered organs containing a stem culture that keeps them alive, which can begin spreading if nourished properly. The scientist who discovered this had to burn the samples when they subsumed a lab table. - In Mortasheen, this can be any of the following: fungi, bacterial mats, bloodsponge, snotmoss, barnacle maggots, cancer, eyes and possibly crabgrass, which may be just normal crabgrass but given the setting probably consists of real crabs. The inhabitants often cultivate these substances outside their houses as lawns (and have biomechanical lawnmower-beasties to keep them at the right length). - There are several patches of this around the facility in Ruby Quest. \|\|Guess what the "cure" was made from?\|\| - This is quite common in the SCP Foundation, with the most well-known instance being SCP-610: "The Flesh That Hates". - The ship in A Shock to the System (Roleplay) is infested with "a greenish biomatter" that looks like both meat and mould. - Welcome to Night Vale: The radio station sound booth in \|\|Desert Bluffs\|\| is covered in and made out of bloody flesh. - The Gemini Home Entertainment analog horror series makes frequent use of some kind of organic growth, shown to take various forms ranging from bizarre to downright horrifying: - \|\|The 'Woodcrawlers' are one-eyed Giant Spider creatures the size of a small car, made to spread the Iris' influence; despite their size they supposedly can travel freely without making a sound.\|\| - \|\|The Nature's Mockeries are carnivorous 'plants' that are the result of humans succumbing to Deep-Root Disease.\|\| - The bottom floors of Project Cadmus in the pilot of Young Justice (2010) appear to be made (or covered) in some sort of biological product. It's not quite clear why, since the floor in question also had working (and fully metal) elevators and bank-vault-esque doors, as well as a metal floor in the room for Project Kr. It's possible that it was meant to be an incubator for unborn Genomorphs. - In the finale of The Owl House, \|\|Belos fuses his body with the Titan's heart, and subsequently starts growing across the entire Titan. The resulting corruption spreads slowly at first, but then picks up the pace and starts spreading at a speed nobody would be able to outrun on foot. The corruption itself is part of Belos's decayed form, and looks kind of like a green fungus or lichen — if fungi or lichens were sentient and covered in eyes.\|\| - Alien Species Wiki's Habitat Modifier entry. - Several varieties of mold can give walls this kind of look. - Biofilm is basically loads of bacteria that have had a population explosion, and due to the nature of bacteria, are extremely resistant to medicines, as the outer layer absorbs the chemical, dies, gets eaten, and replaced. It usually grows on medical implants and teeth. Fortunately, as of yet, they can't form Combat Tentacles. - Exceptionally thick biofilm, called a microbial mat, covered the bottom of most of the ocean for much if not most of Earth's history (starting fairly soon after the beginning of microbial life 3.7 billion years ago). The mat only disappeared in the Cambrian (about 600 million years ago), when animals learned how to burrow into the sand (which broke up the mat by opening up channels for oxygen to permeate the soil, poisoning the anaerobic bacteria). - Snottites, icky cave formations that are actually bacterial colonies feeding on the mineral water dripping from the ceiling. - The so-called Raleigh Sewer Monster certainly gives off this sort of effect. They're actually large masses of tubifex worms that group together in the absence of natural soil. As for why they're pulsating like that, they're photosensitive, so they're recoiling from the massive amounts of brightness and heat from the camera. Poor bastards. - HeLa is a type of cancer that is cultured in laboratories for experimentation. note : The name comes from Henrietta Lacks, the patient it was first isolated from, without her knowledge or consent. It grows at a rate of about a ton per year, all told, and can overrun other petri dishes in the same labs it's kept in if decontamination protocols are lax. One can only imagine what could happen if a researcher was lax enough to contaminate themselves with it... - Luckily, HeLa cells were discovered to not cause cancer when injected into prisoners and the poor in the 1950s to 1970s.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrganicWallpaper
Original Man - TV Tropes A Characterization Trope distinguishing a character who is the first human being or one of the first human beings. The hominid tribe is about 6 million years old, and modern man is just the last sliver of it, definitely not the original. The original hominid would not be recognized as any species living today. That is if anything could be called the original hominid; rather than a single such species having ever existed, today's paleontologists reconstruct a gradual transition with no clear break. But there has been much speculation, study and effort to find the original man, probably some outlandish fiction too. In fact, this is one of the oldest tropes in the book. Can overlap with Advanced Ancient Humans, depending on how complex original man's society was or Humanity Came From Space if original man did not develop on Earth. Also compare with Frazetta Man and All Cavemen Were Neanderthals. A variation of the trope is an older species of man that was wiped out before ours began or is biologically independent of the Homo sapiens species in some other way. In these cases human identification is a must, otherwise they belong under precursors. Identification, not necessarily familiarity. May be named Adam and/or Eve. ## Examples - In The DCU, recurring villain Vandal Savage (originally a Green Lantern villain but nowadays a big-name bad guy who'll fight anyone) is usually one of the very first Homo sapiens to exist, rendered immortal by a Magic Meteor. (Apart from the weird Final Crisis tie-in which depicted him as literally the Biblical Cain, although some later writers adopted this as Metaphorically True in the "first cold-blooded murderer" sense.) - Marvel Universe: - Adam K'ad-mon is a Man-Thing lookalike who is believed by some to be the original human being and protects the Primal Matrix, which is the focal point of the multiverse. - In the Earth X/Universe X/Paradise X trilogy, the original humans were a feral, beastlike race before the Celestials came to our planet and began fiddling with our genetics. The Celestials use young planets as "incubators" for their kind, and Superhumans were created to act as "antibodies" to protect the planet from invasion — particularly from Galactus, their sworn enemy. It turns out that Wolverine is not a mutant, but actually the last "pure" human left alive. - Marville: Wolverine was the first human. He evolved from an otter. It's that kind of series. - In Mission to Mars, the then famous face was theorized to have been carved by original man. (Then famous because when we actually saw it in real life it turned out not to be a face.) - Discworld: One early novel reveals that the First Men of the Disc created by the gods were immensely powerful beings, which took one look at their situation, including their suboptimal gods, and lost their tempers. This resulted in an all-out war between humanity and the gods, after which the High Old Ones — immensely powerful beings who rule over the universe — stepped in and, to prevent such a crisis from recurring, confined the gods to the center of the Disc and re-created men to be a good deal smaller. - Nightside: References here and there suggest that humankind was originally intended/planned/expected to be much more powerful, perceptive, and glorious than we actually are. Just who/what came up with that intention/plan/expectation, and whether it was an injustice or a mercy that we didn't turn out that way, is left unsaid. - Red Dwarf: The prologue to Last Human describes the birth of the first Homo habilis, a girl. Her australopithecine mother is alarmed at the child's short limbs, high forehead and large head — clearly, she isn't going to be like anyone, ever. note : This is, of course, a gross misrepresentation of the evolutionary process — the transition between species occurs slowly, over many generations, not in a sudden leap from one to the next. - In Symposium, Plato makes a fictional Aristophanes present a "Just So" Story on the origin of love. According to this tale, humans as originally created by the titans were not like we are today: We had two heads, four legs, four arms and both sets of reproductive organs. The later gods changed us to be more like them (which is better than what they considered doing). The idea was to make us wish for the parts we no longer had and supposed to teach us love. - Battlestar Galactica (2003): The people of Kobol whose ancestors became the Twelve Colonies were this, although the primitive humans of Earth (2) appear to be a separate "creation" of that series' God. - Fringe: Before The Reveal, the First People were believed to be this. Much was made of them being an ancient civilization of human beings — the first humans — that supposedly predated Adam, Eve and the dinosaurs. This was a bizarre claim even for a show where computer viruses can infect the human brain. Later, \|\|it's revealed that the "First People" are actually the future versions of the main characters who designed the technology attributed to this ancient civilization and sent it back in time through a wormhole to the distant past\|\|. - Stargate-verse: The Alterans, an ancient human subspecies predating Cro-Magnon. They are indistinguishable from homo sapiens outwardly, technically have much greater genetic diversity on account of longer existence and wider distribution but so few are left in the visible universe that it is almost a moot point, and most of them Ascended thousands of years ago. The Stargate builders among them left behind a lot of technology that only works when used by people with their genes though. - The Book of Genesis describes the creation of humans beings twice. Studies of Hebrew narrative grammar indicate this is a matter of "summary vs details", rather than two separate events. Genesis 1 describes the creation of humans in relation to the rest of the universe. Genesis 2 takes a closer look at the details of how they were created. - In Genesis 1:1-2:3, male and female are created in God's image, before being told to take care of the Earth and multiply across it by God. - In Genesis 2:4-25, the first human is formed from the dirt and receives life from God's breath. After experiencing loneliness and naming the animals God creates, the human's rib is removed and from it is formed woman, who the first man praises. The first humans here know not death, labor-pains, toil, or shame before violating the law of the Garden and being forced out into the harsher wider world. - In the Zohar and other Kabbalah texts, the original man, Adam Kadmon, is not so much a physical being as it is a spiritual realm from which every human body gets its soul. - Thanks to syncretism, the original woman is sometimes equated to Lilith (originally an animal in The Bible or a demon in Mesopotamian Mythology) in certain traditions, which would make her very different from modern woman. - In Manichean religion, original man was a creation of God given to the world of light to help them fight off the invading forces of The Antigod from the world of darkness. Modern man was a mistake caused by not properly following God's instruction. - In a lot of Gnostic discourses, modern man is said to be an illusion and inferior imitation of the original man. - Adam and Eve are described as having been giants (about 60 cubits tall, or 90 feet) in Islamic tradition, with each successive generation of descendants gradually decreasing in proportions to the size modern humans have been for the last few thousand years. Also, humans originally did not age but started doing so many thousands of years later ( partially in response to Abraham asking God for a sign that his life is nearing its end). - In some Chinese creation stories, original man Pan Gu was a giant and modern man were as fleas living on his flesh. When Pan Gu died his remains became many of the Earth's features. In fact there would not even be a planet if Pan Gu had not shaped it while he was alive. - The original man, Kali (or Kaliyan) was born from a fragment of evil in Ayyavazhi mythology and he and his later created wife are distinct from swyambhuvana manu, the naturally evolved man of wider Hindu religion (and is not to be confused with the righteous goddess Kali either). - In Mayan Mythology, the gods tried to destroy original man with a great flood but a few people managed to survive. For this act of defiance they were turned into the monkeys which populate the American jungles to this day. - Aztec Mythology, told that the original human race was devoured by ocelots. Not so cute anymore is it? - Creek Indians had taught that sky people predated the human race and that fire was stolen from them for us. - Izanagi and Izanami of Shinto are often interpreted as a god couple by modern readers but the classical texts suggest something more along the lines of original human beings, the vast differences between us and them simply popping up over time. - The oral history of the Hadza people of Tanzania mention their oldest ancestors as hairy giants who lived more like animals. These were replaced by a race just as tall but used fire, medicine, domesticated dogs and lived in caves. - Demon: The Fallen depicts Adam and Eve as Ultimate Lifeforms. Their antediluvian descendants are also described as exceptionally powerful, if only because they had infinite faith (in God and the angels) — something that their modern descendants severely lack, much to the dismay of the returning Fallen. - Dark Souls, in a late (and hidden) dialogue, it's revealed that Humanity's progenitor and thus the player character's ancestor is none other than \|\|The Furtive Pygmy, a character only briefly shown in the opening cutscene and is described as "so easily forgotten", and who, in the dawn of time, gained the power of the titular Dark Soul.\|\| - Halo: The original humans were a collection of different hominid species who used to hold one of the strongest interstellar empires in the galaxy. Then, tens of thousands of years ago, the Forerunners defeated them, erased all traces of their empire, stripped them of all their technology, forcibly devolved them into a more primitive state, and quarantined the vast majority of them on their home planet of Erde-Tyrene. - Nasuverse: Copies are always inferior to the original, and since children are considered copies of their parents, the first humans (i.e. human archetypes) were immensely more powerful than their modern descendants. - Xenogears: The humans that live on the planet the game is set on are descendants of the creations of "Deus", the supercomputer that acts as the overarching central antagonist. As such, all humans are "pieces" of Deus itself that it one day plans to absorb as part of a millennia-long self-repair program. The "original" humans were part of the spaceship which Deus took over and destroyed. - "The" Original Man is suspect, as we cannot be sure a new fossil won't be discovered that's a better candidate than the currently-known hominids. Plus, where do you draw the line between Original Man and common ancestor of humans and other apes? - Regarding what we would immediately recognize as human: - The first anatomically modern inhabitants of Europe are referred to as the Cro-Magnon peoples. They existed about 300,000 years ago based on fossil evidence, and another hundred thousand or so based on DNA evidence. Modern Europeans are identical to the Cro-Magnons beyond becoming a little taller, having lighter skin tones, and retaining lactose tolerance after maturation due to a mutation. - In the case of Homo sapiens as we are, there is Homo sapiens idaltu, which lived in Ethiopia about 160,000 years ago. In fact, the translated name actually means "First born/Elder Wise Man" in Afari (an Ethiopian language) and Latin. - While they're typically considered to be distinct species, neanderthals and Homo heidelbergensis are sometimes classified as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens heidelbergensis. This would put the first Homo sapiens at around 600,000 years ago. - Regarding more distant ancestors: - Homo erectus was apparently able to speak, built rafts or simple boats, used fire and probably wore animal skins, and the first known fossil of Homo erectus dates to 1.8 million years ago. - Arguably the first member in the Homo genus belongs to Homo habilis, though some would say they were australopiths and not human beings, and an intermediate form dates back to 2.6 million years ago. - Some people hold that australopiths are also human beings, making Original Man arise about six million years ago.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalMan
Organization with Unlimited Funding - TV Tropes In Real Life, the world's largest corporations and government agencies often have a total annual cash flow that exceeds the Gross National Product of smaller nations, own fleets of multimillion-dollar vehicles, or enough office buildings to start their own city. But modern Real Life organizations like Wal-mart or the U.S. Defense Department would be on the bottom end of this scale at best. Merely being an unusually successful Mega-Corp is not enough to qualify for this list, nor is an Elaborate Underground Base (or more than one), as these assets may have been around for a while, acquired at a discount, or required to accomplish the organization's whole purpose for existence. These organizations routinely accomplish feats whose mere existence in the setting could result in Fridge Logic or even straining Willing Suspension of Disbelief: - Construction projects that normally require hundreds or thousands of workers laboring for months or years are often accomplished before the next episode. - If the organization is responsible for a major national project, they will often build a spare just in case or for their own use. - The organization funds projects which apparently break the laws of physics using only wealth and the Rule of Cool or the Rule of Funny. - If some other convenient fictional trope makes something possible, it doesn't count. You don't buy sound in space when Space Is Noisy. It's not impressive to have Infinite Supplies when everyone else does. Building a Humongous Mecha is not noteworthy when any random scientist can make five in a weekend. - An example might be, in a setting 20 Minutes into the Future, while every other spacefaring organization is still working on commercial-manned flight to the ISS or missions to the Moon or Mars, this organization is already secretly operating multiple interstellar vessels that could carry the space shuttle in their secondary cargo holds. It pretty much goes without saying that any investor who owns more than 1% or so of one of these organizations will be a member of the Fiction 500. If an organization is owned largely by one individual or a relatively small group, please file the example under Fiction 500, not here. Compare Mega-Corp, Abusing the Kardashev Scale for Fun and Profit, Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?. ## Examples: - The Liar Game Tournament Office appears at one point to blow ten quintillion yen on the first round of their tournament. That's 107.54 . trillion U.S. dollars - In fact, at the start of the story, the invitation read "...You are one of the 1 in 100000 people who have been entered..." which means, if it takes place all over the world, there's about 70 thousand people taking part, and since each of those people gets 100 million yen, the total amount for the first round is only 7 trillion yen, or 80 billion dollars (which to be fair, is still a lot). - As far as the Game's first round goes, they intended to recoup most of the money from the losers (whose debt is relatively low), and quite a lot of the rest of the money would remain in-game as players continued. They get 50% of the winning of dropouts; in effect, worst-case scenario for them, they can only lose 50% of what they put in. Which is "only" 40 billion dollars! - As the characters point out, it's actually a scam. They give each player 100 million yen and require that each player pay back that amount at the end. Assuming no player goes bankrupt (which is a ridiculous assumption, but the company supposedly has hand-wavy powers to extract the money somehow), they'll never lose any money — the loser just pays the winner 100 million, and the company neither gains nor loses anything. But then the company also charges 50% of your net winnings if you drop out, which is pure profit for them. - Neon Genesis Evangelion deconstructs this trope, like many others. NERV (a UN Special Agency)— is able to replace entire cities within days, not to mention the upkeep and maintenance of three giant biomechanical weapons, each with a budget equivalent to a small country. NERV has funding in excess of what a UN agency can normally legally have, and required a special resolution to the funding regulations just to be chartered. Their monetary requirements are absolutely enormous, and they are given all the funding they need, but even so, they still run into financing issues because they take up so much of the budget that other programs end up gutted in order to meet their needs. As one member of the SEELE council said, "Man cannot live on Eva alone," and fully funding all their operations can cripple other critical programs. - Momoka Nishizawa from Sgt. Frog. Even granted that her family has more than half the money on Earth she spends insane amounts of money, mostly on trying to get closer to her love interest, Fuyuki. This goes to the point that there's actually an episode dedicated to her trying to formulate an extremely low-budget plan as a change of strategy (really, she'd get a lot further just buying a marriage certificate). - In the opening act of Dance in the Vampire Bund, the secret vampire nation gets Japan to authorize creating a semi-independent vampire state on a man-made island just off the coast of Tokyo. Mina Tepes gets the ruling party in the Diet to go along with this plan by forking over enough cash to retire Japan's national debt - stated to be roughly ten trillion dollars. And the vampire nation is still obscenely rich after doing so. - One has to wonder how the Mad Scientist from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS gets the required funds and materials to develop and build a huge army of highly advanced robots, revive and upgrade a dead research program for creating combat cyborgs, which had been explicitly stated to be scrapped due to high costs and low gain, and build a standard secret lair. To further strain the Willing Suspension of Disbelief, it was all done without anyone's notice, and his "Toys" were routinely destroyed en masse, necessitating extensive additional build orders. \|\|It's eventually revealed that the people funding Jail Scaglietti and all of his illegal research and tech were the heads of the Administration Bureau themselves, having created him as their pet Mad Scientist to keep the Bureau ahead of the Arms Race\|\|. - In the Ultimate Marvel universe, Nick Fury's reply to concerns about funding a weapon to fight off Galactus is: "I could have every human being on earth dressed in solid gold underwear. Tomorrow." S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't appear to be hurting for capital, to put it mildly. - In All-Star Superman, Project Cadmus director Dr. Leo Quintum explicitly states he has unlimited resources. Not surprising since as a good-aligned Mad Scientist his inventions must make millions (if not billions) in this non-Reed Richards Is Useless world. - While we never see them do complete absurdities, the Planetary Foundation never runs into money problems. Their founder is described as having more money than god, and "he funds everything we do without question." - James Bond - In On Her Majesty's Secret Service it's mentioned that Bond girl Tracy's father has ties to the most powerful crime organization on Earth. Bond replies that SPECTRE is larger, given that it operates worldwide. - British Intelligence also fits this trope, having a worldwide network of elite jet-setting agents armed with expensive gadgets at a time when the real-life British government barely had the funds to operate "East of Suez". - To have had a space station and fleet of rocket ships over 25 years before NASA and Russia finally got around to creating one, would have definitely been ambitious in Moonraker - The First Order from the Star Wars sequel trilogy commands massive fleets of ships and huge armies of Stormtroopers, as well as being able to construct their very own bigger copy of the Death Star inside a planet. In short, they are able to build up forces that equal and even surpass those of the Galactic Empire, but where the Empire was a ruling body that logically received tax revenue from the star systems under its control, the First Order is a fringe N.G.O. Superpower without an obvious means of funding itself; how they do it anyway is never explained. - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy features a few, perhaps most notably Magrathea, the planet whose sole industry is building custom-made planets. Yes, artificial planets. It became so wealthy that the rest of the galaxy's economy collapsed, leading the Magratheans to put themselves into suspended animation until people could afford their services again. - Being post-scarcity means every member of The Culture has unlimited funds to do whatever they want. - The hundreds (thousands?) of The Dark Hunters get paid every month with a wheelbarrow-sized pile of gold and precious gems by Artemis, who doesn't seem to grasp the idea of direct deposit. Consider that this has been going on for over a thousand years, and you get quite a pump into the local economy (and the world economy at large). - The Terran Trade Authority, from the book series of that name, which manages the economies of multiple extrasolar systems and has managed the logistics for interstellar wars fought by its sister organization, the Terran Defense Authority. One branch of the TTA, the Central Administration, owns its own city, mainly to store records, which is surrounded by forests to supply the paper necessary to allow paper records to be maintained alongside its electronic files. - In The Wheel of Time, the Aes Sedai organisation of the White Tower has practically unlimited funds, able to offer each of its members (of which there are about a thousand) an annual stipend that easily puts them on a par with any medium-ranking noble or the most successful merchant, and they can ask for more with very little red tape. The Tower can get away with this because it is both the world's oldest surviving political institution, and earns rent on huge tracts of land, and also happens to be the world's oldest bank. - The Raith family from The Dresden Files has emergency credit cards they give out to family members, good for 24 hours upon first use. When asked what the spending limit is on them, the response is "24 hours". - In Night Watch (Series), the titular organization initially appears to have a fairly small budget, and a Light character laments having to fly coach while his Dark counterpart can splurge for business class. Eventually, though, a new Night Watch employee points out that his company-issued ATM card has an unlisted cash withdrawal limit (it uses a foreign bank that doesn't disclose the amount). When the main character confronts his boss, he gives him an "are you serious?" look and asks if he really thinks that an organization that can predict the future to a reasonably high degree would have any trouble with cash flow, considering they'd be able to play the stock market and currency exchange rates. In fact, the boss is considering getting a company jet and even offers the main characters a Bentley. After a moment's pause, the main characters instead opts for a more practical SUV. The boss just shrugs. - Stargate SG-1: Justified, since it is funded through the U.S. Department of Defense budget. It also operates Stargate Command, rents Russia's stargate whenever theirs goes missing, and built at least 5 starships that allegedly each cost more than the entire GNP of the state of New York, and presumably operate other secret projects as well. But then, keeping two galaxies safe ain't cheap. Later an oversight agency becomes a recurring pain in the protagonists' backside as other nations are brought onboard and corporations become involved in adapting found technology to Earth use. - The follow-up books reveal that the financial crisis of 2008 has hit the program's budget hard. No new hulls have been laid down since the attack of the Super-Hive. The Sun Tzu is still floating in space, likely to be written off as a wreck. All in all, the Tau'ri only have 4 functioning starships, not counting the Atlantis. - Torchwood One, of Doctor Who: They built One Canada Square/Canary Wharf/Torchwood Tower (construction costs: approximately £500 million) purely to investigate a weird rift at the top. Even allowing for the rental income, which in that district would have been considerable even by London standards, that's one hell of an up-front expenditure for a supposedly "black" government department. - The Federation in Star Trek was able to recover from having its fleet annihilated in less than a year. Not just recover: 39 ships were lost at Wolf 359, which was considered to be a huge blow to the fleet. As of the Dominion War several years later, Starfleet consists of hundreds, if not thousands, of combat-capable starships. It's explicitly meant to be a post-scarcity future, but still. - A late first season episode of Quantum Leap had Al appearing before a congressional committee to justify keeping the Project going at taxpayers' expense. Meanwhile, in the past, Sam was helping a young woman pass the law school exam. When he was successful the head of the committee suddenly became the woman he had been helping, who approved the funding. Ever since then, there were no questions as to the budget of the Project. - The Company from Heroes fits this to varying degrees throughout the show's run, most closely when it was run by Bob Bishop (who had the power to turn anything into gold) during Volume Two, who identifies himself as the Company's "financial source." - In NUMB3RS, DARPA is mentioned several times as this, specifically using the words "unlimited funding". They end up throwing it at 5-year projects. One character, who tries to scam them with a fake AI, claims no one would suspect a thing, as 95% of DARPA-funded projects are failures. And then it turns out that the US government also has a detachment of people who are literally The Men in Black to go after people who are scamming them for research funds. - JAG: Funding, provided by U.S. taxpayers through the defense budget, is never really an issue, and often in court-martials held in Virginia, foreign nationals as witnesses are flown in from across the world. Subverted though in "Father's Day" when Harm, Mac, and Bud had to conduct an investigation on a tight budget; due to Harm's tortious interference with the secret business of the Bradenhurst Corporation in a previous episode. - There is a notable aversion in The Fall. DSU Stella Gibson, a Metropolitan Police detective, is brought into Belfast to assist the PSNI in a 28-day review of a cold case in which the ex-daughter-in-law of an MLA of the Northern Ireland Assembly was murdered, and she eventually links the murder to two other murders. At the end of the first series, the Belfast Strangler has slipped off the radar. By the beginning of the second season, which is only ten days after the first series' finale, the PSNI's funding and resources have been stretched thin and DSU Gibson has to submit a request for a £1.8 million grant to continue the investigation. - Averted in UFO (1970). While SHADO has all the fancy toys expected of a Gerry Anderson production (supersonic aircraft, flying submarines, a base on the Moon, a Master Computer and an Elaborate Underground Base hidden under a working film studio), several episodes show Straker arguing with General Henderson of the International Astrophysical Committee over his budget allocation. - Averted by the Baltimore Police Department in The Wire. In the early seasons, money and budgetary limitations are frequently mentioned as constraints on investigations (senior officers regularly warn that they only have so many days they can afford a wiretap; two cops fear the financial consequences of losing an expensive piece of surveillance equipment) but never with any actual effect. In the fourth season, the city discovers its school system is running a multimillion-dollar deficit and immediately imposes austerity measures on the police, severely limiting overtime and deferring car repair to the point that one officer has to take a city bus to a crime scene. It gets so bad that two detectives resort to \|\|fabricating a serial killer\|\| to reopen the financial spigots for the case they're trying to make against a major local drug dealer. - Many, if not all, of the major factions in Warhammer 40,000. As the TV Tropes entry states: "Entire planets with populations of billions are lost due to rounding errors in tax returns." - You, when playing Rogue Trader. Okay, Rogue Traders don't literally have unlimited funding, but their financial capabilities are still enormous. (They have to be, to afford their obligatory Mile-Long Ship.) Any given member of a Trader's senior crew has roughly a 50-50 chance of buying an incredibly rare piece of war equipment, or alternatively enough of the common stuff to fit out a regiment — each session, starting from the first — without so much as denting their cash flow. If you want to risk your investment souring, by all means, spend more! - According to Shadowrun lore, by the year 2070 we can expect mega-corporations that literally have more money and military power than most actual countries. The headquarters of said mega-corps tend to span tens of city blocks and legitimately claim that the ground said buildings are upon as sovereign territory, and immune to the parent country's governing laws. - Not that unbelievable, at least the money part. Wal-Mart's annual revenues are more than the GNP of all but about 25-30 countries. - Averted for the Task Force: Valkyrie, The Men in Black Conspiracy of Hunter: The Vigil, in the New World of Darkness. They are a national, FBI-sized agency, with bleeding-edge technology, flat-out said to have the impressively low annual budget of US$875,000. How can they fund all those marvelous gadgets? Being secretly funded by ancient vampires, that's how. - The apparently unlimited resources of the SCP Foundation have been commented on even by its own writing community. Somewhat justified in that they control paranormal artifacts that actually can produce infinite resources, although often with unpleasant side-effects. They do occasionally complain about needless or excessive expenditures, be it D-Class fodder or actual resources. Note that the primary objection to the wasting of D-Class is that there are a finite number of unlikely-to-be-missed life sentence and death row inmates available, not the Foundation's difficulties with obtaining the ones that exist. - The Protectors of the Plot Continuum are able to finance a multiverse spanning organization and have an HQ able to supply any of the needs of their agents as needed. The only real hints we get as to how they're able to run this is the fact that agents are paid at barely what qualifies as a minimum wage and they supply their own electricity via authors literally spinning in their graves.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrganizationWithUnlimitedFunding
Original Generation - TV Tropes When you have a Crisis Crossover or a Massive Multiplayer Crossover, you'll need something to motivate the heroes into action. While having the Big Bads of the series team up can work, sometimes you want a new, even Greater-Scope Villain. One that requires such a massive team-up of heroism. And then, why stop there? Why not go the full way and make a new Hero for this crossover? That way you can have a central conflict for the entire story. Plus, since you'll have an original character tied to this story instead of the differing canons of the other series, you'll be able to have more character development for the main character all in all. The Greater-Scope Villain variety is somewhat more common than the new Hero variety. Crossovers with new Heroes, however, have a tendency to become a series in their own right, a Spin-Off that just happens to have crossover origins. If a completely original villain is created just for a Crossover, that's a Crossover-Exclusive Villain. Compare and contrast Crossover Villain-in-Chief, where an already established villain somehow becomes the leader of a Villain Team-Up of the crossed-over criminals. No relation to First Installment Wins. ## Examples: - Fai, Kurogane, and Fei Wang Reed are the only new main characters in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-, the rest being Alternate Universe versions of characters from other CLAMP works, or from ×××HOLiC, a sister manga by all intents and purposes, being the stories simultaneous (as much as the setting allows) and deeply intertwined. - Pretty Cure: - As per Word of God, Tohru in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid was created by throwing together whatever characteristics Cool-Kyou Shinsha thought would be cool, unlike the rest of the dragons (who are taken from various mythologies). - Gundam Build Fighters indulges in this a lot, since the show's premise is people building customized Gundam models and battling them using an arcade-style machine. The sequel Gundam Build Fighters Try branches out further in this regard, with several characters making models that are wholly original designs that draw inspiration from one or more of the Gundam universes, rather than being built from a specific, preexisting mobile suit. Most prominently, protagonist Sekai Kamiki's Build Burning Gundam was made in the style of Mobile Fighter G Gundam but wasn't based off of one specific Mobile Fighter note : Word of God refuted the idea that the Build Burning was named for "Burning Gundam", the Bowdlerized name for God Gundam from the official English dub; likewise Wilfred and Shia Kijima have Gundams inspired by Mobile Suit Gundam 00 while their teammate Saga Adou's Gundam The End is a mish-mash of concepts borrowed from about four different sources ( G, Wing, 00, and Unicorn). - Yu-Gi-Oh!: The ZEXAL anime only introduced 46 of the 100 Emperor's Key Numbers and the manga, which is a completely different continuity, introduced only 24 new Numbers. The remaining 30 Numbers have been introduced by the OCG long after the anime and manga had already finished. - The Marvel Versus DC crossover had a new character named Access. As he's co-owned by the two companies, he isn't used very often. - The Transformers Collaborative line saw a few transformerized versions of famous vehicles from other companies, as well as an original character named Ectronymous Diamatron (aka Ectotron), a ghost-busting transformer. - Specific to The DCU: - A well-known Greater-Scope Villain example is the Anti-Monitor from DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths. There were some new heroes as well—Pariah, Harbinger, the Monitor, Alex Luthor, Superboy-Prime, Lady Quark, and Doctor Light—but, with the exception of Doctor Light, they faded quickly after the event ended, only brought up when the writer wished to remind the readers of Crisis. Or in the case of Superboy-Prime, to make a FaceHeel Turn and become a recurring Big Bad in his own right. - Onslaught, created for the Onslaught Saga that eventually led to Heroes Reborn. - Lampshaded in the anthology Wha... huh?'s Identity Crisis parody — Identity Girl says she was created just because of that one. - Kid Kaiju was created for the Monsters Unleashed revival, which began as a crossover event, but continued later as an ongoing title featuring him. - Basically every character introduced in Spider-Verse —and there are lots of them— were created specifically for the event, most notably Spider-Gwen. - Subverted in Infinity Wars (2018) by Requiem - seemingly a new character created for the series, they are revealed to be \|\|Gamora\|\| early into the run. - Voyager, introduced in the Avengers Family Crossover Avengers: No Surrender as a formerly-forgotten heroine the others all see as one of the "classic" Avengers \|\|but actually the Grandmaster's daughter\|\|. - Ikon the Spaceknight was created for the Annihilators miniseries and is the only member of the titular team who is not a pre-existing character. - Star Trek: Phoenix: The story tends to skirt around canon Star Trek events instead of directly following or replacing them, and Equestria is entirely absent from events after the opening chapter. Consequently, a large portion of its cast, including all of the Phoenix's crew outside of Sunset and Twilight, consists of original characters. - Fantasia Times is a Massive Multiplayer Crossover with characters from numerous different fictional works; however, the lion's share of focus goes to the original characters Andi, Sera, and Scarlett — especially Andi. Even when the canon characters get A Day in the Limelight, they largely defer to Andi when it comes to important decisions. - Wreck-It Ralph In an arcade with video games and their respective characters that exist in real life, the title character and friends came from games that were created specifically for this movie. - SD Gundam The Last World is an Intra-Franchise Crossover of SD Gundam, featuring characters from a good number of its works. It also includes a couple of characters made specifically for this story, including Sen-Pu Ninja Exia, Gundam the Gold, Ryuutei Unicorn, Tri Gunvoy, the Throne Siblings and so on. - Kamen Rider: - The lead Rider of Kamen Rider Decade is an original character that serves to cross over elements of the nine series before him, partially by being able to make use of all their powers. His primary enemy, Narutaki, brings random enemies from the crossover elements to combat him. Diend, the second original Rider, serves as a rival who is less concerned with fighting Decade and more with stealing and trolling, but has the ability to send clones of crossover heroes or villains into battle for him. \|\|The major enemy group Dai-Shocker later appears, which is basically one or two people who got the smart idea to have all previous enemy groups in the Kamen Rider series stop fooling around and join forces.\|\| - The Grand Finale Movie is a bit more open about this: \|\|Wataru Kurenai, the original universe Kamen Rider Kiva, tells the cast that Decade exists solely to be whatever the Rider worlds need him to be: hero or villain, savior or destroyer. He has no home and no story of his own, and therefore after he presses the Reset Button through Suicide by Cop, there's supposedly no way to bring him back.\|\| - Ayakashi Rakider Chinomanako Diend Form is this in Kamen Rider Decade's Intercontinuity Crossover with Samurai Sentai Shinkenger. A monster of Shinkenger's world with powers stolen from Kamen Rider Diend, with the Diend Driver in its possession. - The Kamen Rider franchise's Movie Wars films, which bring together the current and previous Rider casts, tend to make use of these. The most unusual examples come from Kamen Rider × Kamen Rider Wizard & Fourze: Movie War Ultimatum, which introduces modernized versions of several Shotaro Ishinomori characters including Inazuman (as Kamen Rider Fourze's student), Bishoujo Kamen Poitrine (as \|\|the Donut shop owner's "inner self"\|\| from Kamen Rider Wizard), and the Akumaizer 3 (the film's Big Bads). - Walter from The Muppets (2011) is a Muppet made for this movie. He is an interesting case as he was created for a single franchise (albeit jumping The Muppet Show continuity to the silver screen), rather than a crossover. - Twice Charmed gives Lady Tremaine a Wicked Fairy Godfather who helps her plan revenge on Cinderella. - Trope Namer and probably the example that stands out the most in fiction, due to sheer numbers, are the various characters that Banpresto made for their Super Robot Wars series, as well as other crossover games ( The Great Battle and Another Century's Episode, for example). Each game (excluding the first game and Super Robot Wars Compact) since Super Robot Wars 2 has added in new original heroes and villains, whose stories tend to link together the various licensed series in the game. The originals gained such a fandom that Banpresto made a Spin-Off series consisting of nothing but their original characters, called Super Robot Wars: Original Generation. This was convenient, as the lack of licensing issues made it possible to finally bring the series to international audiences for the first time. - The Original Generation games decidedly goes recursive, as a number of original characters were created just for these games. - And now the Super Robot Wars: Original Generation characters (At least Ryusei, Kyouske, and Masaki) have shown up in Another Century's Episode R, where they aren't treated as originals. Banpresto has found a way to make it go full circle. - Technically, the first Original Generation game was Super Robot Wars Gaiden, which predates Super Robot Wars: Original Generation by eight years. Unfortunately, its rather racy, risque dialogue sadly made this a No Export for You. - A Nintendo DS Action RPG, Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier, stars Alternate Universe versions of Super Robot Wars originals...along with the Namco × Capcom originals mentioned below and KOS-MOS from Xenosaga. Crazy, isn't it? The latter three are characters created by Monolith Soft, a co-developer with Banpresto for the game. - They also have a tendency to create new mechs and upgrades for already existing series. Among these are Great Zeorymer, Final Dancougar, and Mazinkaiser (the only one to become a Canon Immigrant). - In fact the \|\|Devil Gundam\|\|'s third True Final Boss form is an original design for Shin Super Robot Wars. - Two Original Generation mecha had started their lives out as figurines. The first is the Fei Yen Ver. HD, which was Fei Yen mixed with Hatsune Miku. The other is Mazin Emperor G, the long-awaited upgrade to the Great Mazinger. - In Kingdom Hearts, you have Sora and his friends to make the Heroes. There are a few other side characters, and then the Greater Scope Villains: the various incarnations of Xehanort, Organization XIII, and of course in general, The Heartless. Ultimately, the Kingdom Hearts games focus almost entirely on the original characters and their story, with the crossover elements being used as the backdrop for the world. - The King of Fighters started as a Massive Multiplayer Crossover with a handful of original characters, but has slowly evolved to the point that the originals nearly outnumber the crossover characters. It's gotten to the point that most fans don't complain about the Fatal Fury cast being downplayed in what used to be their tournament, but that the preceding original protagonist characters have always had the spotlight stolen from them by other original characters, since every major story arc so far has a different protagonist. In the case of the main games, Kyo Kusanagi had the spotlight stolen from him years earlier in KOF '99, with K', who in turn got it stolen by Ash Crimson. Since Ash was a Villain Protagonist, as well as rather effeminate, it only added to his unpopularity \|\|until it was revealed that Ash was always on the side of the heroes. A good part of the fandom forgave him after that.\|\| As of XIV, Ash has since been replaced by Shun'ei, who's more of a Nice Guy than the previous protagonists were. The 3D Maximum Impact Series take this further by having different protagonists, Alba and Soiree Meira. The GBA Spin-Off series The King of Fighters EX has several new characters who have never appeared in the series proper, such as Moe Habana (essentially Kyo's Distaff Counterpart), an Aloof Dark-Haired Girl named Miu Kurosaki, and an Action Dad named Reiji Oogami. - NeoGeo Battle Coliseum introduced two protagonists named Yuki and Ai, as well as an antagonist named Goodman. The Orochi clone Mizuchi may also count. - The Capcom vs. series: - The Japanese version of Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter had Norimaro, a fighter based on comedian Noritake Kinashi. - Marvel vs. Capcom 2 had Ruby Heart, Amingo, SonSon's granddaughter (also named SonSon), and the boss Abyss. - Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite has Ultron-Sigma, a combination of Ultron from The Avengers and Sigma from Mega Man X. \|\|He also transforms into a more powerful form called Ultron Omega for the final battle.\|\| - Capcom vs. SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium with Shin Akuma (as in "God Akuma", not "True Akuma") and God Rugal. These were slight twists on existing characters (Shin Akuma and Omega Rugal), but could only exist as part of the crossover, since their existence involves Rugal absorbing the Dark Hadou or forcing his Orochi power into Akuma. - SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos introduced Serious Mr. Karate and Violent Ken. The latter is based on the brainwashed Ken from Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, and has since become a Canon Immigrant. - Namco × Capcom brought in Reiji Arisu and Xiaomu, as well as Reiji's arch-nemesis Saya, all tied together by dimension-hopping shenanigans that gave an excuse for all the game settings (ranging from Ghosts 'n Goblins to Street Fighter to Soulcalibur to Xenosaga and even more) to be stitched together without too much scarring. - Cross Edge hosts a whole slew of new characters that are not from any of the games of the five companies that "Cross" it, including lead characters Kannagi Yuuto/York Neely and Aiba Mikoto/Miko Aiba. There's also Toya/Troy, Anesha, Judas, Lazarus, Augustine, Raizen, Vivi, Eruma/Mimi, and Iruma/Cece, who all seem to be part of a greater plot of gathering different "Souls" from different worlds, thus explaining why you see characters from Darkstalkers, Ar tonelico, the Atelier series, Spectral Souls, and Disgaea. - Capcom Fighting Evolution had Ingrid, who was later added into the PSP version of Street Fighter Alpha 3. She was supposed to debut in the canceled 3D fighting game Capcom Fighting All-Stars with two other characters: D.D. and Rook. - Shin from Street Fighter Online: Mouse Generation is the only character in the game who isn't from a prior Capcom game or another license. - Project × Zone, Spiritual Successor to Namco × Capcom, features Kogoro Tenzai and Mii Kouryuji, as well as the originals from the latter game and a couple originals from Super Robot Wars and the Endless Frontier spinoff. - The Super Smash Bros. series has a few: - Master Hand and Crazy Hand, most of the bosses, and the Fighting Polygons/Wire Frames/Alloys. Also of note, Master Hand crossed over into the Kirby games and gives Kirby his Smash Bros. Move set when copied. - While Giga Bowser is still technically Bowser, this extra-bestial form is unique to the Super Smash Bros. games, to the point where his series icon in Melee is the Smash Bros. insignia note : Master Hand, Crazy Hand, and the Wire Frames being the only others with this distinction and his spirit in Ultimate is listed under the Smash Bros. series while all the other Bowser spirits are labeled under the Mario series. - Super Smash Bros. Brawl: The story mode includes several examples of this: - The antagonists primarily consist of the all-original Subspace Army with its leader \|\|Tabuu\|\|. Notably, most of the playable characters are still entirely crossovers. (Although some receive traits unique to Smash Bros, like Mr. Game & Watch, who does not exist in his games. Instead, he is a Composite Character of all the Game & Watch handheld games. He is also \|\|the source of the aforementioned Subspace Army\|\|.) - The Subspace Emissary also has the Ancient Minister, \|\|who's actually a subversion. He's really R.O.B. And then double subverted, as R.O.B.'s characterization is unique for Smash.\|\| - Two other bosses from the Subspace Emissary, Galleom and Duon, are entirely original, although Duon's design at least was clearly inspired by Dialga and Palkia from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. - While the Mii Fighters are based off the Miis, they are considered original to Smash and thus use the Smash icon as their series logo, compared to stages and music from various Mii games which use the Mii logo instead. - The fourth installment introduces \|\|Master Core, the final Boss of the game's single player mode, which is spawned from Master Hand\|\|. - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has an Adventure Mode, "World of Light", with a new antagonist, Galeem, being the main threat. Later on, \|\|another enemy, Dharkon, appears as The Rival to Galeem, forming a Big Bad Ensemble\|\|. - Tales Series has the crossover series Tales of the World: Narikiri Dungeon. The first crossover game, Narikiri Dungeon 2 on the Game Boy Color, had Mel and Dio, an entirely too cute matched set of silver-haired chibis with the ability to dress up as classes or monsters. When the series made the jump to the GBA, the new protagonists were given the ability to assume generic classes... or to go the whole way and become the other characters they were fighting alongside. These also included villains, spirits, and cameos like Wada Don and Mr. Driller. Oddly, Pac-Man has not been a costume yet. - And with the Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology series, the three Kanonnos and the three flying creatures (Mormo, Paneer, and Rockspring), among other original characters. - Marvel Comics games tend to include these. Not counting Marvel vs. Capcom examples, listed above: - Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects has half the cast as originals, the title Imperfects, who were also intended to become Canon Immigrants. They didn't work out so well. - In a more successful example, Marvel: Contest of Champions has Guillotine (who ended up becoming a Canon Immigrant) and Morningstar. - Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 follows the rough plot of Civil War but eventually split offs into an original storyline when \|\|the nanites go rogue, creating a new villainous, viral Hive Mind intelligence known as the Fold. An evil cyborg Nick Fury being the closest thing the infection has for a figurehead effectively means they're more of an Original Generation concept\|\|. - For Captain America's 75th anniversary, all of Marvel's mobile titles debuted new alternate-universe versions of Cap. Two of the more notable ones were in Marvel Puzzle Quest, where Steve was assassinated and Peggy Carter became Captain America in his place; and Marvel Future Fight, where Steve never became a Fish out of Temporal Water and got to settle down with Peggy, and their daughter Sharon took up the mantle. Puzzle Quest's "Captain Carter" became popular enough to become a Canon Immigrant, appearing in both the comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. - Future Fight later debuted more original heroes; Luna Snow, a K-Pop Idol Singer with ice powers; Crescent, a martial artist Kid Hero who can summon a spirit bear named Io; and the Warriors of the Sky — Blue Dragon, War Tiger, Shadow Shell, and Sun Bird — a Multinational Team (specifically from various Asian countries) themed around The Four Gods. - Marvel Strike Force has Kestrel, a founder of S.T.R.I.K.E. who had gotten lost in the multiverse before finally making her way home and joining the rest of the heroes; Deathpool, the daughter of Deadpool and Death; and Spider-Weaver, a spider-themed Najavo mystic. - Midnight Suns features a new hero called the Hunter, a Hunter of Monsters and child of the demon Lilith. They're a way to involve Character Customization in what would otherwise be a team of pre-established Avengers. - Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe has Dark Kahn, a Greater-Scope Villain who could only be created due to the crossover, being the result of Darkseid and Shao Kahn being struck down by Superman and Raiden respectively as they were going to escape into dimensional portals while the universes were separate. All this happening at the exact same spot in time and space, thus merging them and the two universes. - Dengeki Gakuen RPG: Cross of Venus has a rare case of an unnamed original protagonist (and his (named) classmate), tying the various light novel series taken from the Dengeki magazine (including Shakugan no Shana, Bludgeoning Angel Dokurochan, Toradora!, Kino's Journey, A Certain Magical Index and Haruka Nogizaka's Secret among others) by forming a rag-tag party with their heroines in order to battle the Big Bad's Canon Defilement. - Ruru and Nowel from Magical Battle Arena, a doujin 3D battle game featuring the Magical Girls and female mages from Lyrical Nanoha, Cardcaptor Sakura, Slayers, and Magical Circle Guru-Guru. Kirara and Sarara are somewhere in between, coming from Magical Girl Kirara And Sarara, an H-game that's related to this. - The Nicktoons Unite! series has the Wise Old Crab as a rare case of a supporting original character (all of the playable characters are crossovers) and the Mawgu and Globulous Maximus as Big Bads (the other villains in the series are crossovers). - Takumi and Haruna of the Shin'i Organization and villainess Kuu in Battle Moon Wars. - The DS version of Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games has the Snow Spirits as a rare case of MacGuffin original characters. No such things are present in the Wii version. - .hack//Link features characters from many previous entries in the series (Kite, Pi, Haseo, Midori, Albreio and so on) due to the fact that this is a 3rd version of the The World. The main character and villains however are entirely new. - SD Gundam G Generation has a variety of original units which are Mobile Suit Variations (Prototypes which are handwaved to not exist in the anime). But the most prominent one is the Phoenix series of mobile suits which the Phoenix Gundam is said to be the strongest Gundam even in comparison to ∀ Gundam. Along with that is a set of original pilots which either is just meant to be filler or is part of a side story plot. - G Generation Wars play with this trope. You won't even aware of its existence until you unlock an EX mission, and it only appear in last two missions. Yet it turn out that events in the game was controlled by Generation System super computer. - And the Gundam Vs Series gives us the two Extreme Gundams, the pilot of one of which is voiced by GACKT. - Dissidia Final Fantasy has Cosmos as the Big Good and the guiding force driving the heroes to defeat Chaos. Chaos himself sorta counts as this too, as he's from Final Fantasy originally, but has been reinvented to the point the only real similarities between his original incarnation and his Dissidia incarnation is their physical appearances and name. The Final Fantasy I Chaos was a generic demon One-Winged Angel transformation for Garland— Dissidia's Chaos is a Physical God and the Greater-Scope Villain to all previous Big Bads. Note that it's still implied that he is in fact the Chaos from Final Fantasy seeing as rigorous time-and-dimension travel is explained to come into play through the reports in 012. Garland says that he and Chaos are the same thing in a cutsceen anyway. Despite Garland being The Dragon to Chaos in this game. - The Warrior of Light from Dissidia and other Final Fantasy crossovers, who represents the original Final Fantasy I, is based on the main Fighter class from the original Final Fantasy. Much like Chaos, the Warrior was reinvented so heavily he's a new character with the original name. - While he's arguably an Expy of St. Germain, newcomer Aeon is responsible for the events of Castlevania: Judgment. - The Mario Golf and Mario Tennis series included original characters in the Nintendo 64 version of Mario Golf, the Game Boy Color versions of Mario Golf and Mario Tennis, and Mario Golf: Advance Tour and Mario Tennis: Power Tour on Game Boy Advance. This allows players to have a decent selection of characters to choose between in the former, and enough rivals, opponents, as well as as Playable OC Stand Ins in the latter four. Both GBC games can transfer their playable characters and their stats to their respective N64 versions, and the GBA and GC golf games follow in their footsteps. - The Compati Hero Series, a Banpresto video game series which crossed Super-Deformed versions of Ultraman, Kamen Rider and Gundam, introduced a fourth hero in The Great Battle action game series called Fighter Roar. Roar is not a hero from any previous franchise, but a new character meant to represent Banpresto. - The Parodius games have always had a greater or lesser number of Konami charaters in their player character roster. In the initial games the only character unique to the series was the octopus known as Takosuke in later games, but from Gokujou Parodius onward the number of original characters, not counting Expys and Palette Swaps, grew steadily larger. - Rockman Xover, an iOS social game developed to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Rockman franchise, centers around a new Rockman named Over-1 who must rescue the other seven Rockman heroes. - Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed has a small example, one of the secret characters is \|\|a living Dreamcast VMU that morphs into vehicles from Sega's games\|\|. - Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey has the heroine, the pixie, the Bogs, and the Big Bad, \|\|Zara\|\|. - Persona: - Dynasty Warriors and its offshoots: - Hyrule Warriors, a crossover spinoff with The Legend of Zelda, has multiple characters from the Zelda series who are either playable or appear as bosses (or both). However, there are also a few original characters. One is Cia, the primary villain, a sorceress with a Villainous Crush on Link. She's supported by Wizzro, an evil ring that was reborn into a sorcerer of darkness (inspired by Zelda baddy Wizzrobe), and Volga, a Blood Knight who sold his soul to Cia in order to gain power (inspired by Volvagia, the dragon boss from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link). Also, on the side of the heroes, there's the Cute Witch Lana, who has some history with Cia. The Legends port adds an additional original character, a Distaff Counterpart of Link named Linkle. - The Fire Emblem crossover Fire Emblem Warriors has its own original characters: the main characters and heirs to the throne of Aytolis, Rowan and Lianna, their mother and current queen, Yelena, the king and prince of the Gristonne kingdom, Oskar and Darios, and the game's main threat, the Chaos Dragon \|\|Velezark\|\|. Only Rowan and Lianna are fully playable warriors, though Darios is a reoccurring NPC and \|\|Velezark is the Final Boss\|\|. - Warriors Orochi, a crossover between Dynasty Warriors and its sister series, Samurai Warriors, has a lot of its own new characters, the most notable of which being the titular Big Bad of the series, Orochi. Beyond him and his different forms are literal dozens of other characters based on various mythologies, from Nuwa and Fu Xi note : who originally debuted in Dynasty Warriors 3 before being wiped from the main series forever, presumably out of not wanting to stray too far from the source material all the way to Odin and Loki. - Warriors All-Stars, alongside its many characters from across Koei Tecmo's history, has three anthropomorphic characters named Tamaki, Shiki and Setsuna, whose ambitions to each seize the royal throne are what form the game's plot. - Fighters Megamix has Deku the anthropomorphic Mexican jumping bean(!), Sibe, URA Bahn, a fighting chunk of meat on the bone, and the AM2 palm tree amidst its roster of characters hailing from Virtua Fighter, Fighting Vipers, Sonic the Fighters, Virtua Cop, Rent A Hero, and even Daytona USA. - JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The 7th Stand User has several, including the protagonist and an all-new group of antagonistic Stand users known as the Slaves To Fate. Additionally, the game includes a secondary route starting where the protagonist \|\|is attacked by J. Geil instead of Abdul\|\| and reunites at the fight against Judgment. This route features a cast of all-new characters, with the exception of \|\|Hol Horse\|\|, as well as Stroheim and Speedwagon if you managed to find them earlier. - The one unifying character throughout the entire Dark Parables series is the Fairy Tale Detective, the player character, who must interact with the legendary characters of classic fairy tales and help them fix whatever is preventing them from reaching their Happily Ever After. There are also a handful of original characters among the fairy tale cast, but these are usually connected to the traditional stories in one way or another. - Yo-Kai Watch mainly uses actual Japanese youkai, however many are original characters. This is most obvious in the third game, where many of the "American yokai" are influenced by other material or are based on Eagle Land stereotypes. - The crossover game LEGO Dimensions gives us Lord Vortech, whose goal is to smash together the various LEGO universes to create his vision of a "perfect" world. We also get his former assistant X-PO and their homeworld Vorton, which contains portals to all the licensed universes. - There's also "Gamer Kid" who is original to the game's Midway Arcade world. - The game also features several alternate rebuild versions of existing fictional tools, weapons and vehicles such as the Laser-Pulse TARDIS and Proton Zapper (rebuilt from the Ghostbusters' Ghost Trap) that make use of the fact they are built from LEGO and thus can have their structures rearranged. - Heroes of the Storm makes up entirely new characters as heroes to represent fan-favourite units from Blizzard's real-time strategy franchises. As of late 2018, they also started adding "Nexus-born" heroes that are Original Generation for Blizzard as a whole, the two which were added to the hero roster being Orphea and Qhira. - Fire Emblem Heroes gives us Alfonse and Sharena on the heroes' side, as well as a new incarnation of Legacy Character Anna. On the villains' side, we have Veronica (who was even voted to have a Brave Hero variation), the Mysterious Man (real name \|\|Bruno\|\|), and \|\|a mysterious woman -a Goddess- named Loki\|\|. Book II introduces the Ice Kingdom Nifl, featuring Fjorm, Gunnthrá, \|\|Yglr, and Hríd\|\| as allies, and the Fire Kingdom of Múspell, featuring Surtr, Laegjam, and Laevatein as its royalty, as well as Helbindi and \|\|the aforementioned Loki\|\|, as the antagonists. Before the end of Book II, all of them became playable in various intervals. Likewise, Book III introduces \|\|Eir (who is a new playable Mythical hero), and her adoptive mother Hel as the royals of the Realm of The Dead, and Lif (a Bad Future version of Alfonse who lost his Sharena) and Thrasir (a similar version of Veronica) as her generals (which eventually became Mythical Heroes)\|\|. In Xenologue 5 (set between Books III and IV), \|\|Loki's fellow goddess, Thórr\|\|, is introduced as the Goddess of War and a prominent antagonist in modes such as Røkrr Sieges, Hall of Forms and Mjölnir's Strike, before becoming a Mythic Hero at the end of Book V. Book IV then introduces \|\|Peony, the Ljósálfar as its first Mythic Hero, her fellow Ljósálfar Mirabilis, and Freyr, Queen of Ljósálfheimr as allies; and Plumeria, Tiandra and Freja, Queen of the Dökkálfheimr as antagonists\|\|. Book V sees the apperances of \|\|Reginn, princess of Niðavellir as the respective first Mythic Hero, her stepbrothers Fafnir and Otr as initial antagonists, and Eitri as the true antagonist; as well as princesses Dagr and Nott as initial antagonists and later Mythical Heroes\|\|. Between Books V and VI, Nifl and Múspell, deities from their eponymus kingdoms, are properly introduced as new Heroes. And now, Book VI welcomes \|\|Ash, retainer of Askr as the first Mythic Hero; and leader of the Curse Directive Letzia from the royal family of Embla and Elm, retainer of Goddess Embla as antagonists\|\|. As with Nifl and Múspell, deities Askr and Embla from their respective kingdoms became Mythical Heroes before the end of Book VI. - World of Final Fantasy has new heroes Lann and Reynn, cute animal sidekick Tama, mysterious deity Enna Kros, and villains the Bahamutian Federation interacting with classic characters, monsters and settings from across the Final Fantasy series. - Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle has Beep-O, the avatar of the Supa-Merge headset, which is fused to a Rabbid (whom Bowser Jr. names "Spawny"). - Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE has EVERYONE who isn't a Mirage be original to the game. Even the shopkeeper who only looks a lot like Anna but isn't really her. - In Sailor Moon: Another Story, the sailors are up against the first three seasons of bad guys. The enemies are being resurrected by the Opposito Senshi, dark counterparts to the Inner Team, and their queen Apsu. - Kirara Fantasia introduces several original generation characters to assist the Manga Time Kirara heroines, most prominently the witch Kirara. All of the playable characters remain Kirara imports, though. - The console and Nintendo DS versions of Power Rangers: Super Legends both feature a character created for the game who never appeared in any of the Power Rangers shows. The character exclusive to the console version is the Future Omega Ranger, while the character exclusive to the DS version is the Guardian of the Hall of Legends. - Final Fantasy XI's final expansion Rhapsodies of Vana'diel is instigated by the arrival of Iroha, a sorceress claiming to be the Player Character's apprentice from a doomed timeline. She and the player then avert the apocalypse in a story that has cameos from nearly every other major character. - The majority of the teams in Mutant Football League are thorough parodies of real NFL teams, from their cities to their colors to their rosters, like the Scarolina Panzers/Carolina Panthers or Killadelphia Evils/Philadelphia Eagles. A handful, however, are completely original, namely the agile playmaking all-alien Galaxy Chaos, pass-happy all-robot Tokyo Terminators, the brutal (very nearly) all-orc Orcs of Hazzard, and the best team in the game, the Full Metal Mayhem. - Funko Pop! Blitz is primarily a crossover game due to the nature of the line it is based on, but there are a few cases of original franchises characters: - Freddy Funko is the mascot of the Funko company. He is given multiple variants as additions in the game, and is also the tutorial character. - The Fantastik Plastik characters are pre-Pop Funko characters that were given Pop designs. - The Wetmore Forest characters are part of the unique Funko Pop! Monsters subline. - The Pets are part of the unique Funko Pop! Pets subline. - The Peppermint Lane characters are from Funko's original line of Christmas Pops. - The Pop! Around the World series is from a Funko-exclusive brand of characters. - While Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled pools the vast majority of its roster from the greater Crash Bandicoot series, the Grand Prix events also add baby versions of Crash and Coco, and the brand-new King Chicken and Hasty (who is based on an old misconception regarding a "scrapped" Team Racing character). - Call of Duty: Mobile crosses over different characters from the franchise, particularly Modern Warfare Trilogy and the Black Ops series. However, there are also new characters created exclusively for the game, as well as changes of backstory to the older characters to fit the game's narrative. - Namco High: All of the romanceable characters are Namco (and Homestuck) property, with one exception: Cousin, the player character. In-universe, they are one of the cousins of the Prince from Katamari Damacy. They do not exist in the Katamari games and were created purely for the crossover. - Friday the 13th: The Game had Temporary Online Content based on a concept by Tom Savini: what if Jason Voorhess Escaped from Hell after going there instead of being revived by Freddy Krueger? Also, since Jason's mask never came off in Jason's Dead or when he was in Uber-Jason form, the game designed unmasked looks for those versions. - Similarly, Evil Dead: The Game had a skin designed by Savini for Ash Williams based on the idea of Ash, instead of winding up in the Middle Ages, being transported to the dimension where evil itself came from, being physically warped by the corruption there. - Warner Bros.' crossover platform fighter MultiVersus has Reindog, a Mix-and-Match Critter that was a royal guard for a kingdom destroyed by The Nothing during its initial expansion into the WB Multiverse. - Almost all the racers in Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour. Disney only allowed the developers to use Chip 'n Dale and Jiminy Cricket, forcing the developers to fill out the roster with ten new characters inspired by the park's attractions. - To represent Tetris, Puyo Puyo Tetris introduced the crew of the S.S. Tetra, its members based on the seven Tetriminos. There's also \|\|Ex\|\|, who represents the crossover of both franchises yet is tied closely to the Tetris representatives in backstory. The sequel introduced Marle and \|\|Squares\|\|, both of whom share design aesthetics of the Falling Blocks of both series. - Gundam: The Battle Master zigs-zags this, as while all of the mobile suits are ripped directly from the many anime series released up to the game's release, the pilots are all original characters co-existing in a pocket timeline not connected to any pre-established Gundam lore, such as the orphan bounty hunter Honey-B (pilots the ZZ Gundam), the no-nonsense federation officer Mercury Promenade (pilots the Zeta Gundam or RX-78), or the Ryu-parody Keiji Date (pilots the Hamma-Hamma or Nu Gundam). It's completely played straight with the Psycho Gundam Mk-III, which has yet to make a reappearance in any other Gundam media, made even more awkward as her pilot is the scorned woman Maria Nichols, who hijacked the Mobile Suit out of revenge. Needless to say, when The Battle Master 2 was brought over to the west as Battle Assault, they had to jump through a lot of hoops to justify its existence there, as all of the original cast members were scrapped in favor of using the official anime characters. - The Japanese-exclusive Tatsunoko Fight crosses over four of Tatsunoko Production's properties ( Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, Neo Human Casshern, Tekkaman, and Hurricane Polymar), as well an original property dubbed Denkou Senka Volter that hadn't existed before or after the game's release. There's also the main antagonist of Rosraisen, who isn't a part of Volter despite this fact. - Princess Lana and Kevin of Captain N: The Game Master serve two purposes. Princess Lana's storyline exists to create a single universe for all the crossovers to take place in along with a central plotline for the series to follow. Kevin exists to make sure that A) none of the other franchise characters is the star (which could piss off a licensee) and B) there was someone to appeal to the target audience of game-buying kids. Normally, he would also be there to ensure nobody's character got derailed, but, well... - (The Villain Whose Name Isn't) Shirley was literally created (in the most literal case of Create Your Own Villain ever) in the third The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour. - Reptil from The Super Hero Squad Show, who later immigrated to the mainstream Marvel universe. - Similar to Reptil, Evan Daniels/Spyke and Kaldur/Aqualad in their respective shows are series original characters, both with a number of similarities. They're both African Americans with blond hair, that were indirectly brought into the comics later but received vocal hatred from sections of the fanbase for reasons other than being series original. And, before all of them, Firestar in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, created because they couldn't get the copyright to use Johnny Storm. - The Warrior King was a character created for a crossover event that spanned all four shows in USA Network's "Xtreme Action Team" Saturday morning block: Street Fighter, The Savage Dragon, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm and Wing Commander. - When Rankin/Bass Productions welded several of its Christmas Specials to create Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July they wound up creating several new characters. Most notable is a Big Bad named Winterbolt, a wizard who ruled the North Pole before Santa arrived. He worked with two lesser villains, a Jerkass businessman and an Evil Counterpart for Rudolph who had not actually existed in his previous specials. - While Pibby is a Crisis Crossover between numerous Cartoon Network properties, the main characters (the titular Pibby, Alloy Boy, and Melira) were all created for the show.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalGeneration
Original Flavour - TV Tropes Said of a Fanfic that attempts to emulate the tone, atmosphere and style of its inspiration as closely as possible. The goal of the Original Flavour fic is to seem as though the original production team could have thought it up. Even if it heads off into previously unknown and unexplored territory for that property, the story will emphasize the use of existing gimmicks and devices rather than introducing totally foreign ones. If you are writing an Original Flavour fic, you (usually) don't introduce or kill core characters, revise continuity, or do anything that is non-canon beyond the events of your story. To an extent, it is possible to pull these off and still maintain this trope, but only if it's in a way that the canon itself could have evolved (as opposed to anything drastic). Original Flavor is exactly like writing a spec script you could submit to the showrunner, but not necessarily in script form. Note that some fandoms, especially those with looser story arcs, are easier to write in Original Flavour than others. It's also more popular for works with a distinctive style of writing and/or dialogue, as this is a particularly easy element to imitate. If the original work was Cut Short, anyone would be glad to read how the rest of the series could have played out if a fanfiction continuation assumes this trope. Original Flavour has been the direct polar opposite of most other Fan Fic types at one time or another. Because of the widespread prevalence of labyrinthine Fix Fic and florid Shipping, Original Flavor can be incredibly rare. Fun is also found in a self-imposed challenge to see how far a writer can go out of the lines without technically deviating from "canon", without becoming an overt Elseworld. For when this treatment is done for individual characters rather than entire stories, see Sailor Earth. For fanfics that take this up a notch, see Script Fic. Frequently overlaps with Pseudo-Canonical Fic. Cousin trope of Spiritual Licensee, in which a brand new work or franchise attempts to emulate an existing one, due to appreciation for what the latter was as a whole, and could be considered a symbolic installment for that franchise. ## Examples: - Future Reunion is a fan comic based on the manga Sailor Moon. The artist's style in both artwork and storytelling ability is near identical to the original work. - It has been commented on that the the alternate versions of the non-Arc-V characters that show up in Arc-Ved Protagonists make perfect since for how they exist in an Arc-V setting and that they are still true to their original selves despite the new settings they are put in. - Death Note has If It's Not Me, It's You, a Gen Fic that has been praised for it's very canon-like plot, mind games and excellent, IC characterization. - In Manga-ish form, the french comic, Magical Fami fanfic of Ojamajo Doremi, by Alexandre JBOMagical follows the exact same formula as the original counterpart. It is to a point that it has enough material and is so close to the original it could be adapted into a ~26 episode sequel of the original and most wouldn't notice. - Iron Touch closely mimics the tone and plot structure of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, specifically Part 3 and Part 5. The author often refers to it as a fan part rather than a straight fanfiction for this reason. - Rob "Kenko" Haynie's Girl Days is an excellent Original Flavour Ranma ½ fic. - Neon Genesis Evangelion RE-TAKE has the same sort of occasionally Mind Screw-ey plot as the original Evangelion, the art is as good or BETTER than the canon source, the characters are all perfect, and the \|\|eventually happy\|\| ending is completely believable, taking into account the characters and the situation. Asuka fans consider it to be the true continuation and ending of End of Evangelion, while others feel conflicted about the plot direction it takes, particularly some very graphic sex scenes (in the unedited version) and plot details towards the ending. Original Flavour may not always be a good thing, especially when it's based on an already divisive series. - Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, while not a Doujinshi like ReTake, is also an alternate universe fic which shows an impressive attention to detail on the part of the author. It is written as a Alternate Universe continuation that picks up where Episode 24 left off, but going in a different direction than Episode 25 and 26, and The End of Evangelion, and is essentially written as the second season of the show that never was. The writer has also commented that he even deliberately attempted to be vague on some of the same elements that the show was (such as the more metaphysical stuff). - The White Dog for an Inuyasha Original Flavour fic. - Talya Firedancer's Gravitation fanfics were explicitly written to read like a typical script taken from the anime. - Online Fan Fic pioneer Ryan Mathews once participated in a hoax wherein an unfinished Dirty Pair fanfiction was released on Usenet as the purported "transcript" of a lost OVA. Apparently, it was Original Flavour enough for those who read it — the record shows some of the readers engaged in several weeks of frantic research. - The Haruhi Suzumiya fanfic entitled The Love Affair of Nagato Yuki (whose title doesn't prepare you for the various surprises inside—well, except one), received various praises comparing it with both the series and the novels. - Neko Love Hina is a take on the Love Hina franchise by Kytranis that aims for humor with every chapter. - Dragon Ball Multiverse is a webcomic with an art style in the tournament chapters very similar to official art from Dragon Ball, Akira Toriyama. However, later chapters have been drawn by several different artists, each putting their own spin on certain facial expressions. - The Hetalia: Axis Powers fic An Incident and Jerusalem/Increments of Jerusalem play out (for the most part) like a classic Sherlock Holmes story, going so far as to capture Sir Arthur C. Doyle's narrative style. This stays consistent all throughout, even as \|\|Arthur casually outwits Holmes.\|\| - This Pendent Heart is a Princess Tutu fanfic stunningly similar to the tone of the original show, even despite being overtly shippy at times (it helps that the anime is, after all, a Shōjo work). It also ties together and expands on a few plot threads, while continuing to develop the characters. - The Elemental Chess Trilogy, a series of Fullmetal Alchemist fanfics, was intended to be this. It apparently succeeded, since a few reviewers questioned whether the author was really Hiromu Arakawa writing under a fake name. - Spreading Their Wings and Another New World are two Robotech fanfics that follow the style and canon of the series. - Mado of Stone Mil is a great Haibane Renmei original flavour that takes place a little after the events of the anime. - Of Science and Magics is one for the A Certain Magical Index franchise, with Touma becoming childhood friends with Mikoto. - Meet Nadeshiko, a Shugo Chara! fanfic. It starts out as a generic rimahiko fanfic, but as the story progresses, it becomes a great sequel to the series. - bebop-aria's ''Left Eye'' is a brilliant Cowboy Bebop fic assembled from still photos in the anime series. It is a mature, detailed outline of Spike, Vicious, and Julia's lives pre-Bebop that ties together some of the series' unresolved plot points, and provides a deeper look into the trio's characters. - There were several light novels based on JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, with one of them being commissioned by Hirohiko Araki himself, but by far the most popular one for its faithfulness would be Purple Haze Feedback, which serves as an epilogue to Part 5 whilst also tying it back to previous parts and expanding on loose plot threads that were left open to interpretation. Readers have praised the novel for retaining the wacky, yet comprehensive narrative that JoJo is known for, to the point of having some kickass action scenes described in words only. It also helps that it focuses on Pannacotta Fugo, whom Araki regrets not having done more with, and although he didn't write it, Araki contributed some really nice art to PHF. - A Cluster of Stars. Especially recommended for people who want more of what Lucky Star itself could have offered. - Unlucky Black Holes, about what kinds of Witches the Lucky Star girls would become if they were fallen Magical Girls in Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Despite being not only a crossover, but only one by borrowing the concept of witches from Madoka-verse, it does a fine job capturing the essence of witches. One reviewer even commented that it would be interesting to see everything described in each Witch's profile in the spinoff game Grief Syndrome. - Warrior's Secret reads like a somewhat darker, but still true-to-canon continuation of the Kirby anime. Unsurprising, because the author was also the main translator for the anime's fansub, and thus knows the canon quite well. - This is one of the main goals of Kirby of the Stars: The After Story for the Kirby series. Since this story is a crossover of the games and the anime, both the anime and the game canons are taken into account, and the chapters read very much like anime episodes (albeit with more lengthy story arcs in mind as opposed to being episodic). - Despite being a case of Rule 34, one particular Gintama H-doujin kept all the hallmarks of the series without a break in character. It's even done in a Two Shorts format like earlier seasons of the anime; the iconic shot of the Odd Jobs building is used as a faux-Sexy Discretion Shot while Gintoki and Kagura yell dirty phrases to get the reader away, Shinpachi chastises the pair for making the audience read that, and the pair do a small spiel on how the words matter more than the actions as a coverup for being lazy. The second part involves a wave of "dick slasher" cases in Kabuki-cho, to which Gintoki and Shinpachi turn to Kyuubei to protect them from the perp. - Life with Fumi: A Yo-kai Watch AU is a Yo-Kai Watch fic based on the episode where Whisper enters an Alternate Universe where Katie received the Yo-kai Watch instead of Nate. In it, Whisper ends up back in the universe and must work with Katie (known by her Japanese name "Fumi") now. - Pokémon: - The main draw of Pokémon Story: Sinnoh Journey. It reads like an actual Pokémon Contest episode from start to finish. \|\|The extra chapters deviate from canon when Tobias and Darkrai are Adapted Out, but even then, it still reads a like logical, unofficial conclusion to Ash's Sinnoh conference without them\|\|. - The sequel, Pokémon: Nova and Antica, continues the trend to an impressive degree. It's your standard travel-to-a-new-region story following Ash as the protagonist, but with many twists, alongside an overarching Myth Arc, that lives up to its aim of combining the new with the old. The Tenla Region and its Pokémon sound like stuff from the games. - Revenge of the Old Queen is a cleverly written fanfic for the The Rocky Horror Picture Show. - The Joker Blogs. Barring the Mythology Gags, everything is as Original Flavor to The Dark Knight Trilogy as can be. This is multiplied to the nth degree considering the Joker's characterization, and his performance is so good that a lot of commenters jokingly(?) think that Heath Ledger has come back from the dead. - The Disney fanfic Lost Tales of Fantasia, despite being deliberately darker than a typical Disney movie, still imitates the usual Disney format by excluding swearing and sex and having regular musical numbers. - San Tropez by Breakinglight11 is a Cabin Pressure fan fic designed to be like just another episode of the series. Not only does it fit in with the continuity, the voices of the characters and the style of humor are a very close imitation of how original author John Finnemore writes them. San Tropez is even written in audio drama script format. - Eleutherophobia sticks as close to K. A. Applegate's writing style and tone as possible, mimicking Animorphs' balance of the hilarious, heart-wrenching, and horrifying. - Not He Who Tells, an original short story written in the style of Stephen King. The author is G. Norman Lippert, who has also written a Harry Potter continuation series. - Alice Through the Needle's Eye is a Fan Sequel to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that perfectly mimics Carroll's style. - Peter Pan and the Only Children is a Fan Sequel to J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, that perfectly mimics Barrie's style - Rich Drushel added to Bored of the Rings parodies of The Lord of the Rings's Appendix A and Scouring of the Shire. The latter is intended to be fitted into the text between the final two chapters. - Emperor's Ward: A Ciaphas Cain Story captures the style of the Ciaphas Cain yarns nigh-perfectly. - Though it starts out roughly, The Clone Wars: Commando's Dirge winds up having several readers proclaiming it not only tastes just like Karen Traviss' Republic Commando Series (without all the Jedi-bashing, too), it seamlessly brushes against a chapter of Triple Zero, without changing the scene at all. - Astrokath has a particularly good take on the events shortly after Dragonsdawn in Dragon Days. - In which Frank Herbert's ellipses are severely abused: Good Surprises. - The Ollivander Children attempts to write in the style of the later Harry Potter books, or that failing, some of the best fanfiction—such as seen Harry Potter and the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus and Interwoven. - The North Remembers for A Song of Ice and Fire, so much that many of the reviewers were claiming that the author Silverblood was George R. R. Martin himself. - A.A. Pessimal's work in the Discworld and Good Omens fanfic universes is essentially Original Flavour fan fiction. Even when introducing and elaborating on concepts which have not yet appeared in the canon, Pessimal is at pains to explain they are firmly rooted there and will show his working. For instance, "Rimwards Howondaland"—a Discworld expy of South Africa—is kind of there in the canon, as he collated eight or nine clear hints in the published books that point to its existence. Terry Pratchett just hasn't developed it past those few hints and throwaway jokes. Noting, not unreasonably, that originally the Discworld Australia was no more than three or four throwaway gags which paved the way for its later introduction, Pessimal felt at liberty to introduce Southern Africa to the Discworld. The author also focuses on bit-part players and incidental characters in the canon, some of whom have not even had one line yet, as so much more can be creatively done with them. - Word of God is that Pessimal thought he was taking a big liberty by introducing the land of Aceria (with its Eagleland-like Lower States) to the Disc, as Pratchett had famously decreed that no part of the Disc should evoke any part of North America. And then, the posthumously published The Compleat Discworld Atlas introduced the Discworld's Canada/USA, called "The Great Outdoors"— exactly in the blank space on the Mapp where Pessimal put his Aceria... - Averted with the Screwtape Letters fanfic Screwtape's New Secretary (which is Rule 34 and therefore NSFW), but a review of the fic fits the trope. My dear Snaremouth, When that fool Blargrot allowed his patient to get his hands on thirty-one of the letters I had written to the idiot Wormwood, it was a serious intelligence fiasco . Imagine my elation, then, to learn that you got your own patient to write porn of it. It is a clear sign that your patient has completely missed the point . That said, did you really need to include ME in it? Your affectionate mentor, Screwtape - General consensus in the Worm fandom is that very, very few fics are able to successfully emulate the tone and style of canon. Cenotaph is one of the few considered to succeed, and is among the most celebrated and notable because of it. - Diary of a Wimpy Kid has an entire genre of original flavour fics thanks to the r/LodedDiper subreddit, called "Looks Like Books" (L.L.B.s for short). Like the title implies, they take great pains to make their fanfics look like the original books, down to the text, journal paper, and art style. - Geraldine Brooks's March is a Pulitzer Prize-winning take on Little Women from the perspective of patriarch Mr. March, who is offscreen for most of the original novel. The whole book is written in a sort of 19th-century style meant to emulate Alcott. - The one-shot The Road Built in Hope doesn't stray that far from Land of Oz canon, aside from some references to romance (lesbian romance, at that) and American politics that you wouldn't normally see in the series. - The Animorphs fanfic The Wheel reads just like one of K. A. Applegate's books, accurately channeling Marco's POV. - The Ace Attorney sprite comic Kristoph Gavin: Ace Attorney does a very good job of emulating the original's style. - The longer the Super Mario World romhacking scene sticks around, the more its participants rely on different graphics, new music, and unusual game mechanics in order to make their creations stand out from the pack. Return to Dinosaur Land, on the other hand, is a hack consisting almost entirely of levels that could have been in the original game. These sort of hacks are usually referred to as "vanilla" hacks by other members of the scene. - The Oswald Adventures are direct spiritual successors to the Epic Mickey series. - Screennameless's Gears of War fanfic Reconnoiter is praised for its borderline obsessive maintenance of the canon character's personalities even as new characters are introduced. - The whole purpose of the Tomb Raider Level Editor project Back to Basics 2009 — all levels must be built with only the resources given when the editor was released to the public nine years ago. - Silent Hill: Promise attempts to faithfully create a full Silent Hill game as an interactive web comic. - Neutronium Dragon's Sojourn would make a dark (and relatively short) installment of Quest for Glory, but as a story, it would fit right in — out-of-left-field goofy moments included. - Til the Sun Grows Cold and the Stars Grow Old is written with this trope in mind; it was intended to be so close to canon that it could be read almost as a novelization of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. - The Joy of Battle: Historical Espionage Action is a Metal Gear Solid 3 fanfic that presents the adventures of the Cobra Unit in a similar style to a Metal Gear game. The story does not change any of the existing canon and includes the Once Per Game torture scene as well as a prison escape, dramatic "ultimate weapon" reveal, and quirky villains. The main break from the style of the Metal Gear games is a non-linear plot. - Between Minds by 3theCaptain is one for the Half-Life and Portal universe. "If all goes according to plan, this story will not interfere at all with the canon material." - Pokémon: - Edan R. wrote a series known as Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Legendary & Ancient Discoveries. - While a number of Pokémon hacks shoot for ambitious story telling, changes to the overall badge collecting formula, or otherwise veer off the very narrow design concept of the main series, the Emerald and FireRed hacks Altair, Sirius, and Vega are designed to mirror the main games in every way, from the stat spreads of their new Pokémon down to the style of music, trainers, and towns. About the only thing that's out of place from the typical games is the last of the three hacks' extreme difficulty, and their choice of an eighth Gym Leader. - Tales From Tamriel does this with Skyrim. - There's a short one for CLANNAD: Whenever You're Ready by InfinityOrNone. Despite being about the Official Couple having their first night of marital bliss, it manages to be rated T. - Hitman Miami is an unusual example, as it is a text fanfiction of a video game and attempts to convey the feeling of actually playing a Hitman game. It is written like a walkthrough, with each chapter being a different mission, the plot being advanced in "cutscenes". - Night of the Vent: A Tale of Weirdness does its best to capture some of the fear and paranoia of Five Nights at Freddy's 3. However, in this case the guard didn't realize there wasn't very much to be upset about in this situation. - Interstitium is filled with scenes that easily fit within Mass Effect 2, and the flashbacks and Character Focus just as easily fit in the Mass Effect setting as a whole. - Many of the Game Mods for the original 1993 Doom are "episode replacements", level packs which emulate the look and feel of one of the original game's episodes. - Some Touhou Project fanfics fall into this: - Touhou Tonari: Does this in the attempt to shed some light on Yuyukos backstory. - The same applies to Though the Wind Cries but focusing on Suwako, Kanako and Sanae. - Diamond in the Rough (Touhou) provides an absolute Deconstruction of the Gappy Stu archetype simply by using nothing else than Touhou canon. - This original soundtrack is designed to capture the essence of the MSX Gradius games' soundtracks. - Mario & Luigi: Cleanup Crew: The artist has claimed that the comic is actually his concept of a game for the Mario & Luigi series. - The Elder Scrolls: - Tamriel Rebuilt, a massive Game Mod for Morrowind, seeks to recreate the rest of the province of Morrowind (despite Morrowind's title, it restricts the action to the island of Vvardenfell), while adhering as closely to the official lore as possible (or more accurately, official lore around the time of Morrowind, to stick closer to the style and feel of Morrowind and not have to worry about integrating retcons from later games), aiming to feel more like an official Expansion Pack, than a game mod. The associated Project Tamriel mods aim to create other Tamrielic provinces in the same spirit, although the "around the time of Morrowind" clause can obscure it for people familiar with the Cyrodiil of Oblivion and the Skyrim of Skyrim. - In a similar vein to Tamriel Rebuilt, there is also the massive multi-team Game Mod, Beyond Skyrim for Skyrim, which seeks to recreate most of the continent of Tamriel, (and even a few places beyond) for the player to explore. Like Tamriel Rebuilt, developers of the different mods have it as their stated goal to stick as closely as possible both to to the official lore and the style of Skyrim to ensure that the mods integrate more or less seamlessly with the base game and appear like they could be official DLC. One of the project's stated tenets is also to not make or introduce any significant changes to Skyrim's core gameplay, but keep it as close to vanilla as possible. - Resident Evil: The Progenitor Chronicles sticks very close to the themes of the games. The finales of the first 2 volumes are straight survival horror. The finale of the third volume is way more action-focused, which ironically mirrors the evolution of the series from 1 to 6. - Heroes of Might and Magic III: One of the Horn of the Abyss Game Mod's main selling points is closely sticking to the aesthetic and lore of the original game while still adding tonnes of new content. The first new town, Cove, is a Pirate faction that fits well into the Fantasy Kitchen Sink world. Story-wise, it represents the island nation of Regna, which could only previously be shown as the unfitting Castle or the equally unfitting Stronghold. The second town, Factory, is a recontextualizing of the scrapped sci-fi Forge, instead going for a Cattle Punk theme that fits into the game better. It adopts the lore of a faction discovering super-advanced tech, but instead of cyborgs and laser guns it's steampunk and revolvers. - There are many, many Homestuck-derivative fanworks. However, probably the most Original Flavor of them all is Housetrapped, which carefully copies the art style of the original with different characters, and which is being used as the basis for a fan-game. - Secret Agent Men strives for this in its approach to the series that inspired it, Niels. - In A Shadow of the Titans, a Jackie Chan Adventures and Teen Titans crossover, and a part of the collection of fics referred to as Project Dark Jade, it has been commented that both Jade and the TT characters are kept very much in character. - Avatar: The Last Airbender has Lost in Translation, which makes up a fairly realistic origin myth that all the four nations would know... and then creates a new version for the fire nation under Fire Lord Ozai's rule. - Some of the later works of JBERGES in the Futurama Fan Fic community read exactly like a canon episode, only with the science and math gags turned up to 11. Of Mice and Mensans is probably the best-written example, despite being Script Fic. - Though she dislikes being recognized for only this, The Illustrious Crackpot did one of the best Phineas and Ferb fanfics in the entire fandom: The Great Danville Cold Wars. - The Stepbrother Sitch and all its follow-up stories are as close to Kim Possible and Phineas and Ferb as possible, with plenty of Lampshade Hanging, Continuity Nods (possibly bordering on Continuity Porn at times), and some thoughts on various pieces of Canon Fodder. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fics tend to try to follow series formula: - Most Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers fanfics try for something close to this, but remove the 80s cartoon censorship. - The Ben 10 Hero High Series pretty much reflects the first episode but then goes off in an entirely new story line with strong character development and stories. - Ezra Lost, a Star Wars Rebels fanfiction. It doesn't hug to canon completely, as it was in the progress of being written before the second season began to air, but the alternate things that occur rather than canon are relatively reasonable. - Although some could be interpreted as Fix Fic, this author tends to get the Scooby-Doo formula down pat. - Many feel that the Danny Phantom series Facing the Future Series fits the tone so good that they feel it's an unofficial fourth season. - The Meg's Family Series reads a lot like actual Family Guy episodes, minus the Meg bashing. - Young Justice: Darkness Falls. This is a tricky example, as it breaks so many rules of original flavor what with introducing new characters, tricked out plot twists that upends parts of Young Justice's premise and shifting character focuses. And YET, so many of the readers say that what was created would serve as a suitable conclusion to Greg Weisman's vision for the show with villain intrigue, tapping into the deeper DC universe, revised character origins and the same kind of espionage and tricks as the show but in different ways. - Unlike many Kim Possible fanfics which like to ramp up the drama, The More Things Change Series has the feel of the actual series, with each story being like an actual episode. - Gets Wrecked is a Dark Fic of The Magic School Bus that reads more like an Unexpectedly Dark Episode. In it, the bus gets into a car crash while coming back from a field trip and Ms. Frizzle gets Identity Amnesia. - Though Mortal Man tackles the unexpected subject matter of death, the story still feels a lot like an episode of the show, albeit a Very Special Episode. - Zootopia: A Tail of Two has been regarded as having the definite feel of the original Zootopia movie. - Being a continuation of the Beetlejuice cartoon, Cinderjuice and (to a slightly lesser extent) its sequels are intended to emulate the nonsense and color of the source material while also having a coherent plot. - Total Drama Legacy hews very close to the style and structure of the Total Drama series. Each chapter of the fic is structured like a TV episode, even having a designated point where the theme song would play. Several staples of the series, like the outhouse confessional, the marshmallow ceremony, alliances, and dangerous challenges, are all present. - The Simpsons: Team L.A.S.H., written by Total Drama Legacy co-author FlamingMercury5, also hews very close to its source material's style and structure with each chapter being analogous to an episode, but does Legacy one better by being a straight-up Script Fic. - Both A Dash of Logic and Marooned in Madagascar by WDGHK very much aim to recapture the comical tones and writing styles of SpongeBob SquarePants and All Hail King Julien respectively. - Child of the Storm, despite being a Mega Crossover is particularly noted for keeping many of the various characters very much in character (so long, that is, as their backgrounds remain broadly the same. Outside of canon Harry Potter and Avengers characters, there are few that haven't had a little spin put on them) while those chapters from the point of view Harry Dresden are regarded as being downright uncanny in their mimicking of the original author's Signature Style. - This author seems to have a taste for Original Flavour. Besides for a few quirks, most of the stories are obvious (but apparently highly effective) attempts at writing actual episodes. - The Man with No Name somehow manages to be Original Flavor to both Firefly and Doctor Who, despite the two series having widely varying tones (though granted, Doctor Who itself has widely varied its tone over the decades). - This is the entire point of the "Sbubby" meme (which has an entire sub dedicated to it on Reddit). Take a logo, poster, or box art and cleanly rearrange the letters so it looks like its saying something completely different (usually gibberish, though more coherent words phrases are just as common) while still visually resembling the original. - Fantasy of Utter Ridiculousness, a crossover between Megas XLR and Touhou Project, has been noted to fall into this category. One of the author's stated intentions when writing the story was to adhere as closely as possible to the source material for both series, evading most of the memes and fanon associated with Gensokyo and its residents. The end result looks as if it falls squarely into Megas's canon, while simultaneously having the feel of one of Touhou's supplementary manga. - A Peaceful Afterlife: The author does an impressive job of keeping the tone of both series than comprise it, namely Hazbin Hotel and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. The majority of the story keeps with the debauched, comical nature of Hazbin, but the fights manage to incorporate the Outside-the-Box Tactics and Indy Ploys of JoJo. - Somehow, Cross Cases manages to feel like a perfect combination of installments of both Supernatural and The Dresden Files at the same time. The sections written from Harry's POV align perfectly with his narrative voice in canon, and the plot is paced well and twisty enough to feel like an actual Dresden novel, with even the length, number of chapters, and timescale falling within normal range for the series. And on top of that, the sections from the perspective of any of the Supernatural-side characters hew closely to their canon characterizations and somehow manage to feel like an episode of Supernatural whose events slot in well with both the ending of Season 10 and the start of Season 11, without ever once feeling out-of-place with the sections mimicking a Dresden novel. There's only one OC of note- the main antagonist -and even they fit nicely into the canon of Dresden, complete with their history with the protagonist being something that could totally be present in canon. It's quite remarkable to see. - Though there are some things about the series that are different from the main canons that make up the crossover, the author of Tokimeki PokéLive! and TwinBee sticks as closely to the source material as possible regarding the battle mechanics, which follow those used in the Pokémon games closely as well as the overall tone of the series being just as dark as Pokémon media outside the anime can be at times like the games, Pokémon Origins and Pokémon Generations and as action packed and filled with Shocking Moments as a Shonen anime/manga while also keeping the general lighthearted atmosphere and focus on School Idols that Love Live! has normally as well as the romantic atmosphere of Tokimeki Memorial! - Equestria Girls: A Fairly Odd Friendship: The story is intended to be an authentic combination of both the moods and humor of EG and FOP. - The crossover fic My Hero School Adventure Is All Wrong As Expected is very original flavor for the the My Hero characters and even matches the original works Shout Outs to Star Wars. - The New Teen Titans Play The Muppet Show is written out like a normal episode of The Muppet Show, with the Teen Titans playing the part of the celebrity guests.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalFlavor
Orgy of Evidence - TV Tropes Are we really supposed to accept that all of this came from a 120 lb woman? Danny Witwer: I worked homicide before I went federal. This is what we call an orgy of evidence. You know how many orgies I had as a homicide cop? Officer Fletcher: How many? Danny Witwer: None. This was all arranged. A common tactic for fictional criminals (especially murderers) is to plant false clues at the scene of their crime, either to deliberately frame someone else or merely to throw suspicion away from themselves. Sometimes, however, they take things too far and the sheer amount of clues they plant has the opposite effect. No detective will believe that any criminal could be so careless as to leave that much incriminating evidence behind. He may also be suspicious because his investigation seems to be turning up all this evidence far more quickly and easily than is usual for this kind of case. Alternately, the quantity of evidence isn't the problem; the problem is the plausibility of the EXISTENCE of the evidence, or the investigator's ability to find the purported evidence (the latter usually leads to either a Detective Mole or a The Bad Guys Are Cops situation, although that can be avoided in the case of evidence that shows up after a thorough search in a place already searched). In Real Life, of course, this is unlikely to work as it does in fiction. note : i.e. in Real Life, the police will likely fall for it. Any defense made in court that "I wouldn't be that stupid" is completely hopeless. Even if you prove to the court that you have an IQ of 200, any cop will have seen so many Stupid Crooks leave ridiculous amounts of evidence that they're likely to believe you did the same. The reason in fiction that the detective doesn't believe the evidence is generally that the detective is very experienced; the amount of evidence they find is so disproportional to the norm that it not only strikes them as unusual but implausible. That's why they start to suspect that it was planted deliberately. A Signature Item Clue may be what is used in these. If it does end up leading back to the real culprit, see Revealing Cover Up. Compare and contrast Suspiciously Clean Criminal Record, which looks suspicious because it's overwhelmingly exonerating, and Absence of Evidence, where the lack of evidence is in itself suspicious. See also Never the Obvious Suspect. If you're looking for that kind of orgy, then Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter. ## Examples: - In Assassination Classroom, Nagisa sees reports of a yellow man stealing women's underwear across town and he and his classmates confront Koro-sensei. While attempting to prove his innocence, Koro-sensei inadvertently reveals bras lying around his office and a list of all his female students' cup sizes. After he leaves in humiliation, Karma points out that the evidence against their teacher is far too damning to be simple sloppiness and that Koro-sensei would never do anything that would risk losing his students' respect. As it turns out, \|\|Shiro planted the evidence to lure Koro-sensei into a trap trying to catch the real culprit, who is actually a decoy in a motorcycle helmet. At the scene of the crime, Koro-sensei is ambushed by Itona for one final chance to assassinate him\|\|. - On the Coreline short story Coreline: A Tale Of Two Maris, this is the particular issue that occurs with a murder investigation on Indianapolis, the (apparent) work of a version of Mari Illustrious Makinami (with the powers of Captain America, who has been trained by Captain America, and with extensive knowledge of Supernatural Martial Arts) that has gone rogue. The police suspect that it is Mari because all of the murders have been done with moves which are unique to her, while the members of The Champions (a Corporate-Sponsored Superhero team) that have taken up the assignment to investigate believe that it's not her because they assume that someone who has been trained as extensively in covert operations as Mari has would have access to other methods of assassination that would not lead back to her, and thus she's being set up. \|\|The Champions end up being right — the one doing the set-up being an evil version of Mari with the powers of the Taskmaster, who can easily copy anything the other Mari does, especially martial arts moves.\|\| - In the first Mary Russell novel, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, the mastermind leaves behind a plethora of evidence in the cab as a deliberate taunt to Holmes. - Played with in Black Man. The main court-admissible evidence of someone's presence at the crime scene is "genetic trace", which is unique for every person. Merrin's rampage across the US countryside leaves one orgy after another. The trick is, \|\|if it's a genetically engineered supersoldier that just happened to have an identical twin in a freak development of the already-modified egg, they would leave identical traces...\|\| - Discussed in Anthony Boucher's The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars. When someone questions why Harrison Ridgely is so ready to call attention to anything that makes him look guilty, the police officer sighs "It's an old trick to make the case against yourself so black an investigator will automatically disregard it. Trouble is, it so seldom works." - In The Clue of the Screaming Woman by Erle Stanley Gardner, the killer attempts to frame a local recluse for a murder. However, believing Sheriff Eldon to be a doddering old fool, he badly overplays his hand. - The Continental Op story "The Tenth Clew" note : "Clew" is an archaic spelling of "clue" — the eponymous clue being that the other nine are bogus. - Discworld: - Deliberately invoked in Jingo where a vast amount of stereotypical evidence implicating Klatch in a murder is planted (Vimes notes that the only thing missing is the camel under the pillow) as the Klatchian ambassador realizes this will cause Sam Vimes to look everywhere except Klatch for the killers. It works flawlessly on Vimes because he's (justifiably) cynical about his own people; it fails to work on his Klatchian counterpart, as he's (justifiably) cynical about his own people... (It also fails to work on Sergeant Colon, who just takes it at face value.) - Lampshaded in Feet of Clay. Vimes states that he instinctively distrusts clues because "you could walk around with a pocketful of the things." - Enchanted Forest Chronicles: In book 2 ( Searching for Dragons), King Mendanbar finds a section of the Enchanted Forest burned down with a bunch of dragon scales scattered around. When he (sensibly) goes to the witch Morwen for advice, she figures out that the scales have been planted to make it look like a group of dragons did it- the scales were magically made different colors because no two dragons are exactly the same color (But Morwen also knows that scales from different dragons have different shapes, and these ones are identical), there's more there than a dragon would shed, and if a dragon really wanted to hide their involvement they'd have picked the scales up instead of enchanting them. Sure enough, when Mendanbar gets the scales identified, they're from a dragon who got turned into a frog in the first book and left a bunch of his scales lying around. \|\|The actual culprits are wizards, who created the burned areas by absorbing all the magic in the vicinity.\|\| - In one Five Finder-Outers book by Enid Blyton, the kids do this deliberately to confuse the policeman. He seems to be fooled only for a while, though. - One of the 1980s Hardy Boys books ("Blood Relations") has Joe and Frank approached by Greg and Mike Rawley, who are convinced their mother, Linda, is going to be killed by their stepfather. Given he's Walter Rawley, an old friend of the family's, the brothers are unsure. They keep it up, finding some evidence after Linda is kidnapped. Frank goes missing as well with Joe a detective who's been hunting Walter for a while coming to rescue Linda. At which point it turns out Linda and her sons were using Frank and Joe to make it look like Walter was the bad guy so they had an excuse for killing him in "self-defense" and get his fortune. And the "detective" is Linda's real husband and Greg and Mike's dad. At which point, Frank manages to bust in with Fenton, their friends and the real cops. Frank explains he was struck mid-way through on how easy and obvious the case was shaping up as "we've never had to do so little work" to crack it. He thus "flipped it around" to consider Walter the innocent and realized how much more made sense. - Hercule Poirot: - Murder on the Orient Express: A bewildering array of clues, much of them contradictory, serve to alert Hercule Poirot that someone is making massive attempts to muddy the waters. The clues include a dropped handkerchief, a dropped pipe cleaner, a dented watch showing the time of the murder, a lost button, someone pretending to be the victim (and speaking a language he did not speak) after he was supposedly dead, an abandoned conductor's uniform, and a sighting of a mysterious woman in a scarlet kimono. - It happens again (though not to the same extent) in The Hollow, which involves several people \|\|diverting attention away from the real killer by planting false clues and generally acting as suspicious as possible\|\|. - Poirot's investigation in Mrs. McGinty's Dead leads him to suspect that they are looking for a woman with a criminal past. Later another body is found, and the number of clues that point to a woman having visited — lipstick stains on a cup, scent of perfume in the air — eventually makes him realise that a man must be behind it. - In the Honor Harrington short story "What Price Dreams?", great care is made to create an orgy suggesting that a man who had been psychologically conditioned to become a suicide bomber was in fact a deranged Stalker with a Crush obsessing on Princess Adrienne who decided to pull a murder-suicide. The head of Adrienne's security detail would note that it likely would have worked had the local treecat population not captured both the bomber and the person who did the psychological conditioning alive. - In the Jack Reacher novel One Shot, this is what the case against James Barr becomes. However, what makes Reacher suspicious is not the amount of evidence, but that the investigative team thought to look for a clue that they had no reason to believe existed. - In The Enemy, Reacher investigates the death of a soldier. At a first glance, it appears that the soldier was killed because he was gay; however, there's not just one indication of this, there's multiple, to the point that it's so over the top that Reacher can only conclude that the killer wanted the investigators to think that the victim was killed because he was gay, and went really, really overboard trying to make it happen. - In the Lincoln Rhyme short story "A Textbook Case", the killer left behind a near-mountain of contradictory evidence. Simply categorizing the various kinds of evidence, before any sort of analysis could occur, would give the killer plenty of time to cover their tracks. - Shadow Police: In Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?, Sefton realises that the cryptic clues planted in the Sherlock Holmes Museum were a deliberate blind so that the police would focus on them, and not on what was missing. Quill even refers to it as "an orgy of evidence". - In the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Norwood Builder, there is already considerable evidence incriminating the suspect in the eyes of the police, but the clincher is a bloody thumbprint of the suspect on the wall. Holmes finds this suspicious, since he had carefully searched that hall the day before and there had been no bloody thumbprint there, making the clue proof in his eyes that it was a setup. - In the Star Wars Expanded Universe X-Wing Series of books, Tycho Celchu is accused of being a sleeper agent, as well as of murdering Corran Horn. His lawyer is quick to point out to the military tribunal that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that proves Tycho's guilt, but that someone has been actively destroying anything that could exonerate Tycho. For example there were numerous bank accounts indicating that Tycho had been paid millions of credits by the Empire, an amount completely disproportionate to his alleged importance as a spy. Not to mention that he was also supposedly brainwashed and thus there shouldn't have been any reason for the Empire to pay him at all. \|\|In the end, Tycho is let go when other clues come up, like the fact that Corran himself walks into the room and declares that Tycho didn't kill him. It also turns out that General Cracken knew Tycho was innocent all along (a fact which outrages the prosecutor, who was genuinely convinced of his guilt) and didn't reveal this to the tribunal so that his Imperial counterpart Director Isard would keep devoting resources to maintaining the frame-up instead of moving on to a different plot.\|\| - On 9-1-1, Bobby is convinced his former sponsor Wendell was killed trying to expose a shady rehab center. He reaches to a patient named Tamara who calls him, overdosing. Bobby breaks into the center as a fire breaks out to save her only for the center owners to blame him for it. The detective in charge tells Bobby they have reports of him harassing them, threatening them and witnesses claiming Bobby set the fire and "a perfect trail of breadcrumbs leading to your door" that a jury can buy. Luckily for Bobby, the detective adds, "here's my problem: I don't trust perfect." She can tell this is way too easy and helps Bobby and Athena prove the center owners killed Wendell and tried to torch the place for the insurance. - The third season of Absentia has the FBI tracking a mole with evidence coming to a man who is found dead seemingly of suicide. But the supervisor openly notes that whatever else, the man was far too smart and experienced to allow so much evidence (literally caught on tape) just lying around which makes him suspect he was the patsy for the real mole. - On American Gods Shadow and Wednesday are arrested for a robbery they committed in a previous episode. The police detective has them dead to rights but is worried because the evidence is primarily satellite photos of the crime in progress. The technology used is state-of-the-art and is what governments use to track terrorist masterminds. She wants to know why someone with access to top-secret surveillance satellites would use it to track two small-time crooks. She is right to be worried since the source of the evidence was \|\|Mr. World, who had Wednesday arrested so he could offer him a deal that would prevent the coming war between the Old Gods and the New Gods. All the cops are massacred by Mr. Wood at World's behest so there are no witnesses to the meeting.\|\| - Andromeda has a variation on this, where Tyr is in a locked room alone with a planetary president he blames for killing tens of thousands of Tyr's people, when two shots are fired from Tyr's weapon, killing the man instantly. Tyr's defense is essentially that if he had actually planned to assassinate the president, he wouldn't have gotten caught. "And I have... some small experience in these matters." He then starts listing off virtually untraceable means of assassination with discussion of their pros and cons until Dylan stops him. Later on, Andromeda reconstructs the events and realizes that Tyr's gun fired at the floor. The only reason the victim was killed was because all guns here use miniature guided missiles instead of regular bullets. Still, someone as experienced as Tyr would've fired at the target. - An episode of The Avengers, "The Curious Case of the Countless Clues", has John Steed go up against a killer who plants clues over each of his hits, and then poses as a detective attempting to "solve" each of the murders he himself committed. - Burke's Law: In "Who Killed Marty Kelso?", the murderer plants a cufflink at the scene to implicate an innocent man. After the police fail to find it, she plants its mate. When Burke finds both of them, he figures that one cufflink is a clue and two is an obvious frameup. - Can go both ways on Columbo. - Often, the killer will go out of their way to leave behind evidence to throw off the scent or frame an innocent suspect. Other times, they'll do their best to erase evidence. But in either case, Columbo will find it odd that so much "evidence" is piling up so easily and that leads him to figure out the truth. - In "Publish or Perish", Riley Greenleaf arranges for his hitman Eddie Kane to plant an orgy of evidence against himself while he carefully stages an alibi, to try to convince the police that someone is trying to frame him. Unfortunately, he plants too much evidence and some of it doesn't fit (literally). - CSI: In "The List", the team investigates the murder of an ex-cop who was in prison for murdering his wife. Over the course of the investigation, it becomes apparent that the original case against him was based on an orgy of evidence. - CSI: NY: In "Prey," the CSI team investigate a murder with a large amount of strange evidence, all of it designed to simulate evidence encountered at early crime scenes, thus throwing the investigators off the perp's trail. - A variation occurs in the pilot of Daredevil (2015). Karen Page has a drink with a colleague and wakes up with his corpse in her apartment, clutching the knife that killed him. What Matt Murdock finds suspicious is not this Orgy of Evidence but why she was not charged immediately despite the overwhelming evidence of her guilt. Either someone wants to delay letting her lawyers see the evidence, or she's being pressured by whoever set her up. - In a series 3 episode of Death in Paradise, the Victim of the Week has been poisoned, and nobody has been able to find the poison or work out how it has been administered. The killer then plants the poison at the scene of the crime to try and frame somebody else, but this inadvertently gives the police the information they need to solve the case. - Diagnosis: Murder has Dr. Sloan realize that the suspect was being framed because there is "a mountain of evidence" left behind, which he finds suspicious. This leads him to the killer who is arrested by the police, even though Sloan has no real evidence to tie him to the crime and the mountain of evidence hasn't been proven fake. - Another episode of the show, "Talked to Death", discusses this trope. The killers are planning to pin their crime on the victim's assistant (who earlier tried to blackmail them over it under the very stupid impression that it would succeed for him) and go to plant evidence on his dead body. One killer wonders if they brought enough, and another mockingly asks if they should have brought a typed, unsigned confession letter as well. The ringmaster of the plan explains that if they leave too much evidence implicating the assistant, the cops would realize it's a setup. - In Elementary Sherlock believes that \|\|Detective Bell\|\| is being framed because the suspect is an experienced police officer who would know better than to make so many basic mistakes. He might get sloppy on one or two things but would not do something as stupid as \|\|hide the murder weapon in his own home in a place where the police were bound to search.\|\| - The CBS legal series Family Law had a few cases where the attorneys realize there's just too much evidence to make something look shady. - More than once, a client seemingly has an airtight alibi...but the team realize that there's just so much going for them from testimony to how they can account for every minute as no one can actually be able to account for everything on a given day. - A man is accused of trying to kill a dealer selling drugs to his daughter with the kid identifying a car matching his. Rex brings up how he was once shot at by a client and he, an intelligent, fast-on-his-feet lawyer, was so shaken that "if you'd asked ten minutes later who I was, I don't know if I could have answered." Yet, somehow, a stoned teenager, with a bullet in his leg had the presence of mind to note (on a dark night), the make, model, and license plate of the car driving off. Lynn quickly realizes that someone (such as the guy's daughter) must have been feeding him that info. - Father Brown: During The Summation in "The Brewer's Daughter", Father Brown points out that the sheer amount evidence uncovered was unlikely unless the murderer was attempting a frame-up. \|\|The killer was attempting to invoke this trope by framing herself, and relying on Father Brown to then uncover the more subtle evidence she had left implicating a second suspect.\|\| - Parodied in The Goodies episode "Daylight Robbery on the Orient Express", where the clues they find include a Union Jack waistcoat, a pair of glasses, and a beard... - Hannibal: - In the first season finale, Will Graham is able to deduce that he is being framed because while he might believe he was capable of \|\|murdering Abigail Hobbs\|\|, he couldn't possibly accept that \|\|he also murdered the victims of the copycat killer (a.k.a Hannibal Lecter).\|\| - Will Graham actually uses the trope name in the second season premiere when admitting to Jack Crawford that \|\|Hannibal Lecter's frame-up was successful because it avoided a glut of incriminating evidence in favor of just enough to convince Crawford.\|\| - Comes up later when Will predicts that evidence in the barn where \|\|Miriam Lass\|\| was found will exonerate Lecter. Lecter, however, anticipated this and left evidence that could implicate himself...but could also be interpreted as implicating \|\|Chilton.\|\| - Hill Street Blues: A variant comes up during a long story arc about a particularly nasty robbery and homicide. Soon after making a public appeal for eyewitnesses and offering a significant reward, it seems like they've caught a big break: A cab driver claims to have been in the vicinity and gives a nearly perfect description of the suspects, including details that had been deliberately left out of the press release to help filter out anyone trying to pull a fast one... But Captain Furillo starts to get a bit suspicious after a while, because the guy's testimony is too perfect, going into such detail that the man would have to be Sherlock Holmes to pick it all up from a fleeting glimpse of two men running down a poorly-lit alleyway in the small hours. When he confronts his supposed star witness with these facts the man cracks and admits he was lying, and got all his information from his girlfriend who works for the Police Department as a clerk. - Legend of the Seeker: The plot of the episode "Confession", after Kahlan finds a man she had confessed to killing resistance members somehow was not really guilty. Richard, along with another woman, also suffer this before it's over. It doesn't help that the real murderer has a magical artifact that allows him to transfer some of his memories (such as those of the murders) to another person. - Midsomer Murders: In "Fit for Murder", Barnaby and Jones find a large amount of incriminating evidence when they search the house and vehicle of a pair of suspects. Barnaby points out the murders were methodical and carefully premeditated, and scarcely the work of someone who leave incriminating evidence (that they had no reason to keep) where any search would reveal it. - In Money Heist, The Professor allows the police to discover the gangs staging area because he filled it with irrelevant information and false leads. The police would spend days trying to chase down every lead only to discover that they had nothing of value. It is then subverted when \|\|the police forensic expert concludes that the evidence is useless and correctly identifies the one place in the house where real evidence might be found\|\|. - Monk has used this trope several times: - In "Mr. Monk and the Rapper", only Natalie, not the police or even Monk, realizes that someone is trying too hard to make Murderuss take the fall for the car bombing that killed Extra Large, which include: the use of a white gold pocket watch as the timer (a signature trademark of Murderuss's), lyrics from a suggestive song by Murderuss called "Car Bomb", a blasting cap stolen from a construction site near Murderuss's house, and footprints of a shoe brand that he wears at the scene of the limo driver's murder, after he's killed by the real attacker to keep from talking to the police. Natalie deduces this as she reasons that if Murderuss were responsible, he wouldn't be dropping so many obvious clues behind that pointed to himself (he would have probably used a generic pocket watch instead of his trademark type; stolen the blasting cap from somewhere away from his house; not worn his trademark shoe brand when he killed the driver; nor written the song "Car Bomb"). - In "Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale", this trope is invoked almost on purpose. Dale "the Whale" Biederbeck has his physician Dr. Christiaan Vezza kill judge Catherine Lavinio and stage the scene to make it look like Dale himself did it... because bedridden Dale, who is so morbidly obese he hasn't left his bed in nine years, is the only suspect who could not have possibly done it. Dr. Vezza does it by wearing large boots to leave big footprints behind. He kills the judge with a baseball bat with the engraved initials "DB". He also deliberately sets off a smoke alarm and dons his own empathy suit (a giant fat suit) so that a passing neighborhood girl sees a "very, VERY fat man" disabling the alarm. Lastly, he fakes a 911 call, impersonating the judge's voice to deliver the ace in the hole. - In "Mr. Monk Goes to a Fashion Show," Monk is convinced that Pablo Ortiz is innocent in spite of the fact there's an orgy of forensic evidence against him. This turns out to be because the orgy of forensic evidence is actually against Julian Hodge, the real killer, but a forensics tech was bribed into relabeling the blood samples so they appeared to be Ortiz's. - The tie-in novel Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants has a Mystery Writer Detective accusing Sharona and Natalie of working together on a murder. Monk cites the slews of evidence as the first clue to the duo's innocence. After all, if anyone is going to be smart about not leaving behind clues, it'll be two people who worked for a detective obsessed with details. - Murder, She Wrote: In "Night Fears", the killer floods the police with a bunch of false clues pointing towards a psychopath, hoping that this will drown out the one legitimate clue pointing towards him. - NUMB3RS had an episode where the Don's team worked with the ATF to investigate a series of copycat bombings, zeroing on a disgruntled scientist who was suspected of the originals (he wasn't but did write the manifesto that inspired the culprit). It was actually a Frame-Up as revenge and it almost worked. The one thing the bomber didn't count on was Charlie, who viewed the case from a purely analytical point of view and found the data "too good". There were no outliers or false data ("a perfect storm of data points that fit together perfectly") which isn't at all possible, convincing the team to look again and they discover the truth. - Once Upon a Time: In "The Cricket Game", there's so much reason to believe that Regina killed Archie that Emma, quite possibly the person in Storybrooke most familiar with this world's law enforcement and crime, finds it difficult to believe that Regina's actually guilty. - More than one Perry Mason case hinged upon Perry finding the clinching piece of evidence against his client (or pointing to a Red Herring) after a thorough search had been conducted by Lt. Tragg. - Rizzoli & Isles: In "Burden of Proof", Jane initially is convinced of the prosecutor's guilt. However, the sheer amount of evidence that turns up against him eventually convinces her that he is the victim of a very thorough frame-up. note : Indeed. As stated, the man is a prosecutor who knows exactly what the police would look for. It's highly unlikely that he'd be so stupid as to leave so much evidence behind. - In The Rookie, corrupt cop \|\|Armstrong\|\| frames Nolan for his own crimes by putting stolen money and other evidence in Nolan's house. However, Nolan throws off the Frame-Up by arranging for a peaceful surrender. More importantly, \|\|Armstrong\|\| overestimates his frame as none of Nolan's officers can believe not only that he'd do this but be so sloppy to leave the cash in his home. The corrupt cop then crosses a line by claiming Nolan bragged about his crimes as "you know he loves to talk." The other cops agree that's true, but there's a difference between babbling about nonsense and openly confessing to crimes to another cop. All the frame job does is expose who the real corrupt cop is. - Subverted on Scream Queens as Dean Munsch plants slews of evidence to make it look like her ex-husband's mistress killed him. To her shock, the detectives are too lazy and incompetent to notice any of it and Munsch is nearly arrested herself. - Shooter: Swagger tries to use this as evidence he didn't commit the assassination, as he'd never have left that much evidence lying around. - Assassin's Creed: Unity: A murder mystery involves a warden, who was apparently killed by a local crime gang over his debts, despite the gang's leader swearing they didn't do it. \|\|It was actually his deputy, who gives himself away by mentioning a vital clue no-one could've known about.\|\| - Double subversion in Knights of the Old Republic: in the Sunry case, his medal was quite obviously planted at the scene, put into the hands of the victim. However, that was the Sith's counterattack to the Republic's coverup of what really happened. - Most Ace Attorney cases stack the deck against you and your client this way. The fourth case of the second game gives a clever twist on it, however: the victim is found with your defendant's knife in his chest and a torn, bloodied button from his costume lodged in the defendant's trousers. Even the non-too-bright local detective suspects a frame job. \|\|As it turns out, someone did try to frame him, but your defendant really is guilty, albeit by hiring an assassin rather than committing the murder directly.\|\| - Danganronpa's framejobs almost always turn out like this. After all, these are high schoolers, not experienced criminals. - Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: The third case in the first game looks so damning that one character starts calling it a setup before the trial has begun. A whole story is spun where the frame target runs around in a cardboard robot costume attacking people with progressively more lethal weapons, eventually killing Kiyotaka and Hifumi. Evidence includes a photograph of the culprit dragging Hifumi away, the murder weapons left at the scene, costume blueprints in the frame target's room, and the frame target in the robot suit. The whole frame job falls apart when everyone realizes that the supposed rampage involved The Ditz creating and putting on a ridiculous costume, somehow evading all the students running around the school after him, moving Hifumi's corpse up several flights of stairs without being seen despite the body having been only left alone for a minute- and then somehow getting stuck in a locker. Definitely fishy even before the characters start finding all sorts of flaws in the evidence (such as the blueprints not matching the frame target's handwriting and the costume having been so clunky the culprit couldn't have really moved around while wearing it), and once holes start getting poked in it, suspicion falls on the one person who claimed to see the culprit (really the framed target)- \|\|Celestia Ludenburg.\|\| - Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: The second case in the second game, meanwhile, ends up making the patsy an impossibility as far as suspects go because of all the inconsistencies in her characterization with the evidence left behind. The blood soaked corpse was moved to block a door (forcing the scapegoat to leave behind footprints through sand), and yet the scapegoat didn't have any blood on their clothing or body. Also, the culprit tried to leave behind the scapegoat's Trademark Favorite Food at the scene of the crime, but they got the details wrong and chose a variant that the scapegoat doesn't eat. - In one Puffin Forest video Ben describes a campaign where his players were attempting to identify the person who committed a crime. He had sufficient clues to guide them to the culprit but they insisted on looking for more evidence to be sure. Ben kept giving more clues, all pointing to the culprit, but they still refused to accept the conclusion. Finally he gave them a journal written by the culprit laying out all the details and motive for the crime... at which point the players felt there was too much evidence for it to not be a frame job. - This trope is name-dropped repeatedly on various CinemaSins reviews. In the context of the video, it's used to describe film-makers' ham-fisted attempts at driving the audience to assuming a specific mindset, e.g. using an over-abundance of typically boyish toys and/or furnishings to establish that a room belongs to a boy. As with other uses of the trope, the film-makers plant too much evidence, making the set-up less convincing. - In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Rarity Investigates", there's a lot of evidence for the Frame-Up, with the real culprit, \|\|Wind Rider\|\|, even disguising their voice to sound like Rainbow Dash. But Rarity, who doesn't believe Rainbow is guilty from the start, notices that the clump of Rainbow's mane in the envelope the forged note was in was cleanly cut, since no-pony loses a chunk of hair that big. - In the What's New, Scooby-Doo? episode "Roller Ghoster Ride", the clues pointing to one of the park owners end up pointing away from her due to being far too obvious, being a wrench that was used to loosen a ride which she even said was hers, and a clump of green hair which was exactly like hers. The true culprit turns out to be \|\|her sister.\|\|	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrgyOfEvidence
Living Ship - TV Tropes Who's a good spaceship? It's you! "I'm lost in some distant part of the universe on a ship — a living ship — full of strange alien life forms..." You know what's cooler than a Cool Ship? A cool organic ship. A ship that lives and grows and heals any space battle damage as you go. These ships can run the gamut from being completely non-intelligent (generally comparable to plants) to having animal instincts (the crew often serves more as handlers than as pilots, in this case) or being completely intelligent and self-aware. The exact nature of the ships ranges from being mere cyborgs to fully Organic Technology. How organic they actually look varies greatly. These types of ships tend to be grown more often than made in a shipyard. Sometimes, the ship will also be a Space Whale. The great thing about both the organic and semi-organic living ships is that they're a very easy way to make your series seem ultra-science-fictiony by encasing organic bodies in sleek metal shells. If you want to go for something more alien, then you can take the Organic Technology route and have corridors that look like great big arteries. The idea of a living ship also opens up plenty of story opportunities, simultaneously funny and serious. Imagine a show where the biological ship catches a cold, runs a fever, and keeps sneezing its occupants into space. Not to be confused with Setting as a Character, in which the ship is only treated as alive by the cast, or Mechanical Lifeforms, which are living machines. If the ship is a machine except for a "brain", it's a Wetware CPU. Can overlap with Sapient Ship, though a living ship isn't necessarily sapient, and a sapient ship isn't necessarily biologically alive. If it's a Living Cool Airship, then it's probably also a Living Gasbag. Super-Trope to Tree Vessel. ## Examples - In the manga AKIRA: \|\|Tetsuo\|\| merges with an American aircraft carrier, it becomes an extension of his body, twisting and contorting. Veins and pipes mix as he turns the ship against it's naval taskforce. - Part 3 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has the cast boarding a seemingly-abandoned freighter which suddenly comes to life and starts trying to kill them. Suspecting the involvement of a Stand, they eventually discover that \|\|the entire ship itself is a Stand, powerful enough to be visible even to non-Stand Users (when Stands are normally Invisible to Normals,) and which starts rotting and decaying after its Stand User is defeated\|\| - Knights of Sidonia: The Gauna are capable of amalgamating to form living ship-like structures called Mass Union Clusters. - The Kunihiko Ikuhara and Mamoru Nagano collaboration Light Novel Schell Bullet features the enormous sentient star liners. - The Vajra from Macross Frontier are a fleet of these with a hive mind. - In Nobunagun the Evolutionary Invasion Objects create one of these out of the sunken husk of the warship Musashi, which is subsequently codenamed the "Musashi Wonder." - The spaceships in Outlanders are gigantic bio-engineered organisms. - The Flying Dutchman from Soul Eater is able to turn buildings and vehicles into living things, starting with the Ghost Ship Nidhogg (capable of devouring almost an entire village in a single bite) and then moving on to an entire factory. - Tenchi Muyo!: The Juraian spacecraft are powered by living, semi-sentient trees. \|\|The parent of them all is not only fully sentient, but a goddess — and the alter ego of one of the main characters.\|\| Also, Ryo-Ohki and Fuku, who are the cute mascot characters that transforms into a Living Ship. - Vandread: the Nirvana (or more accurately its power source, the Paksis) is alive, but communicates more through feelings rather than words. - At one point, the Nirvana does have to "go poop", as one of the characters puts it. - The Authority's home base, The Carrier, counts, even down to being a Deadpan Snarker. - Legends of Zita the Spacegirl has Shippy, a small organic ship that Madrigal gives to Zita. Looking like a cross between a bug and a flower, Shippy can receive Zita's commands telepathically. Initially it can't fly on its own and has to be fitted with external engines, but in a later scene when Zita's in trouble outside and calling to it, it literally shrugs off its non-organic components and flies to the rescue. - The "Cetacyborgs" (Space Whale types) in The Metabarons. - Bioship, the resurrected version of Biotron from Micronauts. - PS238 has a cyborg version: the Argonite ship that Tyler and Ron were using, the Valiant Lance, got attacked by some sort of space squid. Long story short, the two wound up fused together, gained sapience and now goes by "Vance." He currently works for Cecil. - Shakara: The Psico Hierarchy travel around in living ships shaped like floating brains. - Superboy (1994): Kossak's massive space ship is revealed to have organic fleshy parts between the metal walls and floors as Kon-El sneaks around the ship trying to rescue his friends and avoid capture. - X-Men: The Brood used lobotomized Space Whales for transport, and the surviving ones at liberty were both sapient and not happy at all about the situation. - Beloved in Walter Jon Williams's Angel Station is a member of a race of living ships, who use genetically-engineered servants to maintain them and do various tasks like load cargo, the most prominent of which is General Volitional Twelve, who is sent to study humans and act as her envoy. At the end of the novel, Beloved's trade (high quality drugs for computers) with the newly-discovered human siblings Ubu Roy and Beautiful Maria results in prosperity for both sides, although it is hinted that Beloved's "people's" exposure to humans will eventually lead to their demise. - Beloved is fully-organic, with parts grown instead of built. This still requires acquiring the proper genetic codes from other ships of her species. It is shown, however, that their navigational organs are horribly imprecise at jump calculations. When Ubu Roy offers simple mining computers for this purpose, they are significantly better at this. - Of course, these "simple" mining computers are light-years ahead of current computer technology, as they're able to process data at FTL speeds thanks to something called macro-molecules. - The Boojumverse story Boojum by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette has Space Pirates using a boojum (a gas giant swimmer which has evolved into a spacefaring creature) to hunt down and eat metal-hulled spaceships. - Bruce Coville's Book of... Aliens II: Veeplex's ship in The Very Long Distance Wrong Number. He gives the protagonists a baby drive-beast as thanks for helping him. - In Geoff Ryman's The Child Garden the spaceships, like a lot of other things, are organic, and are connected mentally to the astronauts. - The Willflower from Colony becomes one of these thanks to engineereal evolution. Of course, this causes no end of problems for the crew until the end of the book when Eddie gets to meet the ship. - The Culture: Look to Windward: Behemothaurs, giant flying creatures which double as airships for the creatures living on their backs. - Discworld: Great A'Tuin himself (or possibly herself), the giant turtle with the Discworld on its back, where all the books are set. It even has a self defense system, based on actual turtles, where it spins around to avoid meteorites. - It's not a spaceship, but in The Last Continent, the God of Evolution creates a plant that grows galleons as fruit in order to get the wizards off his island. It has a leaf sail, a trumpet-like flower that detects land in the crows nest, and the seeds are surfboards. - Doctor Who Expanded Universe: - In Sky Pirates!, the eponymous pirates acquire a Cool Ship that is a living organism. - Eventually the Eighth Doctor Adventures managed to produce the humanoid TARDISes, Type-103 or 104 in comparison to the Doctor's Type-40. Those were, indeed, capable of interacting with others normally with nobody the wiser. \|\|Eventually, a companion of the Eighth Doctor was transformed into this type of ship, and was used in this capability.\|\| - Faction Paradox is here to remind you: Living Ship + Sapient Ship + Time Travel + Psycho Prototype = Oh, Crap! - In Engines of War, the Doctor describes a TARDIS graveyard as a home for old friends and points out to Cinder you can't run away with one without its permission. - In the French novel Etoiles Mourantes by Ayerdhal and Jean-Claude Dunyach, city-animals are giant space-dwelling aliens capable of Faster-Than-Light Travel. As their name implies, they are able to host other species, including humans, inside them. - In The Expanse, Laconian Magnetar-class battlecruisers have self-healing hull plating, a shape described as a vertebra from a giant the size of a planet, and are said to be grown rather than built at the Laconian shipyards. - The Fall Of The Galaxy, the fleet of the Bargon Empire almost entirely consists of small biomechanical raider ships instead of the Standard Sci-Fi Fleet, which is used by the other major human powers (the Galaxy and the Seven Systems' Union). These ships have proven to be extremely effective at operating both on their own and in small groups to conduct raids into enemy territory and wreak havoc with supply lines and even destroy major targets before jumping to safety. Despite the fact that the ships are crewed, the demands of fast-paced ship-to-ship combat require split-second decisions that are best made by the biomechanical brains of the ships themselves. Normal raider ships with electronic brains have proven themselves vastly inferior to the melding of rapid computer calculations and biological unpredictability. - Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings has living submarines, based upon existing whale species. - Genesis Quest and its sequel Second Genesis: had ships made from giant spacegoing trees which caught comets in their roots for water and nutrients, and used reflective outer leaves as solar sails. - The Godwhale: the Roqual Maru is an organic plankton-harvester ship that was built on/in/around (take your pick) a blue whale. - Hyperion Cantos: the Templar create living "Treeships", gargantuan trees fitted with star drives. The treeships are made inhabitable by force fields created by weird space creatures that may or may not be sentient themselves. - Gerard Klein's short story "Jonah" features ubionasts, organic ships weighing half a billion tons. The protagonist's job is to pacify them when they go rogue. - The Last Angel centers on Red One, which is non-organic but has developed 'life' in the form of humanoid combat robots and insectoid repair drones. She describes herself as the ship and views damage sustained as 'injuries'. - The mysterious Naiads turn out to be an entire species of living ships composed of a seamless blend of mechanical and organic technology. - The League of Peoples Verse: the Divian races use living ships called Zaretts. One named Starbiter features prominently in Ascending. - Leviathan: is basically the lovechild of an airship and a blue whale. The British Empire makes lots of these half-machine, half-organisms. - Lilith's Brood: the gene-trading, three-gendered aliens have spaceships that are more or less plants that can be communicated with. \|\|Their seeds are planted on planets where they gradually take over the entire surface before launching off as independent spaceships.\|\| - The Liveship Traders trilogy has many living ships with sapient, talking, humanoid figureheads. - The Lords of Creation: In the Courts of the Crimson Kings: the martians are masters of organic technology. Their landships and airships are both grown from living tissue, though they are not sentient. The landships have backup "engines" that are essentially a kind of land-based squid. - The Night's Dawn Trilogy: there are both spaceships (Voidhawks and Blackhawks) and habitats (space stations that can be tens of kilometres long) that are alive and sentient, based on "bitek", a kind of organic technology. - Old Kingdom: Paperwing aircraft are animated with Charter magic and have some degree of sapience, though they don't bother communicating with humans. Nick gets a surprise when he compliments a paperwing's flight and it does a happy little flourish in response. - The Polity novels: Jain tech is an organic thing and can grow living ships. - In Refugees, the Benefactors' spaceship is apparently an intelligent living organism; it kills humans when they attempt to hijack it. - Saga of the Exiles: The Tanu and Firvulag arrived from another galaxy via a starship that was a huge living organism which used its own psychic powers to travel via hyperspace. - In Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather, the main characters live on a giant slug-like ship called Our Lady of Impossible Constellations. - The short story "The Specialist" by Robert Sheckley is about several aliens species who make up a living ship, but this one has lost a certain part... - One Star Trek short story about young Ben Sisko and a previous Dax, involves a species that uses living ships. A ship is controlled by the crew, biologically linked together, although most of the crew are separate beings. The story resolves around another species that has a 3rd gender that links the first two genders together, to be able to mate, and \|\|a member of that species and gender ends up taking the place of a member of the ship's crew, due to her mental linking powers and other political reasons.\|\| - Star Wars Legends: The Yuuzhan Vong, introduced in a five-year book saga, New Jedi Order. This race organically grows everything, from clothes to communication devices to sewage disposal systems to weapons. Organic spaceships were inevitable. There's also Zonama Sekot, a Genius Loci planet that combines organic matter and technology to create living ships. It's known as the Rogue Planet because it also did this to itself. \|\|The similarities are not coincidental.\|\| - The titular Tin Woodman from the novel is a living ship that requires a humanoid as pilot (resulting in an And I Must Scream situation as they eventually end up a minor component to the ship). Was adapted for the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Tin Man". - In Tuf Voyaging, the biological warship Tuf 'inherits' as the last surviving member of a freelance salvage team is specifically NOT sentient, though it could have been made so; there is mention of other Earth warships with AI installed mutinying and/or fighting each other. - In the Uplift novel Heaven's Reach, many Jijoan colonists are \|\|taken to explore distant galaxies aboard a hydrogen-based Living Ship.\|\| - West of Eden: the Yilané have a civilization built entirely on genetics and selective breeding, and use gigantic genetically modified icythyosaurs for trans-Atlantic shipping. - Wild Cards: the Takisians use and breed sentient (or semi-sentient) ships. Dr. Tachyon's ship — which he named "Baby" — regenerates its "ghost drive gland" over a period of years or decades, after he burned it out trying to go real fast. - Xeelee Sequence: a race of spacegoing, whale-like starships called the Spline, who intentionally modified themselves to be able to survive in space. - Arguably the Xeelee themselves, though they are a very... exotic kind of life. - Babylon 5: - Both the Vorlons and the Shadows use ships which are alive to some extent. Shadow ships are symbiotic and require a specifically prepared and hardwired pilot to merge with them. Vorlon ships are at least semi-sentient — they can sing, they're customized to be loyal to their captain, and they grieve over his death and would fall into rage if he was attacked. Both kinds of ships can regenerate and the Vorlon ship is shown to protrude appendages from its surface. - Several other ships seemed to have biological properties: the Soul Hunter ships, and the Berserker Probe both looked very similar to Vorlon ships. There were also some subversions: the Minbari built their ships to look organic but didn't actually have biotech spacecraft until the alliance with the Vorlons produced the hybrid mechanical-biological Whitestars. Minbari always had advanced crystal tech, but that's a different set of tropes. The Streib (who were only featured in one episode, where they brutally abducted Captain Sheridan,) were also stated by JMS to lack biotech spacecraft and like the Minbari superficially mimic its appearance with their mechanical technology. - In the Expanded Universe trilogy The Passing of the Techno-Mages, the techno-mage ships are also said to be partially alive when "associated" (i.e. connected) with their pilots. This is due to a part of the techno-mage's chrysalis they used to train being integrated into the ship. The chrysalises and the implants are \|\|products of Shadow technology\|\|. - Battlestar Galactica (2003): - Towards the end of Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman, FiveRed accidentally discovers that Vulgyre, the Zone's spaceship/Supervillain Lair, was actually alive! \|\|Turns out, he was in fact the true leader of Zone (the supposed leader, Empress Meadow, was an illusion) and has been a Godhood Seeker to become a Galactic Super Beast. Zone pretty much falls apart after that revelation (one member in particular having a Villainous Breakdown), while Vulgyre succeeds in his plan, becoming a Botanical Abomination, but is weakened by the Sidon flowers, and ultimately the Fivemen defeat him for good.\|\| - Doctor Who: The TARDIS appears to be technological, but at least some of it is "grown". And it certainly has sentience, though it cannot speak and only occasionally directly affects a story of its own volition. - Until "The Doctor's Wife", where the soul of the TARDIS gets put into a woman, and we get to hear her describe her adventures with the Doctor from her own point of view. Basically, the Doctor wanted to escape Gallifrey and see the universe so he stole an unlocked TARDIS. The TARDIS wanted to escape Gallifrey and see the universe so she unlocked her door and stole a Time Lord. - It's also implied that multiple previous "malfunctions" had actually been the TARDIS taking the Doctor where he needed to go and not where he wanted to go. - The Taelon mothership from Earth: Final Conflict is a living being which lives on the same energy as the Taelons themselves. - Farscape: the Leviathans are living biological ships who communicate through their permanently-bonded Pilots and were created by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens known only as the Builders to work for peace in the universe. One, Moya, is the main setting of the series, but various others appear in the show, most significantly Moya's son Talyn, \|\|who was created as a battleship through the interference of a fascist culture who once enslaved Moya and is unfortunately Ax-Crazy as a result\|\|. - Lexx: the titular ship is mostly (and often gruesomely) biological. It can speak directly to its crew, and its hobbies include blowing up planets. Strangely enough, it even reproduces at the end of the series, spawning a smaller light-white version of itself when it dies...of old age. Since Little Lexx has no mechanical parts added to the hull or machinery of any kind like the original's cryo-pods and moth breeder bay, it's likely that the non-organic elements were added to the original as it was growing. Little Lexx even has a glowing angler horn. - The Outer Limits (1995): "The Heist" involves a living ship, composed of numerous organisms, which crash-landed in New Mexico three years earlier. The only part of the ship which survived the crash was the cooling system. - The titular ship/submarine from SeaQuest DSV was partially organic. One episode even dealt with a biological infection of its hull/skin. - Sliders: The Manta ships used by the invading Kromaggs are said to be living machines. - In Space Cases, the Christa is alive. This denies the cast a hyperspace shortcut back home in one episode. The gate controller refuses to allow them entry since Christa wouldn't be able to survive the trip through the gate. - Stargate Atlantis: The ships used by the Wraith are organic and are suspected to be grown rather than manufactured. This is confirmed in a later season when \|\|Dr. Keller\|\| is infected with a virus and begins to grow into a Wraith hive ship. Despite their organic nature, they seem to possess little to no intelligence. - The series finale reveals that the greatest limitation to the growth of a Wraith ship is the amount of available power. When an Ancient ZPM module is plugged into a Wraith hiveship (already one of the largest ships in the universe), it grows to enormous proportions, thickens its hull to rival Ori shields (weapons that cut through Ori shields like butter barely dent the abnormally thick super-Hive armor) and grows larger-caliber energy weapons, turning it into the most powerful ship in the known universe. - Star Trek: The Next Generation: - In the very first episode "Encounter at Farpoint", the crew discover \|\|that Farpoint Station is\|\| a living space-jellyfish-type organism. - In the episode "Tin Man", the titular ship is a living organism \|\|that is suicidal over the death of its crew and the rest of its kind\|\|. - Star Trek: Voyager: Species 8472 use living ships so powerful that the Borg themselves form an alliance with Voyager to defeat them in "Scorpion". Voyager itself has biological components. The most often mentioned are "bioneural gel packs" which act as computer processors; in "Learning Curve", the ship is nearly destroyed because some bacteria from cheese making got into the system. - The Mechanisms travel in The Aurora, a biomechanical ship given sapience by the same process that turned the rest of the band into cyborgs. Nastya, the ship's engineer, is in a romantic and sexual relationship with the ship. - In Legendaries Lost, the Wailord Leviathan serves as water transportation for the Quan's Hope group. He even has 5 times the usual HP for his species to make it less likely that he'll get killed by a lucky hit. - Eclipse Phase gives us Meat Hab — a biological space habitat ran by an uploaded transhuman. It's largely benign, but has an odd sense of humor when it comes to the cult leader residing in it. - GURPS - GURPS: Spaceships includes this in divergent technology paths. If you have a powerful mage there are rules of zombifying your Living Ship. - GURPS Supers supplement Wild Cards. The 'Ishb'kaukab are a race of whale-sized, telepathic, sentient creatures that live in deep space. They have been tamed and genetically engineered by the Takisians into self-repairing spaceships. - GURPS Bio-Tech also has rules for these. - In Hc Svnt Dracones Transcendent Technologies Inc is known for making, aside from implants that defy physics, biological spaceships. They don't need as many crewmen as other Corps' ships (aside from ASR's robot ships) and can heal damage, but when damaged they have a chance of going crazy and doing stuff like rebelling, eating some of the crew, teleporting to a random part of the Sol system, or just sulking. - Mage: The Ascension: The Progenitor faction of the Technocracy built a living spaceship called the Vivo. Many of them find it hilarious to refer to going somewhere in vivo. If you get this joke, you've spent too long in a lab. - The Phase World setting for Rifts has the Necrons, whose hate for non-organic technology has caused them to develop bio-ships capable of spreading that hate across the Three Galaxies. - Many systems for tactical space fleet gaming, especially those with ship design rules and the option to do without the canon setting presented in the rules, usually have at least one bio-tech race. Silent Death features the Bugs, which grow to fit into manufactured frames and become cyborgs; while Full Thrust have the Phalon, who build their ships from parts and units made of lab-grown tissues, and the Sa'Vasku, whose craft, and indeed anything they use, are usually fully-fledged living organisms in their own right. - In Spelljammer, the space elves' ships are grown, not built. The titular Spelljammer itself would also qualify. - Star Fleet Battles. The Branthodon use controlled, cybernetically enhanced space dragons as ships. - Traveller 2300: The Pentapods have living starships which they engineered for — and from — their own species thousands of years ago. - Warhammer 40,000: - The Tyranids are a completely biological race. Everything is some kind of animal, including huge living space ships. - The Eldar starships may also qualify. They're made out of wraithbone (a psychoplastic material solidified from pure Warp energy) instead of actual biological matter like the Tyranids, but wraithbone can heal from injuries and seems to be alive in some sense. The ships also possess a smaller scale version of the infinity circuit of the Eldar Craftworlds, giving them a limited consciousness (but no true sentience), and allowing the steersmen to control them as extensions of their own bodies. In some cases the ships may even be "crewed" by souls of dead Eldar placed into the infinity circuit. - The page pic is the Terminus Est, an ancient battleship which has served as the flagship of the Death Guard Chaos Space Marines since the time of the Great Crusade, when the Legion was still loyal to the Emperor, and which has now taken on a daemonic life of its own, as corrupted with disease and pestilence as the Death Guard itself. - The Necron's technology is made out of the same living metal as they are and have A.I.s with varying degrees of sentience just as the Necrons themselves. Same as wraithbone this living metal can heal itself and is often grown into shape as much as it is forged. This means their ships are slightly more recognizable as alive than Eldar ships. - Tsukino Empire is a Space Opera stage play series about the last remnants of humanity fighting against an Alien Invasion by these, assisted by defectors from the aliens, who have decided to help humanity as shinjuu (Spirit Beast) Bond Creatures. As shinjuu, they take animal forms — the most powerful ones are the Four Gods — but they can revert to ship form as well, and their human companions pilot them like giant robots. - BIONICLE: The Red Star is a combination of metal and organic tissue. It's more like a space station than a ship, though. - Achron: All Grekim technology is in fact a member of the Grekim race that has morphed into the required form. This includes their spacecraft. - AI War: Fleet Command: Several of the aliens you find don't build ships so much as they are them. The Zenith are the clearest cut example, starting out rocky and metallic but small and growing into kilometric dreadnoughts as the decades and centuries go by; they don't lose vessel-ness with death, and their corpses (called Golems) can easily be repaired and made into powerful "normal" starships. The Spire are less clear, as their species seems to vary quite a lot in size and shape; however, it's explicit that their technology is based on themselves and their own crystals, and that their vessels are essentially engineered members of their race. - Conquest: Frontier Wars: The mantis appear to grow, everything. Ships, platforms, space stations.. - Creatures 3 and Docking Station: The Shee Ark and Capillata are grown in vats. Capillata even has some kind of brain/heart thing visible in the Hub section. They aren't shown to be able to communicate, but appear to be capable of running themselves. - In Darkstar One, titular ship is partially organic. It was built from organic alien artifacts, and said artifacts can be seen on parts of the ship, though it otherwise looks like your run of the mil human space ship. - In some of the more esoteric The Elder Scrolls lore, it is stated that, during the heyday of the Second Tamriellic Empire (under the Reman Dynasty) in the late 1st Era, the Empire engaged in a "space race" with the Aldmeri Dominion to explore Aetherius, the realm of magic, through the use of "voidships". The Aldmeri used Sunbirds, ships somehow literally made from the Sun. (Which, in the ES universe, is actually a portal to Aetherius through which magic flows into Mundus, the mortal realm.) The Empire, on the other hand, used "Mothships", enormous Ancestor Moths bred, hollowed out, and flown into the void on strength of willpower alone. (Ancestor Moths have a special supernatural connection which also allows them to be used to somewhat protect mortal readers from the power of the Elder Scrolls, which is why the Scrolls are kept and read by the Cult of the Ancestor Moth.) The results of these expeditions have largely been lost to history, but it did leave the Imperial Legions with the specials Imperal Mananaut corps. - In EV Nova, the Polaris grow their ships around artificial skeletons, though they have varying degrees of mechanical components as well. The smartest class of ship have roughly the same level of intelligence as a smart dog. - In Event Horizon, the Taraniak and Jugrans factions consist solely of these. They have innate regeneration, but can't use a repair bot. - Final Fantasy XIII: Two of the airships are \|\|fal'Cie\|\|, and one is \|\|the Big Bad\|\|. - In Galactic Civilizations 2: Dread Lords, the Arnor and the eponymous Dread Lords both appear to use insect-like biological ships. The Iconians as of the Twilight of the Arnor expansion can also use Organic Technology augmentation to toughen their ships, and any Good-aligned civ can get access to a small amount of Arnorian battle armor, but their ships are still almost entirely non-living. - Humanity in Genesis Rising uses genetically engineered ships called "organids", which are highly modular and advanced. They also use blood as fuel and construction materials. A group of rebellious enemies of humanity, the Defiance also have their own, thanks to them stealing and reverse-engineering organid technology. - The Lapis are a race of Rock Monsters are effectively one with their ships, which are made of asteroids. Their largest vessels, the Gigafortresses use the souls of sentient beings as power sources. - Half-Life 2:The combine have living flying gunships and living gunner tripods - The Beast of Homeworld: Cataclysm takes this trope and runs with it. Each infected vessel is its own "self", alive and aware. Add in a command ship, and all of the individual "selves" are assimilated into the whole, essentially becoming a living fleet. - Mass Effect: - The Reapers are finally revealed to be this: entire civilizations distilled into biological goo (while supposedly retaining consciousness somehow) which forms the core part of a massive artificial body. - The Leviathan of Dis, described as a "biological ship" found by the salarians, and apparently stolen by the batarians, was revealed to be yet another Reaper. Not necessarily obvious considering the Reapers appear to be entirely mechanical on the outside AND the inside; only thorough investigation can reveal that they contain a significant amount of living matter. - Musashi Samurai Legend has the Anthedon, a large ~~space~~ sky whale carrying the city of Antheum on its back. - No Man's Sky - "Living Ships" are a unique class of playable starships. In contrast to other starships, living ships have a distinctly organic appearance, their technological components are actually various organs (a "Pulsating Heart" in lieu of a Pulse Engine, for instance), and said organs draw power from exotic metals and organic materials instead of fuel. Further reinforcing how different they are from regular starships, living ships' inventory slots are called "storage sacs", and their technology slots are called "organ chambers". - One of the rewards for the Leviathan expedition is the aforementioned Leviathan, a living frigate. Like the living ship, the Leviathan has a distinct organic appearance. In addition, interactions with the Leviathan during an expedition involve forming a mind-link with it. - It is worth mentioning that both Living Ships and the Leviathan are fully sapient - the Starbirth questline reveals that Living Ships communicate through song, and the Leviathan is intelligent enough to bind the traveler into a repeating timeloop. - Prey (2006): The Sphere, the ship that the game takes place in, is part technology, part living tissue, with something that used to be (probably) human as the "brain". - Stated by name in Schizm: Mysterious Journey, for a group of organic structures floating on the ocean in one area of Argilus. Most of them are used as villages, but Hannah Grant commandeers one of them as a means of transport across the planet. It has its own navigation controls, a telescope, and a signal lamp. \|\|At the end of the game, bringing the Wanderer to this ship allows it to play this trope straighter and launch itself into space, headed back to Earth.''\|\| - Septerra Core: Helgaks is a domesticated species of animals that have certain aptitude to flying. Technologically superior race of "the Chosen" has battle fleets of ships which are essentially grown out of helgaks. - SimCity 2000: The monster is an implied version of this trope - it has characteristics of a UFO, such as a laser gun on its underbelly, but it also seems to be sentient. Its appearance is mechanical, but the blinking red eye hints that it could be organic as well. - Space Pirates and Zombies plays this trope mostly straight — if Zombie Critters kill all the crew of any ship — be it enemy, ally, or YOUR VERY OWN, the ship transforms into a purple-tinted dumb-but powerful monster ship which has partially organic hulls. Oh, and they regenerate hull HP. This trope is played even more straight with the Zombie Breeders — they are mostly organic , save for the random bits of spaceship in and on them. Because they generate Rez, they can replicate human ships without need of victims — this is why they can LAY EGGS which HATCH INTO FULL-SIZED BREEDERS. - Starcraft: The purely organic Zerg have several units capable of traveling through space, including Overlords, which can carry land units with them. The Expanded Universe adds the Behemoths, originally a race of Space Whales that were assimilated in order for the Swarms to leave Zerus, their original homeworld. There's also the Leviathan, a massive hulking Zerg that dwarfs the Terran Battlecruiser and serves as Kerrigan's Battlestar. - The Presbyterate in Sunless Sea uses these, since the Blood of the Mountain drains into the zee where they live and dissolves the hulls of metal ships. You can get one yourself, in the form of the Cladery Heart, by completing a quest, but sadly it is not immune to the Blood of the Mountain. - UFO Aftermath: The alien ships are revealed at some point of the game to be living things. - Warframe: Sentients come in many shapes and sizes, but the greatest of them are massive intelligent warships. In theory they are machines, but they are so incredibly advanced that it is very difficult to draw the line between artificial and living beings. They speak of their wombs, as well as their parents and children. Hunhow was once a Sentient warship, now reduced to a greatsword but still very intelligent and dangerous. The Sentient that attacked the Plains of Eidolon was split into three Kaiju called Teralyst, Gauntlyst, and Hydrolyst, as well as countless tiny Vomalysts. Unlike Hunhow, the Eidolon is now mindless, its scattered pieces wandering the Plains trying in vain to recombine. - The Empyrean update allows Tenno with a Railjack and access to the Veil Proxima to board Murex ships which house and spawn Sentient life-forms. The "Scarlet Spear" event was a two-pronged assault on these Murex ships; Tenno on the ground attacked Condrix drop-pods to obtain Kill Codes, and Tenno in space boarded a Murex to upload those codes into the ship to drive it away. - The New War update ups the ante by bringing in a new kind of ship: \|\|Praghasa, Hunhow's mate and a massive Sentient Warship all her own. While she's been rendered brain-dead by the time of the story quest, her intended function of consuming anything to rebuild herself is still functional, and this extends to her ultimate use: to devour the Sun!\|\| - World of Warcraft has the Kal'uak, who use giant turtles as sea-going vessels. - In the expansion Mists of Pandaria, the starting zone is a giant sea-circling turtle, the Wandering Isle. - In the X-Universe, the Boron Kingdom Fish People use sleek, high-tech ships with iridescent green hulls, though it's not made clear how organic they are, and they certainly have no innate intelligence. Various Game Mods explicitly call them organic constructs. - Dreamcatcher: has a race of parasitic aliens whose biology is based on fungus — like those fungal parasites that eat ants from the inside out. This allows them to blow up their Living Ship like a puffball if attacked. - The short 40-page webcomic Mother Ship Blues centers around a group of aliens who live in a literal Space Whale. Separate sectors of this ship have varying degrees of technology, with the pilots living in the most advanced area of the ship. - Khut in Star Trip is a shapeshifter with powers advanced enough to become a living ship, including a habitable space for their human companion, Jas. They aren't capable of faster than light travel, though, relying on warp gates to move between star systems. - These are called "bioships" in Orion's Arm. Ones designed for war are instead called "biowars". Some bioships are even capable of reproducing. - RWBY: Volume 7 ends with the grand entrance of Salem, after millennia of hiding in the shadows, leading a Grimm army to attack the Kingdom of Atlas from atop Monstra: A giant city-sized sperm whale-like Grimm that can fly thanks to several massive pairs of wings and tons of Gravity Dust mounted on its back. Monstra is complete with an array of landing pads just under said wings in gill-like formations, vast hallways, membrane-like doors, prison cells that double as torture chambers for those that oppose Salem but are too useful to kill, personal chambers for Salems inner circle, and even a vast throne room with a view out Monstras translucent head, for the Grimm queen to watch the chaos unfold before her. Best of all, Monstra naturally produces the liquid that Grimm are born from, like the Wyvern from Volume 3. However, Monstra generates so much of it that she can vomit it to form rivers, geysers, and lakes for Grimm to spawn from. - SCP Foundation: SCP-1245 is a whaling ship that disappeared in the late 1940s. Over time it has assimilated whale body parts from its catches into its structure. Its engine runs on whale bodily fluids; whale brains are networked together in its comm room, connected to the radio; steel pipes and intestines take the cut-up whale parts around the ship; and it is estimated that the majority of its structure is made up of whale body tissues. - SCP-4217 also fits this trope. It's the WW2-era German warship The Bismarck, fused with some sort of giant squid creature.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrganicShip
Mighty Whitey and Mellow Yellow - TV Tropes "Let's just look at Phuong... mistress of an older European man. Well, that pretty well describes the whole country, doesnt it?" The stereotypical relationship of a white male with a disadvantaged, or submissive, Asian woman. Interracial relationships, in general, are still a touchy subject. There still exists the notion that the women of a social category somehow "belong" to the men of that category and vice-versa. Those who stray are often considered some kind of traitor to "their people". Asiatic-European pairings are also plagued by the shadow of Orientalism, and a long history of stories about "pink men rescuing brown women from evil brown men". Though Orientalism was originally defined by European attitudes to the Middle East, European eyes went on to view the Far East through the same paradigm. In any case, the modern stereotype of an Asian woman is that she's a charmingly exotic, uber-domestic, unquestioningly-subservient nymphomaniac... or, at the other extreme, an uneducated, ditzy moron. Thus, her white lover will arrive and be somehow "better" than her Asian peers, often to the point of her complete devotion. Sometimes, this trope is a simple Race Fetish, but at other times, expect one or both partners to be something of a Flat Character. The Asian woman may exhibit Asian Speekee Engrish, may be a sex worker, may be an immigrant struggling to fit in, or otherwise show some sort of social disadvantage. The white male, however, will either be a a wealthy, successful, exotic and handsome hunk-angel who will win the hearts of frustrated Asian women or an Everyman that audiences can identify with. The former is popular in Glurgey Asian romance novels and is a direct counterpart to the eponymous Greek/Spanish millionaires of trashy romance novel fame. Remember, this is not simply a list of relationships between Asian women and white men in fiction, but of a specific depiction of such relationships drawing on Race Fetishism and Asian stereotypes in relation to the Mighty Whitey trope. See also Asian Babymama, where this type of relationship doesn't end well. Compare Where da White Women At?, which is about African-male-European-female pairings, and contrast Black Gal on White Guy Drama, for the African-female-European-male pairing. Contrast Like Goes with Like, where an Asian courts another Asian (though predominantly as it occurs in European media). ## Examples: - Code Geass: The outrageously gorgeous Kallen Stadtfeld has a Japanese mother and a Britannian father. And her mother is the maid. - Also inverted in the first season, since Brittanian Princess Euphemia's boyfriend is none other than her personal knight, Suzaku Kururugi (Japanese). He is the lower status individual on pretty nearly every scale, but he kicks ass and likes being told what to do, and she's a total sweetheart, so it's actually pretty well balanced. - Neon Genesis Evangelion has an inversion with the red-haired, blue-eyed German-American Asuka (who is quarter Japanese through her mother), who has some emotional and sexual tension with Shinji Ikari. Interestingly, Asuka is often flummoxed by his submissive and meek behavior, seeing him as unenthusiastic about her advances. - This trope gets referenced in several of Margaret Cho's routines. In talking about how limited acting roles are for Asian women, she joked that as a little girl she thought to herself "Someday, I could be one of Fonzie's girlfriends on Happy Days! Or I could be a prostitute on MASH!" - Charisma Man, a comic book produced for English-speaking expatriates in Japan. The title character was a dorky Canadian unsuccessful with women in his own country - until he arrives in Japan where he instantly becomes suave and supercool, admired by all the locals, and able to pick up any girl he wants. His mortal enemy is "Western Woman", the only one aware of what a loser he really is. - Shortcomings: After seeing Miko with Leon, a white-passing man, Ben (who is Japanese) comments that seeing an older white man with a younger Asian women has gross Orientalist connotations, while the gender inversion is much less common and much more pleasing. However, Meredith turns it on him, asking if his fixation on white women is a manifestation of his desire for assimilation. She then points out that he makes moralizing generalizations to make himself feel better. - Parodied in The World of Lily Wong: The title character, a Hong Kong Chinese woman, is married to a wimpy American expatriate. - Doonesbury: White mercenary, conman and ambassador "Uncle" Duke has a quite fucked-up relation with his secretary/translator/sex slave Honey Huan (Chinese). - Defied with a comic strip produced by the government of China which warns Chinese women on dating foreigners, on the grounds that they could be undercover spies. No kidding. - Parodied in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series* episode 15. When Tea and the rest of non-duelist characters are asked identification by Kumo (the hair guy) she tries to distract him saying "Me love you long time?", before Mai's breasts save the day. - How Stormer Got Her Groove Back: The half-Chinese and half-white Aja dealt with this stereotype a lot as a teenager growing up in the '70s and '80s. A lot of the white boys wanted her to be their "exotic" girlfriend, while the Chinese boys didn't understand her punkish fashion and music interests. Aja had called quits on finding a boyfriend until she met Craig, who saw behind her ethnic background and liked her for her. - Total Drama Comeback Series inverts this trope with Heather and \|\|Ezekiel\|\|. She's clearly the "mighty" of the pair, with her boyfriend being the "mellow". - Considering that the nation-tans of Hetalia: Axis Powers tend to have personalities based on National Stereotypes, this trope sometimes comes into effect when the fandom pairs an Asian nation with a non-Asian one. It occurs the most frequently with Japan, the most stereotypically Asian nation-tan whose most common partner in fanworks, Greece, happens to have a clear interest in his culture and language in canon. Even when he's paired up with another Western nation, there's usually an undercurrent of said Western nation being attracted to Japan's 'exotic'-ness. - However, this is not necessarily bad as it's usually implied that it works both ways, with Japan being attracted to his Western love interest mainly because of their very Western/nation-based bluntness or easygoing nature, and their focus is often on personality dynamics as opposed to, say, specific Asian fetishes. Plus, many fanworks depict the other Asian nations as Japan's family (even if "family" is relative for nations), so it's not like he has a lot of romantic prospects outside of Western nations in them. - Also frequently happens with Hong Kong and England, usually taking place between the Opium Wars and the return of Hong Kong to China. Russia and China might also count; while Russia is not western, he's still European and the dominant member of that relationship, whereas China is the strange, exotic but disadvantaged one who ends up strongly influenced by Russia, i.e. China becoming communist. - Discussed in Already Tomorrow In Hong Kong between Josh (a white American living in Hong Kong) and Ruby (an Asian-American on vacation). She realises that most of her boyfriends have been white, and she mocks herself for enforcing the stereotype. Josh's girlfriend is a local girl, and dating more than one of them has led to him being mocked by his white co-workers - who accuse him of having a Race Fetish. - The quintessential example is The World of Suzie Wong in which a wannabe artist in Hong Kong falls in love with a local prostitute. Journalist HY Nahm described the film's reputation being something of a sore spot for many Asians who had never seen it but grew up in its shadow. Upon interviewing the lead actress Nancy Kwan, Nahm sat down to watch the film and actually enjoyed it. As discussed here, Suzie herself bucks the submissive Asian woman stereotypes by rebuffing any men she doesn't like, temporarily supporting Robert financially, and challenging the racism of the white Hong Kong expats. The film was also highly unusual at the time because it was typical for white man-Asian woman pairings to end with death of one or two of the lovers, or them ending up with members of their own race. Suzie Wong however broke stereotype by presenting a white woman as the Romantic False Lead, acknowledging the classism at play and having Robert and Suzie earn their happy ending. - Inverted with China White, a Romeo and Juliet-esque love story set in Amsterdam's Chinatown, where the protagonist, a Chinese triad enforcer Bobby Wong had a rocky relationship with his Dutch girlfriend Anne Micheals, an Interpol investigator. Anne is clearly submissive to Wong throughout the entire movie. - Inverted in Java Head, where the Asian woman is the more privileged partner (she's a noblewoman and he's just a merchant's son). It's also the only film where Anna May Wong got to kiss her white co-star. Another character, the brother of the husband's spurned childhood crush, develops a fixation on the princess because of his obsession with China. - Given an intriguing race flip in Korean romantic comedy Marriage Blue, wherein a white woman from Uzbekistan, in Korea on a work visa, has fallen in love with an older Korean man. It's Mighty Yellow And Mellow Whitey, but in all other respects, the dynamic is the same with the woman being the foreigner, of lower social status (the man owns his own flower shop), and struggling to fit in with the dominant culture that the man is part of. - House Of Bamboo: An American military policeman in Japan convinces the widow of a murder victim to pose as his girlfriend, and she eventually falls in love with him. - The Barbarian And The Geisha starring John Wayne as the first American Consul-General in Japan. His Japanese hosts give him a geisha to help make him feel more comfortable, as well as to keep tabs on him. - Similarly with Glenn Ford in The Teahouse of the August Moon as a captain of the occupation forces, tasked with Americanizing a Japanese village and ending up romancing the geisha Lotus Blossom, played by Machiko Kyou. - The Sand Pebbles: Richard Attenborough saves a Chinese woman from prostitution by buying her debts and marrying her. - Year of the Dragon: Stanley White (Mickey Rourke) aggressively courts Tracy Tzu (Ariane Koizumi), and his sexual attraction to her is implied to be a byproduct of a blend of attraction/repulsion towards Asians which he picked up in Vietnam. - Played with in Tai Pan (as well as the original novel), where protagonist Dirk Struan has a fiery mistress named Mei-Mei, who defies just about everything about the "Mellow Yellow" attributes, with mellow and submissive being the last two words to describe her - but she still has to deal with the monumental racism of the white people and all the disadvantages it brings. Also, both the novel and the film reverses it, with a poverty-stricken young Englishwoman who makes an extremely good living by prostituting herself to an exclusively Chinese clientèle. - Good Morning, Vietnam: Adrian Cronauer tries to get a relationship started with a local Vietnamese girl, but while the latter eventually warms to him, the relationship remains platonic. Also the girl he goes after is the third (fourth?) one he sees wearing identical white robes and straw hat, and (probably jokingly) thinking she's "following" him, he obsessively goes after her; "Asian Fever" seems oddly appropriate for how he was acting (blaming it on being surrounded by Grecian women, who he claims are hairy). - The Transporter: Jason Statham rescues Shu Qi from abduction, and she thanks him with sexual favors. - Despite being a portly washed up ping pong player, the main character of Balls of Fury is still mighty enough to get Maggie Q's character. - The Last Samurai: The wounded Nathan Algren is cared for by the widow of a samurai he killed, hinting at a budding relationship between them. Of course, for most of the movie, she's understandably peeved at housing her husband's alcoholic killer, but her brother asked she do it. She only mellows after Nathan gets some Character Development, and that's half a year in-story. - Miami Vice: Gong Li is the mistress of a (white-looking) Latin American drug lord, and has a tryst with Colin Farrell. - The Home Song Stories: Hong Kong bar girl Joan Chen marries an Australian sailor and moves with him to Melbourne. This film actually zig-zags with the trope, as she soon leaves him after arriving in Australia and has affairs with other men, including Asian men. By the end of the film, the Australian sailor turned out to be the only man who truly loved her and takes care of her children. - In the trailer for Past Lives, the white Arthur says that in another story, he might be the evil white American husband stopping his Korean-American wife from reuniting with her true (Korean) love. - Sayonara is about three interracial relationships in Japan: - The Maligned Mixed Marriage is between Joe Kelly and a local girl called Katsumi. In this case, Kelly is the one who assimilates to Japanese culture, as he lives in Katsumi's home, takes on Japanese customs, and speaks with her more often in Japanese (though she is shown trying to learn English). A sad moment in the film comes when it's revealed Katsumi was planning to get back-alley cosmetic surgery to look more Anglo. \|\|The army tries to split up the marriage by reassigning Kelly back to America, leading to the two of them committing suicide together\|\|. - Gruver's romance with Hana-ogi inverts the disadvantaged side of the trope. Gruver is an Ace Pilot, but Hana-ogi is a national celebrity (and when they're found out, she says any other girl would just be dismissed as punishment, but she's too famous). It marked the first Hollywood movie to show a Big Damn Kiss between a white man and Asian woman and averted Yellowface by casting Miiko Taka after Audrey Hepburn turned the part down. It also \|\|changes the original book's ending by having the two decide to stay together\|\|. It was especially notable for being released right after the Hays Code lifted the ban on interracial kissing. - There's a Gender Flip in the form of Gruver's white fiance Eileen growing closer to a kabuki performer called Nakamura. Theirs is only given a Maybe Ever After, and Nakamura is played by the Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban. In this case, Nakamura outranks her. - Another pairing that's less developed involves Gruver's comrade Bailey taking out a lesser Matsobayashi performer (and friend of Hana-ogi) Fumiko. The disadvantaged part is played straight here, as Bailey appears to outrank her and is appealing to his superiors to allow her to enter a whites only club. - Tanguy: The main character, aged 30 something, still lives with his parents and couldn't be moved to ... well move out. As a doctorate student in Chinese civilization, he uses his language skills to pick up Asian girls and eventually, yes, moves to Beijing where he marries a local woman. When he marries the Chinese girl, he moves in with her family and gets them to care for him. - In The Karate Kid Part II, Daniel meets Kumiko in Okinawa and both fall in love, with Kumiko being somewhat reserved and shy. That said, its far more justified than most cases as her only other romantic option was Chozen who given his actions in the film likely chased away any would-be suitors. However, in ''Part III'', Kumiko decides to stay in Okinawa with Daniel respecting her choices to let her be happy. - She actually got a job with a dance troupe in Tokyo but the point stands. - The French movie, Indochine, about a love triangle in colonial Indochina. The young Vietnamese orphan is seduced by the dashing French navy officer, who had also scored her French adoptive mother. Subverted, because, in spite of her young age, the Vietnamese girl is not submissive at all. She even becomes a resistance hero. In contrast, her white lover is quite weak and passively undergoes the events of the film. - However, inverted in another French movie, L'Amant ( The Lover, adapted from the eponymous novel by Marguerite Duras): the heroine is a French teenage girl, also in colonial Indochina, who sleeps for money with an older Idle Rich Chinese man. And she realizes after leaving back to France that she really loved him. - Austin Powers in Goldmember parodies this with a pair of fangirl twins willing to do anything for Austin. With Punny Names. - Pavilion of Women- the original novel depicts Madame Wu keeping her love for Father Andre to herself, but the film invokes this trope, along with Hot for Preacher. - Disney's Mulan was originally intended to be a film called China Doll, which would have been about a poor Chinese girl falling in love with a white British man and moving to the west with him. - In Row Your Boat, Jon Bon Jovi (yes, that Bon Jovi) plays the ex-convict Jamie Meadows, who falls for the beautiful Chun Hua (Bai Ling) in the middle of his struggle to not fall back into delinquency. \|\|Bad thing, Chun Hua is the trophy wife of a Chinese-American businessman... and in the end, Jamie ends up kicking it in a Heroic Sacrifice to help her get away.\|\| - Subverted in Die Another Day. After Bond arrives in Hong Kong and has had a proper shave and some new clothes, it seems like he tries to seduce the Asian masseuse who was sent to his room. Then he takes her gun and reveals her as a Chinese operative. - Played straight in You Only Live Twice, where Bond hooks up with Japanese secret agent Kissy (played by Mie Hama). Earlier in the film, Bond has sex with Ling (Tsai Chin), who co-operates with him to help him fake his death, and sleeps with Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi), although his and Aki's relationship doesn't last when Aki gets killed. - Gender-Inverted in Sixteen Candles: Long Duk Dong ends up with Marlene, a tall athletic woman. Their relationship is Played for Laughs. - In the coming-of-age Spanish film La Lengua De Las Mariposas, the child protagonists older brother Andres is fascinated with a picture of a Chinese girl in his school textbook. Later, he actually meets a beautiful Chinese girl (which would be very unusual in 1930s Spain), but she is unfortunately already married to a much older Spanish man. The girl clearly prefers Andres, but she is powerless to escape. - Pacific Rim actively averts this, with Guillermo del Toro intentionally creating a female protagonist that is not a Love Interest, but an equal to her male partner. While Mako Mori is the quieter of the pair, on multiple occasions she matches Raleigh in force of personality or calls him out on things. The Drift requires both to be in balance, functioning as equals without one dominating or controlling the other. Raleigh actively pursues Mako as his co-pilot because she is his match in mental strength, rather than viewing her as a potential relationship. - M. Butterfly is a deconstruction of this trope, playing the relationship between Jeremy Irons and a Chinese opera singer as a deeply unequal, condescending one. Also, \|\|she's a man in drag.\|\| There's also that. - Gender-Inverted in Stratosphere Girl, where a European girl who's an aspiring comic book artist falls for a Japanese foreign exchange student from a wealthy family, then when he returns to Tokyo, she follows in the hopes of finding him again; when her early tries at getting hired in the manga industry fall through, she ends up stuck working as a hostess in a bar catering to the white Race Fetish of its Asian patrons. And then the murder mystery happens... - Nathan and his domestic, Kyoko, respectively in Ex Machina. \|\|Kyoko is a robot who is made to resemble an Asian woman, and is programmed to be a subservient sex slave, speechless, whose sole purpose and reason for being built is to cook and clean and provide sexual pleasure for the white * : (or at least non-Asian — Oscar Isaac, the actor playing Nathan, is Latino; Nathan's ethnicity is unclear) male owner\|\|. - Crank: High Voltage: Bai Ling's character (Ria) is determined to fulfill this trope after Chev accidentally saves her from a bad guy. Chev's lack of interest in her doesn't seem to matter. "He my Kevin Costner!" - Triangle of Sadness: Inverted, like many dynamics, once the remaining passengers wind up on the deserted island. \|\|Older, more street-smart Filipino woman Abigail, now in charge of the survivors, begins sleeping with hapless white pretty boy Carl, to the consternation of his equally hapless white girlfriend Yaya.\|\| - Fah Lo Suee, daughter of Fu Manchu, falls in love with Sir Denis Nayland Smith and betrays her father for him. - James Clavell's Asian Saga. - Shogun provides some justification, as Mariko-san is the only available translator for Blackthorne, so the two end up spending all their time together. Blackthorne, all told, has four Japanese women: Fujiko, whom Toranaga orders to run his household as a consort (with all that the word implies), Mariko his translator, and, in the end, \|\|he is married to Midori, in order to solidify his standing as samurai and to run his house once Fujiko commits seppuku, and Kikuchiyo's contract is given to him so she'll be attached to someone worthy of her, and so that he'll have someone to delight him for as long as he's imprisoned in Japan\|\|. Blackthorne's real-life inspiration actually did marry a Japanese woman (although a commoner of the merchant class, not a samurai or a geisha) and have two children with her. - Mariko from Shogun is an aversion: it's made clear that she finds most Westerners disgusting for their lack of hygiene and eating habits, and she only hooks up with Blackthorne when he has adopted Japanese ways \|\|and been declared an honorary samurai.\|\| - Tai-Pan takes it much further. Several white men have Asian mistresses or have kept them at one point, and all three either explicitly have or are implied to have had utterly disastrous marriages back home. Inverted with Mary, who \|\|whores herself out to Chinese men to enjoy some power and pleasure, and she confirms that there is strong attraction on both sides.\|\| - The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan plays with this trope. One of the couples plays the stereotype of white man/Asian woman relationships having a dominant man and submissive woman perfectly straight, but it's strongly implied that the husband cheated because of his wife's spinelessness when she catches her husband in flagrante delicto with a white woman. - The Ben Devereaux/Li-Xia couple in Red Lotus can come off as this, but while Ben is definitely a Mighty Whitey, Li-Xia is not a Mellow Yellow. - In the Chinese novel Shanghai Baby by Zhou Weihui, the main character, a Shanghai woman in her 20s, is in a relationship with a caring but sexually impotent Chinese man, and has a steamy affair with a Western expatriate. The latter is depicted as a tall, blond, sexually aggressive German. - Occurs in Gish Jen's novel Mona in the Promise Land, and lampshaded when the white man, Seth, impersonates a Chinese former romantic interest in order to attract the Chinese-American protagonist's attention. Inverted in a later novel by the same author, The Love Wife. - Lynne Reid Banks' The Dungeon is a dark take on this. MacLennan, a Scottish laird embittered by the deaths of his wife and children, buys a Chinese girl named Peony from her parents on a strange impulse. While Peony is far too young to enter a relationship with him and MacLennan often treats her harshly as only a tea slave to him, there are signs that she's slowly becoming his Morality Pet by reviving the compassion that he's trying to squelch in his quest for revenge against the man who killed his family. \|\|Then MacLennan becomes incensed when he realizes how much Peony is affecting him, throws her in the dungeon and leaves her there to die, and realizes that he threw away the one thing that could have made him happy again only when it's far too late. In short, no one gets a happy ending here thanks to the white guy fucking up everything.\|\| - Austin Coates' novel City of Broken Promises tells the true story of Martha, an orphaned Chinese girl in 18th century Macau who falls in love with Thomas Merop, an English trade official. Merop is initially hesitant about pursuing a relationship with Martha but is won over and eventually marries her so she can inherit his business interests. - Mary Jo Putney's The China Bride features a half-Scottish, half Chinese woman, orphaned by her father in China and living as a male interpreter to survive, falling for a visiting (British?) viscount despite the fiercely segregated environment. The relationship is heavily influenced by the fact that both Troth and Kyle are outsiders; Troth because of her mixed race and Kyle as a foreigner. - In the Fablehaven books, the relationship between Patton and Lena zig-zags this trope really weirdly. Patton Burgess is definitely the kind of rugged Western adventurer you'd see in a Mighty Whitey narrative, and Lena is a vaguely East Asian-looking woman who leaves her home and gives up everything (including eternal youth) to be with him. (In fact, at one point, Lena reminisces about how Patton had a thing for Asian women.) On the other hand, Lena is anything but mellow, and even though she looks Asian, she's actually an American water spirit (giving the whole Patton/Lena subplot a sort of Little Mermaid vibe). - "The Paper Menagerie": Jack's Chinese mother became a Mail-Order Bride for his American father to escape abuse and poverty. If I can cook, clean, and take care of my American husband, hell give me a good life. It was the only hope I had. And that was how I got into the catalogue with all those lies and met your father. It is not a very romantic story, but it is my story. In the suburbs of Connecticut, I was lonely. Your father was kind and gentle with me, and I was very grateful to him. But no one understood me, and I understood nothing. - The Quiet American: An aging British journalist in 1950s Saigon, although having a wife back home, has hooked up with a much younger local girl. When a young American shows up, he competes with the older man for the girl's attention, but neither is really interested to know how she feels about the whole thing. (As the page quote notes, this is symbolic of the state of the world at the time, with the older European powers trying to hold on to their empires while the idealistic but naive Americans try to interfere, with neither side giving much thought to what the people of the third-world countries actually want.) - Inverted in Sannikov Land. Annuir is an Onkilon woman (the Onkilons are related to the Aleuts) who falls deeply in love with white explorer Ordin. However, he starts to like her back because she is anything but gentle and submissive: for example, their acquaintance begins when she demands to become his wife, and only the day after she announces Stay in the Kitchen is not for her and she intends to follow Ordin to war. - Twin Peaks: Joan Chen is married to an older Westerner, and it is revealed he picked her up in Hong Kong. She also has affairs with other Westerners. - Broken Trail is about two cowboys (Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church) rescuing five Chinese women from indentured prostitution; one of them ends up in a relationship with Church. - Gender Flipped earlier in Heroes, with Hiro and his white girlfriend Charlie. Interestingly, Charlie herself is pretty close to parts of the Asian stereotype, being a kind, gentle waitress. Hiro falls squarely as an Ascended Fanboy and thus an Audience Surrogate for many of the nerds watching - women like him precisely because he's an earnest Nice Guy. - Red Skies, a 2002 Pilot Movie set in Los Angeles, features a Chinese female police officer who teams up with an FBI task-force. An unspoken but definite mutual attraction develops between her and the white alpha-male of the group. - Referenced in the Cold Case episode "Who's Your Daddy": An overseer blackmails a Cambodian refugee into providing him sexual favors \|\|and later tries to coerce another one, killing her in the process\|\|; but the consensual interracial relationship is between an Asian woman and an African-American man, who happens to be a Vietnam veteran. Said man is (wrongly) suspected of being a Sugar Daddy for the teenage Asian girl. One construction worker is heard calling out "Me love you long time" as the Cambodian woman walks past. - There's an episode of It Ain't Half Hot, Mum where Sergeant Major Williams wants to marry a local Chinese girl, only for Chinese mafiosi to try to kill him because the girl had previously been engaged to one of them. Sergeant Major eventually ends his relationship with her. In another episode, two of the men fall for Mrs Waddilove-Evans's Burmese maid. - Iron Road is a 2009 miniseries in which a Chinese woman disguises herself as a young man named "Little Tiger" to work on the Canadian railroad and falls in love with her boss' white son. - The subjects of the documentary Seeking Asian Female. It deals with a Citizenship Marriage between a white middle-aged man (who doesn't speak Chinese) and a 30-year-old Chinese woman. Tension sets in when they realize that their personalities may not be very compatible. They got mentioned (perhaps unfairly) in the Creepy White Guys website mentioned below. - Diff'rent Strokes: Phillip Drummond is surprised by a man claiming to be his son; the man's mother is a Korean woman Drummond met during the war. \|\|The man's father was actually an American soldier who raped the woman. She lied and told her son Drummond was his father because Drummond embodied many of the "Mighty Whitey" characteristics of bravery and honour.\|\|. - Dates: One of the first thing Kate notes about her British Chinese date Erica is that she seems to like being told what to do (which becomes a Call-Back when they get into the thick of the plot, as Kate calls for her to speak up for once). It's an unusual twist, with a same-sex couple. - Arrow: - There is an aversion in Tatsu Yamashiro, who is one of the five women Oliver Queen had liaisons with during his time off Starling City — and is the only one he had no romantic subplot with (she's introduced as a married woman). In fact, Tatsu started out hating Oliver, and only came to respect him after he showed that he's not a ruthless foreigner. Years later, she resurfaces back in Oliver's life, but only as a friend, helping him fight the League of Assassins. - The first of said five women, Shado, also averts this as while she had romantic interest in Oliver, she's definitely not a mellow yellow. If anything, she shaped Oliver into a mighty whitey, training him to become a battle-hardened fighter. - Gender inverted in the song "Butterfly" by Smile.dk: I've been searching for a man All across Japan Just to find, to find my samurai Someone who is strong But still a little shy Yes I need, I need my samurai - Cold Chisel's 1978 hit "Khe Sanh", about a traumatized Vietnam veteran who tries to fit in after returning from the war. He expresses disillusionment with Western women: "Their legs were often open / But their minds were always closed / And their hearts were held in fast suburban chains". Later in the song, he mentions his preference for Asian women: "There ain't nothing like the kisses / From a jaded Chinese princess / Gonna hit some Hong Kong mattress all night long." - Modern Talking's China In Her Eyes describes your typical exotic hypersexual Asian beauty, who has those two things as her only defining traits. The songs also mentions every Asian country this side of India (including Indonesia and Japan). - The Vocaloid song with an extremely trippy video, "I Fell in Love With Geisha Girl" parodies this trope, as well as American stereotypes of the Japanese, and vice versa. It has the English vocaloid "Big Al" speaking in Japanese peppered with English, and Luka as the voice of the geisha. - Inverted when it came to Yoshihiro Tajiri and Torrie Wilson. Tajiri wore the pants in the relationship both literally and figuratively and became increasingly jealous and controlling of Wilson as it went on, forcing her to dress how he wanted and dressing her down for not loving him as a way to take out his frustrations on losing matches. Torrie, for her part, just took it, simply shaking her head when Tajiri questioned her loyalties. - Jade Chung with Roderick Strong and AJ Styles, as a result of the former sticking up for and ultimately saving her from her old boss, the nefarious Prince Nana, and his "crown jewel" Jimmy Rave, who literally walked all over her. In time Chung would develop as much fortitude as a pro wrestling manager can get away with having, even returning the favor to Rave. - While Madame Butterfly is infamous for being a Trope Codifier of the "exotic, submissive Asian woman falls in love with Western man" plot, the opera itself is actually also something of a deliberate deconstruction; the American Pinkerton is a cad who ruins the Japanese Butterfly's life with his selfish nature and thoughtlessness, topping it off by abandoning her to marry an American woman (who herself remains unaware of his relationship with Butterfly until it's far too late). - M. Butterfly, a play by David Henry Hwang later adapted by David Cronenberg into the movie of the same name mentioned in the "Film" section, is a subversion; the stereotypically doll-like Asian woman \|\|turns out to be a male spy who deliberately plays into the white man's stereotyped expectations of Asian women to make him fall in love with him. Complete with a scathing commentary on the Western concept of the "Submissive, Feminine Asia' that will fall for the 'Big Gun, and Big Money Masculine West" concept\|\|. And it was Inspired by a true event: look up Bernard Boursicot and Shi Peipu for details. - Played straight in Miss Saigon (which is Madame Butterfly in the Vietnam War!). Sure, Chris is a decent person (certainly far better than Pinkerton), but that still doesn't change the fact that he's a white person sweeping a Vietnamese girl off her feet the moment he meets her. Is it any wonder that Thuy's so upset? The producers apparently went to great pains to make him a Jerkass note : Seriously, was the threatened infanticide really necessary? Declaring his intent to kill Tam also made him Too Dumb to Live in a sense - seriously, you do not make death threats to a child [[Mama Bear in the presence of his mother if you value your life..., and he still garners some sympathy for being on the wrong side of this trope. - This was a common theme in 19th-century colonial fiction. Young white man comes to colonial state, has torrid affair with local exotic beauty, but in the end returns back to Western "civilization", marrying a "proper" white woman. In addition to Madame Butterfly, opera also had Lakmé, the same story set in India. - Super Robot Wars: Original Generation has the blonde, blue-eyed American Brooklyn "Bullet" Luckfield with his Japanese partner/girlfriend Kusuha Mizuha, as well as the German Elzam von Branstein and his late Japanese wife Cattleya Fujiwara (though according to the backstory, Elzam's around 1/4 Japanese). Interestingly, most interracial couples in the series actually invert this, with the very Japanese Kyosuke Nanbu, Masaki Andoh and Tasuku Shinguji pairing up with Excellen Browning, Lune Zoldark and Leona Garstein, respectively (not that you can really tell...) - Inverted in Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love. The hero is a Japanese male who travels to the United States, with his potential love interests including three white women, with two of them being his subordinates (with the last technically being his boss). The earlier Sakura Wars games also invert this trope in the same way, due to their Japanese protagonist's romanceable subordinates including a fair number of Europeans. - Hank Goddard and Pauline Wan in The Sims 3, who seem to be a somewhat stereotypical embodiment of this trope, in that their relationship is massively shallow (although their attraction is not explicitly based on race or appearance, with a few other superficial factors listed). - Played with in Tales of Symphonia, of all places. Despite being a Japanese RPG set in a fantasy land, most of the world seems to be inspired by Western traditions; everyone even follows a Catholic-looking church. Sheena Fujibayashis hometown Mizuho stands out as looking stereotypically Japanese. Sheena can be perceived as a love interest for either Lloyd Irving or Zelos Wilder, and while she certainly looks exotic and sexy enough to play the part of an evil assassin at the beginning of the game, her actual personality is innocent and idealistic, which make her qualify for this trope despite being a skilled Summoner in her own right. - Kim Possible both inverts this and plays it regularly. While Ron is in Asia for plot reasons, his replacement in Middleton is Hirotaka, a male student from the same school, who is athletic, rides a cool motorcycle, and all the girls in Middleton fight over him. Including Kim and Monique. - Inverted in Clerks: The Animated Series where Randal tried to get a mail order bride but ended up with a mail-order husband and had to deal with said husband's rather old fashioned (read: sexist) demands. He seems to have enjoyed it though and expresses that he misses "Toshiro-san" after the husband transferred back to Japan without him. - Lampshaded on Family Guy; when "Asian reporter Trisha Takanawa" meets David Bowie, she starts dry humping his leg and offers to make him fishball soup, and even says "me love you long time!". Tom Tucker gets a rare moment of noticing the issue: "And thank you, Trisha, for setting your people back a thousand years." This is less Unfortunate Implications and more a Stealth Pun — one of Bowie's bigger hits was his 1983 cover of Iggy Pop's "China Girl" (which doesn't fall under the specifics of this trope). - Comic Book Guy's marriage to Kumiko on The Simpsons is a parody of this trope. Even though CBG is fat, nerdy, and condescending and Kumiko is a perky, feminine mangaka, she fell for his shamelessness since she was tired of all the submissiveness in her home country.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrientalistRomance
Order Versus Chaos - TV Tropes Those roommate preference forms? They're just for the illusion of control. "According to the philosopher, Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized." Bored of the age-old battle of Good versus Evil? Want something new to spice up your setting and throw your readers in confusion? Fear not! Cosmological Forces R Us has brought you the brand new dichotomy: Order versus Chaos. Using it in a setting allows you to have two sides, in a similar way to Good and Evil. While the most traditional works have assigned Order to Good, and Chaos to Evil, inversions of this are also common: often, you'll find a Chaotic Good band of rebels fighting against a Lawful Evil empire (Common enough it's becoming its own trope). In another take on the subject, true goodness is seen as the balance between the two forces, and both Order and Chaos are portrayed as evil when they are taken to their extremes. Order, sometimes called Law, is associated with civilization, authority, rules, protection, the status quo, tradition, and, when stretched to its extreme, mindless obedience, totalitarianism, and abuse of power. It's quite common to depict what happens when Order takes their laws and oaths just a little too far, but also don't be surprised to see The Good King portrayed positively. When they have powers associated with them, it's often leadership, The Virus, Brainwashing, and the power to bind with rules and oaths. When used as a villain, he's likely to say "We Have Reserves." Chaos is associated with change, The Trickster, free will, creativity, individualism, and, to the extreme, madness, savagery, solipsism, and selfish overindulgence. The powers associated with it are Shapeshifting, illusions, and matter transmutation, as well as Entropy and Chaos Magic in general. By nature, Chaos tends to be too disorganized to pose a serious unifed threat like Order, and may engage in an Enemy Civil War or find its members Divided We Fall. On the other hand, the forces of Chaos are the hardest to predict. They're sometimes Anthropomorphic Personifications, struggling with the whole world at stake, and don'tcha know, the hero's just the one that's got to pick between one or the other to serve or choose neither one and keep them balanced because Both Order and Chaos are Dangerous. When they're not actual forces, they're broad themes represented by the agenda of specific groups of people. Rarely is it brought up that by sorting the world into clearly defined categories of Chaos and Order, the trope inherently skews itself in favor of Order. It's also generally vague as to why the forces of discord and chaos are regimented and disciplined enough to have actual Forces of Chaos. Naturally this only applies to absolute, cosmic-level order and chaos, not human individuals who tend toward one or the other because humans are a diverse lot. Incidentally, this skews the trope in favor of Chaos, as does the very fact that there is a conflict between order and chaos in the first place. When classifying people as one or the other, three factors tend to get elided into one: - Whether they believe the universe to be ordered - To what extent they support order in society - How they conduct their lives. There can also be a mixture within one character. For instance, a hero who flies by the seat of his pants can nevertheless believe in an orderly universe and support his society more or less according to whether it is in harmony with the greater order. Conversely, an obsessive-compulsive character may be reacting to his belief that the universe is chaotic, and society no better. See also Character Alignment, where this is a major factor. See also Alike and Antithetical Adversaries for other variants on this conflict. Can often be involved with the dilemma of Harmony Versus Discipline. Visually represented on a smaller scale with Slobs Versus Snobs. Also not uncommon in Odd Couples. ## Examples: - Gatchaman Crowds Insight's main conflict is between those who believe that CROWDS shouldn't be given to the people because people will misuse them and will cause conflict (Order) against those who believe that CROWDS do more good than bad and humanity will evolve to use it responsibly in time, creating a better society in the future justifying the conflict it will take to get there. (Chaos) - One Piece has — at least as a background story so far — the war of the World Govvernment and their policy of "absolute justice" against the free-spirited pirates. The World Government is portrayed as corrupt and pretty much completely evil, aside from a few story-prominent Navy officers who reject "absolute justice" in favor of their own brand of justice. The pirates, on the other hand, range from nice guys like Luffy to jerkasses like Buggy to dog-kicking scumbags like Arlong and Crocodile. - Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion: The ultimate question posed by \|\|Homura\|\| to \|\|Madoka after the former became a demon: does she consider stability and order more important than personal desire. Madoka establishes herself as the Lawful of the two when she answers that it would be wrong to selfishly break the rules, while Homura is the Chaotic one whose desires led her to betray her friends and remake the world in her own image.\|\| - s-CRY-ed (anime version) casts the independent mercenary Kazuma as a proponent of Chaos and the military-mindset HOLY member Ryuhou as a Orderly Knight Templar who's confidently skirting the Moral Event Horizon. Most of Kazuma's potential Inner allies aren't all that good, and Ryuho's fellow Cape Busters run the gamut from easygoing to The Caligula. Then Conflict Killer \|\|Kyoji Mujo\|\| shows up, having suckered the mainland brass into thinking him a full-blown Knight Templar when he's really a Social Darwinist. At this point, if the two are left unattended for more than two seconds they start pounding on each other, but both agree that he's the biggest threat. - Tsutomu Nihei's Blameverse features this conflict prominently. In Noise, the main character is a cop investigating a cult who worship the power of chaos who are kidnapping children to use for human sacrifices in their bizarre Magitek rituals. When they kill her, she is resurrected by an agent of the Safeguard, protectors of order, but they turn out to be a pack of fascists who plan on disenfranchising and killing everybody who can't afford network implants and brainwashing the ones who do. Then in Blame!, we see the aftermath of this; the cult succeeded in throwing the world into chaos, but since they're so poorly organized their descendants, the Silicon Lives, don't amount to much more than a bunch of roving cyber-barbarians. The Safeguard doesn't fare much better, as their directives become so corrupted that they essentially believe that everything that's not them must be exterminated. - This is one of those few times in fiction where the reader is shown exactly WHY the Balance Between Order And Chaos is so important and makes it clear that although Order is necessary, if it taken too far from the median line between Order and Chaos, extremes become implemented without a balancing force. In fact this is even evident in the Schizo Tech and Bizarchitecture seen in the manga, where widespread chaotic disruption results in the ever-growing expansion of the City, but the reason why that expansion continues is because the ordered directives of the builders demand logical progression and expansion. With no mediating force, one extreme inevitably bleeds into the other where neither are compatible for continued life. - In K, The 4th and Blue Clan stands for Order, and they get Chaos from both sides - the 3rd and Red Clan are their rivals for most of the series, but their element is Destruction. The Green Clan, JUNGLE, who Scepter 4 fights in the second season \|\|In an alliance with HOMRA, as well as the Silver Clan\|\| is Chaos. - Very much present in Soul Eater, which likes to play around with the concepts on a regular basis. - Mostly in the "pure chaos" results in total insanity with no control or direction, but "pure order" in fact amounts to nothingness where the chaotic nature of life is not present. You start to feel very bad for the Anthropomorphic Personifications who run the universe. - It says something when even they \|\|give up on the idea, and ultimately leave everything to humans. By the end of the manga, most of the 'verse's Anthropomorphic Personifications are either dead, imprisoned, or have sided with humanity against the remaining bad things in the world. There is still the matter of the one in the Book of Eibon, who was shown to be able to tip the balance significantly.\|\| - Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is very much about this trope: the good guys represent the forces of freedom, while the villains are the oppressors. \|\|However, every villain in the series is an Anti-Villain with Well-Intentioned Extremist reasons for their actions.\|\| - The World God Only Knows has a minor version of this in the second to last episode of the first season. Many students want to put a media room in the library, but Shiori, the student librarian, won't have it, preferring the library to be a place of quiet solitude for books to be enjoyed. - The overarching conflict in Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is this, although it's played with a bit. The angelic Anarchy Sisters are Chaotic Neutral, being largely just selfish jerks who want to have fun heedless of the amount of mayhem they cause while protecting the city; by contrast, the demonic Daemon Sisters are Lawful Evil and make serious attempts to improve the quality of life by way of tyranny and enforced conformity. - Given the sheer selfishness and dubious moral choices that Panty and Stocking have both made over the series, most notably Panty indifferently telling the Daemon Sisters to kill Brief, even suggesting they take a crap in his mouth first to give him a last meal, their mutual decision to abandon their fellow survivors in "...of the Dead", and Panty \|\|refusing to catch Brief, even though he just restored her angelic powers, in the final episode, which leads directly to the Daemon's plan succeeding\|\|, it's not implausible to take a more cynical view and view the series as Lawful Evil Daemon Sisters vs Chaotic Evil Anarchy Sisters. - The Devilman spin-off manga AMON portrays conflict between God, Satan and Amon as this. God is a cruel tyrant who wants to exterminate demons just because he didn't create them and they don't fit his vision of order in the world. Satan, while defending demons, despises their chaotic nature and wants to rule over them. Amon, a deeply chaotic spirit, despises both of them. - Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL has the conflict between the Astral World (representing Order) and the Barian World (representing Chaos), with Earth caught up in the middle. The Astral World's ruler Eliphas is so fanatically devoted to Order that he stands in Yuma's way just because he has Chaos powers, even when Yuma uses them to heal several inhabitants of Astral World. After Yuma narrowly manages to defeat him, Eliphas realizes he was wrong, especially with the revelation that \|\|Chaos is the source of life, and the Astral World was slowly dying because they had purged it of Chaos.\|\| - Dragon society in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is divided into three factions: those who seek to keep the world in order, those who seek destruction and power, and those who seek neither. Tohru, Fafnir, and Ilulu are part of the chaos faction, Elma and Clemene are part of the order faction, and Lucoa is unaligned. - In My Hero Academia, this conflict is best exemplified with the introduction of the Meta Liberation Army. The QLA, an organization spanning generations since its founding by a villain named Destro, represents Chaos and the ability to freely use the Quirks(formerly known as "Meta" powers) which are possessed by the majority of the population, but they use terrorist tactics to push their agenda. On the side of Order, the government and law-enforcement maintain the peace with the help of licensed heroes. While this works for the most part, it requires that Quirks be very heavily regulated, with professional heroes being the only ones legally allowed to use their Quirks in combat while anyone else would be considered a "villain" for doing so. - In Attack on Titan, this trope is why Eren abandons \|\|Mikasa\|\| and rejects her allegiance. However compatible their personalities are, or how much she tries to accommodate him, they are too different on the inside to ever be allies. \|\|Mikasa, like everyone in her genetically-altered bloodline\|\| is always trying to build hierarchies and nurture her loved ones. Eren doesn't believe anyone should have power over anyone else, and would eagerly burn down the world if that's what it took to remove the tyrants running it. He's horrified when he realizes \|\|Mikasa\|\| thinks of herself as his 'inferior'. - Tanya von Degurechaff of The Saga of Tanya the Evil maintains neutrality in this debate, saying that that freedom without regulation leads to anarchy; while regulation without freedom leads to tyranny. - Food Wars!: During the Central Arc, once Azami Nakiri becomes the school dean, his first action is dissolving all autonomous organizations within Tootsuki and founding an organization named Central, set to be the only RS/Club/etc., led by him and the Council of Ten Masters. It decides all classes, all recipes, and all students must follow a specific and narrow way of cooking, which it considers to be the "correct way" to cook, thus fulfilling the role of Order. The role of Chaos is taken up by the Polaris Dorm, a rebel faction that refuses to obey Central, spearheaded by Soma and his friends. All of its members have their own way of cooking, and celebrate this diversity by trying each other's food and providing feedback. Erina, Azami's daughter, reflects that their chaotic collaboration and random ideas can create effective solutions, surprising even her God Tongue, which is supposed to be absolute and infallible. - Final Fantasy: Unlimited: This is the dynamic between Gaudium (the followers of the world-eating Eldritch Abomination Chaos) and the Comodeen (who want to defeat Chaos and build a stable society in Wonderland). - The Last Supper: Visually represented with the food around Jesus, as discussed in this blog. The food to Jesus's sides (and thus closer to his emotional, human Apostles) has fallen over, while the food directly in front of him is standing up to reflect Christ's serenity in the face of his suffering. - Shows up quite commonly as a theme in the works of Grant Morrison, who is a self-described chaos magician and anarchist. As a result, Morrison's heroes tend to be agents of chaos trying to break free of the shackles of dull, conformist order. - The Invisibles had the good guys as agents of Chaos, fighting off the evil forces of eternal Order. The series often plays with these associations, as a member of the Outer Church (the Order side) tries to convince a bunch of outsiders they're the good guys by citing the story of Ahura Mazda versus Angra Mainyu (see below). - The original, Silver Age run of Doom Patrol had the team tending toward Good Chaos, as they were the rejects and cast-offs of society. Grant Morrison's later run kicked this into overdrive, with surreality as the order of the day, and characters like Crazy Jane (each of whose multiple personalities has its own superpower) and Danny the Street (a sentient transvestite boulevard). It also featured Evil Chaos in the form of the Brotherhood of Dada, and Evil Order as Darren Jones and the Men From N.O.W.H.E.R.E. Granted, the Brotherhood of Dada wasn't evil so much as plain weird. In fact the heroes found themselves working to SAVE the Brotherhood of Dada in their second appearance, and two of them even pointed out that the Brotherhood had the right idea. - In the last issue of Morrison's run, Crazy Jane is kept in another world (implied to be our own) and her therapist insists her adventures with Doom Patrol are delusions. The therapist claims that some enemies the Doom Patrol facedthe Scissormen and Orqwith, the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E., the Sex Men, the Ant Farm and the Telephone Avatarwere representations of cold, alien, tyrannical authority (Evil Order), while othersRed Jack, Desecrator, Shadowy Mister Evans, the Candlemakerwere predatory forces of destruction (Evil Chaos) representing her father. - Nameless (2015) is a Cosmic Horror Story in which a monstrous, otherworldly intelligence has been imprisoned in our universe and punishes anyone who dares defy its whimsin other words, according to Morrison, it's \|\|the Christian God, ultimate symbol of order\|\|. - Seaguy is a more comedic take on this idea: a colorful, whimsical world in which the last superhero is no longer needed, because all of the villains were defeated long agoand in which the apathetic citizens are secretly ruled by the tyrannical I-Pol. - The DCU: - The Sufficiently Advanced Energy Beings known as the Lords of Chaos and Lords of Order. Several previously-existing magical beings were retconned to fit in with this; Dr. Fate's mentor Nabu became a Lord of Order, the Legion of Super-Heroes' antagonist Mordru was revealed as a Lord of Chaos, and so on. Most portrayals of these focused on balance, especially Hawk and Dove, who represent, respectively, Chaos and Order and were created by a Lord of Order and a Lord of Chaos who had fallen in love and tried to find some happy middle. - It also has Jack Kirby's Fourth World of the New Gods, where Order is represented by the oppressive tyrant, Darkseid, who demands absolute obedience and seeks the Anti-Life Equation, mastery of which will force any mind to submit to the will of he who wields it. He's opposed by the Space Hippies of New Genesis, who believe in peace and free will ("That is the Life Equation!") — and his own son, who is essentially a personification of pure, primal fury. Amazingly, though Kirby clearly spells this out several times, many writers who followed him Just Didn't Get It, and explicitly flipped around the Order and Chaos attributions of the two factions. This may be because it was most clearly stated in The Forever People, the least well-regarded series in the saga. In The New 52 Highfather and Darkseid both represent order, with the Forever People rejecting both of them in favour of a chaotic third option. - Batman and The Joker are Order and Chaos respectively. - Batman upholds justice and the rule of law (the spirit if not always the letter). His mental discipline is the closest thing he has to a superpower, and prevents him from going mad in spite of all he has to deal with. Unquestionably a good guy, but difficult to get along with, and the possibility that a loss of human contact would drive him to Knight Templar tendencies is a disquieting one. - The Joker is strongly anti-authoritarian and anti-society, indiscriminately destructive, and downright insane. He's unquestionably evil, though sometimes his antics are meant to expose hypocrisy or evil in other people. - Marvel Comics' Crystar Crystal Warrior is about a war between the magical forces of Order and Chaos on the planet Crystalium. While the good guys are all allied with Order, and the demon lord Chaos is indisputably evil, it's worth noting that the Order wizard Ogeode recognizes that if Order were taken too far, it would be just as destructive as Chaos (his bosses don't like it when he talks like this); while Chaos's Dragon, Moltar, was railroaded into the job and clearly doesn't really believe in it wholeheartedly, either. \|\|Moltar finally does a HeelFace Turn at the very end of the series.\|\| - Doctor Strange villains Dormammu and Shuma-Gorath have both been described as Lords of Chaos. There is also the God of Chaos Chthon, the source of power for the Scarlet Witch, who is more of a general Marvel-wide villain; he created Chaos Magic which causes Reality Warping and other chaotic-style stuff, but he also represents conquest. The personifications of Chaos and Order represent more of a Balance Between Good and Evil. - Vampirella has a cosmic conflict between Order and Chaos with the Conjuress representing the Balance Between Good and Evil. By and large, Vampirella sides with Order as that is associated with good and justice. However, she has several friends on the side of Chaos. It is also noted that Chaos, the Satanic Archetype ruler of Hell, is insane and not really doing his job well. - Marvel also has Lord Chaos and Master Order, two Anthropomorphic Personifications of the concepts. Usually Lord Chaos serves the role as the antagonist, or they both team up to protect the universe against a greater threat. An exception was when the cosmic being Edifice Rex planned to revert the universe back to a point singularity - all of the other cosmic beings opposed him, except for Master Order who thought it was a wonderful idea. - Subverted in V for Vendetta: V fights to bring down the oppressive government, but is careful to tell to Evey that it's law, rather than order, that he opposes. He also makes sure to explain that anarchy is not the same as chaos. This is because in oppression a resistance will always exist, while in anarchy it will not, as there is nothing to resist. - According the comics, the Cenobites are order. In one of the more comedic stories, an obnoxious, lazy office worker spends all his time tinkering with one of the puzzle boxes, distracting his fellow employees and annoying his borderline Clock King boss, who easily solves the puzzle for him, summoning some Cenobites. The Cenobites prepare to take the boss to the Labyrinth, only to be told off by him; the boss says he only solved the puzzle because it was disrupting the order, productivity and perfectionism he constantly strived for, which the Cenobites are now doing. The Cenobites mull this over for a bit, eventually decide the boss is essentially "doing Leviathan's work" and decide to take the employee, who the boss had earlier described as "a gear that has become misaligned", in his place. - The theme of Jonathan Hickman's S.H.I.E.L.D. is a war between science as a force for change (represented by Leonardo da Vinci) and science as a means of control (represented by Isaac Newton). The lead character, the son of Nikola Tesla, initially sides with Leonardo, before deciding both sides are wrong because they're locked into the idea there must be a war. - Modern Green Lantern comics have shades of this with emotional spectrum. - Green in the middle represents Order and the further you go from it, the more chaotic the corps become. Each color represents emotion, except for Green, which is willpower - the ability to overcome and control your emotions for the greater good, so the further you go from it, the less control you have. - Blue and Yellow, hope and fear respectively, represent how you can use the emotions to affect and shape the world. Their goal is to establish order, but Blue Lanterns see it as harmony that can be built only in cooperation with Green, while the Sinestro Corps tries to impose tyranny and rule the Universe with an iron fist. - Orange and Indigo - greed and compassion - represent what happens when you let your emotions define your life. Indigo Tribe sacrifice their individuality for the common good, but it makes them detached and borderline sociopathic. Larfleeze, on the other hand, is completely selfish and cares only about himself. - And finally we have Pink and Red - love and anger - who represent Chaos. Members of both corps lose their minds, taken by the representative emotion. Star Sapphires want to spread love through the Universe and are willing to go to extremes to do so, as well as tending towards yanderish behavior. Red Lanterns are a horde of berserkers destroying everything in their path and often fighting between each other, when not provided with better (as in, any) targets. In the beginning they were mindless and bestial, but Atrocitus allowed them to regain some degree of self-control since then. - It should be noted that Order isn't presented as completely good and Chaos as completely evil. The White Entity is composed of white light, (formed when all of the seven colors are combined), and represents life, which is a combination of all emotions, as well as order and chaos in all their forms. Meanwhile, Black represents absence of emotions and life, the state of emptiness and stasis. The Guardians' actions to purge emotions from the Green Lantern Corps allowed the forces of Black to infiltrate them, as their actions have bought them too close to this cold, emotionless state. - Nemesis the Warlock pits the titular powerful alien wizard in service of Kaos against the tyrannical bigot ruling humanity, Torquemada. At first it looks like Chaos/Nemesis is good and Order/Torquemada is bad, but as the series goes on it becomes clear Nemesis is manipulating both people around him and readers as well to portray himself as a hero, but in reality is a cruel, bored god prolonging the war for his own amusement, because Torquemada is the only man to give him any challenge. At the end it's clear they are both bastards. - Asterix fits this theme. The Romans are well-organised (the story occasionally lampshades their beautiful maneuvers as a form of history-porn), trained, dress in uniforms, live in elegant villas or tidy little fortified camps, and are cultured and structured — although the characters given to the individual Romans show the cracks in the façade. The Gauls, on the other hand, have long, wild hair and facial hair, live in ramshackle huts, actively resist authority even if that authority might have a point and charge into battle anyhow with no plans and their biggest men at the front. It's worth observing that when the Gauls beat up the (ordinary) Romans, they tend to look messed up, but quite happy about it, as if they're just relieved to be liberated from the oppression of order. The Gauls export their particular brand of Chaos to the camps, eventually — a new centurion arrives to discover that no-one is in uniform and the soldiers, all bruised and missing teeth, have completely given up attacking the village and are now just hanging around enjoying food, drink, games and basically having a relaxed, good time. On the other hand, the Gaulish chaos isn't entirely good, since if they have no-one to fight against they just argue constantly with each other. Some later Goscinny stories, such as Asterix and the Soothsayer, and Asterix and Caesar's Gift (to name just a couple) make it very clear just how annoying it would be to live in the village if you are anything close to being a normal person. - The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil has the orderly world of Here haunted by the chaos of There lurking "beneath the skin of all things" that eventually invades in the form of the titular beard. - PS238 does this, complete with angels of order and demons of chaos along with the fact that their conflicts are "mostly political nowadays," may be explained by the fact that PS238 is intended as a children's comic. There's also Malphast, whose parents are on opposite sides of this war. - Invoked in Birthright by God King Lore who is universally branded as an evil overlord. Lore claims that the affected people spend all their time warring already, but if he conquers all the combatants then he can finally deliver peace. - The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic's fan works typically make more use of this than the TV show itself, most notably in the background characters. You have the obviously chaotic ones, or at least the ones most closely associated with any form of chaos (those usually being Derpy Hooves, Vinyl Scratch/DJ Pon-3, and Lyra Heartstrings), and you have their opposites, the ones portrayed as the more level-headed, orderly ponies (respectively, those usually being Doctor Whooves or Carrot Top/Golden Harvest, Octavia, and Bon-Bon). More often than not, you will typically find them serving as foils to each other in many a fanfiction, fan comic, or fan video. - Chronicles of Harmony's End features the gods of these forces, and as you'd expect, they really don't get along. - Contraptionology!: This is the nature of the conflict between Discord and the Nightmare — or, as they were known in ancient days, Change and Constancy. Constancy used to rule over the prehistoric world, keeping it in a constant, stable state of simplistic nature beneath a static moon and sun; then Change came, bringing motion to the heavens and seasons to the world, and setting existence into the cycle of constant progression and evolution that it has known since. They have warred ceaselessly against each other ever since, Discord seeking to bring randomness and constant novelty while the Nightmare drives ponies to grasp onto something, anything, to preserve in eternal and unchanging stability. - Pony POV Series: This contrast is embodied in the Alicorns, representing Nature's Law, and the Draconequi, representing Nature's Fury (although they favor Chaos, even though Discord is the Anthropomorphic Personification of it). However, while they did have a war at one point, they generally don't hate each other and are meant to balance one another out. During the Dark World Series, we find out that Discord and Grogar went to war, forming an all evil version of this trope. - A New World, A New Way: Discord (who is connected to the natural chaotic forces of the Everfree Forest) clashes with Zygarde, the Order Pokémon, when the latter starts to remove that Chaotic energy and replace it with Order. - The Immortal Game: The backstory involves constant warfare between Titan (Order) and Discord (Chaos). And given that Titan is a Knight Templar of the highest order, this is another all evil example. - Lines and Webs: The conflict of order and chaos is extremely important for the beginning of the series, with Celestia and the Order she represents being portrayed as evil while Twilight and the Chaos she represents portrayed as good — although the series is heavy on Greyand Grey Morality. Eventually Order and Chaos unite against and even greater threat. - The Borderworld: The whole story collection centered around this conflict, with Discord for Chaos and Order being for, well, Order, and the Tree of Harmony for, of course, Harmony. The conflict is called the Eternal War because it spawned ever since all three sides were born, and has spanned across the universe and time itself. However, the Tree of Harmony at some point decided to re-brand herself as a bridge between Order and Chaos; while she opposes both sides' negative attributes, she has come to appreciate their good qualities. - The Origins of Sentient Life as Narrated by Discord has Discord and his kind fighting Order based members of their kind before most life forms evolved in the universe. This led to different worlds being dosed in massive amounts of Chaos or Order Energy, such as Earth and Equestria respectively, affecting their evolutionary paths. This war only ended when a neutral race \|\|the 13 Primes of Transformers\|\| trapping them on worlds where their natural Chaos and Order energies would balance out a world that was leaning the other way. - In the Tamers Forever Series, this is represented by the millenia-old conflict between \|\|the Archangels and the Archdemons\|\|. - The Dark Lords of Nerima has this in form of the Sailor Senshi (heroic Magical Girls who fight for love and justice and work to preserve the peace of the world), and Ranma and the Wrecking Crew (crazy Martial Artists with so many different fighting styles that can blow up mountains at their best, plus they're Chew Toys). They only reason why both sides are at war is because Ranma and Ryouga tricked the Senshi into thinking that they are both Multiversal Conquerors to protect a Youma that Ryouga befriended. The said thing is that the Senshi are very insistent on believing that they're evil, which given how twisted their villains were it's not surprising. - Many of Occam Razor's works, like the Shadowchasers Series, feature this. For example, devils are creatures of Law and Order who mostly aim to enslave the world, while demons are creatures of Anarchy and Chaos who mostly aim to destroy the world. Both races are evil and hate each other. As it is based after Dungeons & Dragons, this is to be expected. - Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights: \|\|The war between the Morning Lights, the faction of MagicalGirls from across the multiverse, and Dead End, the Legion of Doom composed of their enemies, is an extension of the eternal conflict between Cosmos and Chaos. Each is a Sentient Cosmic Force, and it's made clear that either claiming final victory over the other would be a disaster for all of reality. Instead, the Morning Lights seek to restore the balance between them both.\|\| - Sonic X: Dark Chaos: Despite having created the Chaos Emeralds, Maledict Maledict firmly believes in imposing absolute order upon the universe - courtesy of his Demon Empire - and he will do anything to accomplish his goal. Maledict: That is why the universe belongs to me. We bring order upon the chaos. Without it, life and civilization would not exist. Brother would fight brother, parents would destroy their children. Darkness would swallow all. - Son of the Sannin: - Jinin Akebino leans more to the "order" side, which is why he's loyal to Yagura as the Mizukage, even though it's lead to Kirigakure be known as the Bloody Mist, and thinks that Mei Terumi's rebelion will plunge their village into chaos. - A more personal example happens to \|\|Yakumo Kurama\|\|. The chaotic nature of her powers caused her to accidentally kill her parents, leading her to cross the Despair Event Horizon. Then, Danzo showed up offering her the means to control them, leading her to become one of his puppet agents in Root. - In The LEGO Movie, Lord Business represents order, with his insistence on conformity and following the instructions, and the Master Builders represent chaos, with their unbridled (and sometimes counterproductive) creativity. \|\|Emmet succeeds by balancing the two, in a sense. But then the Duplo Aliens of the Systar System show up, being more of the destructive kind of chaos, setting up the sequel...\|\| - One of the underlying conflicts in Demolition Man. Several characters represent different levels on the spectrum, and the two main villains of the movie lie on opposite extremes. - Dr. Cocteau is a relatively benevolent dictator who has built a future world where anything that can offend or harm anybody is banned, and maintaining civil, peaceful coexistence has usurped the value of life in importance. To this end, the following things are banned: guns, alcohol, swearing, caffeine, sexual intercourse (apart from a weird neural link thing), contact sports, chocolate, non-educational children's toys, and spicy food. - Simon Phoenix is a violent psycho who hates rules because they stop him from behaving like a violent psycho. \|\|After they murder Cocteau\|\|, he and his unfrozen gang want to turn San Angeles into a lawless hellhole where they can commit crimes all day, everyday. - Edgar Friendly is an iconoclast leading a gang in the sewers against the Cocteau regime. He fights so people have the right to eat real food, listen to real music, have real sex and generally make their own choices. Cocteau wants him dead for it, so much so that he unleashes Phoenix (albeit with a mental Restraining Bolt). - All the Pirates of the Caribbean want to do is sail around the world, drink rum and get saucy women at Tortuga. But noooo... The Company just has to have its Order. - In 2008's The Dark Knight, the Joker claims that he is a representation of chaos, going up against Batman who represents order. As a sort of justification, he says that chaos, for all that it does, is at least fair. note : Though really, he means "indiscriminate," not balanced or even. - Beetlejuice, the movie with the afterlife bureaucrat Juno and Mr. "It's Showtime", with the protagonists trying to find a happy medium (no pun intended). - In Auntie Mame, Mame Dennis represents chaos, and Dwight Babcock represents order. Babcock wants to give her all the responsibility of raising an orphaned kid while keeping all the power for himself. - In the original Mad Max, Max and the police force represent order, whereas the biker gangs represent chaos. - Somewhat the point of The World's End. \|\|What is better? An advanced, progressive society full of robots, or a crude, harsh society where individual freedom is preserved? Humanity chooses the latter. In fact the advanced society is only full of robots because humans instinctively reject their idea of order; when they did this on other worlds, they only had to replace a few people to achieve it, but on Earth it took damn near everyone.\|\| - In Cadet Kelly, Kelly represents chaos, while Jennifer represents order. Kelly wants to express her creativity and individuality, while Jennifer just wants to enforce the rules. Ultimately, \|\|Kelly finds a way to be creative through the school's rifle team.\|\| - The dynamic between Owen (Chaos) and Claire (Order) in Jurassic World. Which is why their off-screen date was an Epic Fail — she turned up with an itinerary, and he turned up in board shorts note : It's Central America! It's hot!. - Marvel Cinematic Universe: - Loki, The Trickster, is the embodiment of chaos in all his appearances, while Thor brings order to the Nine Realms. Lampshaded in regard to Loki in Thor: Ragnarok: Thor: Come on, [Sakaar] is perfect for you. It's savage, chaotic, lawless. Brother, you're going to do great here. - Thanos believes that life is chaotic and unbalanced, which will inevitably result in extinction, so in Avengers: Infinity War he puts it upon himself to bring order to the universe by destroying half of life and thus limiting it. One of his first victims \|\|is a self-proclaimed God of Mischief\|\|. Thanos also believes in destiny, i.e. predetermined and orderly course of events. \|\|By killing Gamora\|\| he rejects the chaos of emotions and submits himself to this course. - In The Cat in the Hat, there is a struggle between the fish (order) and the cat (chaos). The cat isn't strictly bad, since he brightens what would have been an otherwise boring day, but it's portrayed as a good thing when the house returns to order. When the Cat returns in The Cat In The Hat Comes Back, the children greet him with hostility and make it clear that, fun or not, the chaos he brings is NOT welcome. - In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, McMurphy represents Chaos and Nurse Ratched represents Order. Chaos is definitely the good side here. - Catch-22— the protagonist, Yossarian, is Chaos; the military bureaucracy he's struggling against is Order. - In His Dark Materials chaos is good and order is evil. 'God' is the evil leader of a race that seeks to control and repress joy and passion, so the protagonists must Rage Against the Heavens. - The works of Michael Moorcock, especially The Elric Saga and Corum series, where the Lords of Chaos and the Lords of Law pick Champions to fight for them. Neither Order nor Chaos are portrayed as very nice. It's pointed out in the books: Chaos means that every possibility is allowed (symbolized by the eight-arrow symbol), but at the end, you'll just move back and forth and get to nowhere. Order (symbolized by a straight arrow) means that you have direction, but exclude some possibilities — in the worst case, all of them. A world gone too far in Chaos is one where shape cannot be maintained and horrible things will try to eat you. A world gone too far in law will eventually become a featureless white plane. And although Order has a superficial appearance of being Good, and Chaos of being Evil; the true Good is, in fact, the Balance, with Evil being the extremes of either Order or Chaos. - In A Song of Ice and Fire we have the Wildlings, who love their freedom, would never support the whole monarchistic system that is causing all the crap in Westeros, but have no real infrastructure or laws. On the other hand we have the Night Watch, which is honour bound to protect the country from them. - Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber also had Order and Chaos, respectively embodied by the Unicorn/Pattern and the Serpent/Logrus, as the main cosmological forces of his multiverse. In the second series, they were rather insistent on main character Merlin picking a side, much to his annoyance. Too much imbalance was especially said to endanger the existence of the universe. It's also noteworthy that families ruling Amber and Courts of Chaos both have elements of the opposite in them - Chaos is much more honorable and has complicated form of hierarchy within which all intrigues and schemes happens, while children of Oberon are more or less pragmatic, backstabbing manipulators constantly changing aliances between one another and don't even mantain illusion of hierarchy among them. - Part of the world's magic system of Modesitt's Saga of Recluce novels. His system is very complex but normally the Chaos side is evil. This is increasingly subverted in the later novels, but we have not yet seen an Order mage as a major villain. Ironically, the Chaos mages have (or had) a well-organized Empire, while the Order mages were generally either rebels or refugees for much of their history. - The Illuminatus! trilogy is largely about the battle between Chaos as good and Order as evil, but also suggests that Chaos is 'good' in this context because there is too much Order - too much Chaos is shown to be just as bad. One of the guiding principles of the Discordians (our Chaotic good guys) is that "imposition of order leads to escalation of chaos". - Nonfiction example: Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan is very pro-Order, characterizing totalitarianism as the only alternative to "the war of all against all". - A semi-viral unpublished novel called The Cloven Accord depicts Chaos as evil natural disaster-causing demons and Order as a mind-destroying cult. The happy medium, the Ilyarians, appears to be extremely metaphysical hedonism. Uniquely, all symbolism inherent in these concepts is helpfully listed at the back of the book. - Mickey Zucker Reichert's The Last of the Renshai series ties this trope to a modified version of Norse Mythology. Odin has been keeping the world as orderly as possible to delay Ragnarök. One of the main characters in the book decides the world needs a little bit more chaos. The efforts of other characters to stop him end up being counterproductive, tilting the balance the other way. - On the Discworld, there's the constant competition between Fate and the Lady, the Lady being Luck — a chaotic factor interfering with Fate's order. - The Old Kingdom series has Charter Magic (Order) vs. Free Magic (Chaos), though the Abhorsen makes use of both. - The Thursday Next books have the Hades family as Evil Chaos and Goliath Corporation as Evil Order. Thursday tends towards Balance - In John C. Wright's Chronicles of Chaos, the central conflict of the setting is that of Cosmos vs. Chaos. The children are caught in the middle; indeed, one consideration when thinking of escaping back to their parents is that they aren't certain the forces of Chaos are right, even though the forces of Cosmos have been holding them hostage. - In Gordon R. Dickson's The Dragon Knight series of books the forces of evil are constantly trying to upset the balance between "History" and "Chance." - In another nonfiction example, it was subverted by Pierre-Jospeh Proudhon's writings, namely by the statement "Anarchy is Order." - Louise Cooper's excellent Time Master trilogy, along with the sequel Chaos Gate and prequel Star Shadow trilogies. Another example of Good = Balance, and Evil = Extreme; although none of the factions are quite that straightforward, and the nature of the universe is portrayed as a pendulum constantly swinging back and forth between the two. - In Tamora Pierce's The Immortals novels, the Big Bad turns out to be \|\|the goddess of chaos who fights against the other great gods. It's because of her that creatures like the stormwings got into the mortal realm.\|\| - It also is known in The Icelandic Sagas which sometimes can seem to resemble the Western genre. - R.A. Salvatore's The Orc King has an interesting play on this; King Obould is motivated by bringing order to orcish society where as his rival Grguch firmly believes that chaos is the way of the orc and Obould should die for straying from that. This is demonstrated in parallel scenes where Obould subtly helps his generals plan for an assault with considerably more discipline and forsight than one would think an orc capable of(an attack he knew wouldn't happen, at that). Meanwhile, Grguch orders a raid on the orc's enemies without any planning at all, despite, when he's called on it, displaying considerable understanding of battle planning; he knows what to do but doesn't do it as he considers order and discipline contrary to what he believes orcs should be. The twist in all this, however, is how these two are percieved by the heroes. The Companions of the Hall have been fighting orcs for as long as they can remember, and are forced to chose between assisting the creation of Obould's stable kingdom, which completely disrupts their perception of the natural order, or Grguch's chaos, which is normal for them, but in practice will involve a long conflict that will surely cost many more lives before it is resolved. - In Elizabeth Bear's The Promethean Age series the Fae are definitely Chaos and the Promethean Society Order and neither is presented as very nice. Subverted in that\|\| The Promethean Society was originally founded by Lucifer who is a Magnificent Bastard and the original rebel against Order\|\|. - Paradise Lost uses the standard notation where God is Order and Lucifer is Chaos. As a quirk of the way Milton wrote it, God is the stern version, while Lucifer decides in the first part to make the best of the bad situation he's been put in. It also points out Lucifer's hypocrisy. While he claims to stand for freedom, he very quickly becomes a despotic tyrant who rules Hell with an iron fist. Like many classics, the resulting work is still quite open to interpretation. - In The Bartimaeus Trilogy, there is Grey-and-Gray Morality. As such, the most prevalent conflict is between the magicians' order and the spirits' chaos. - The Mistborn trilogy has the gods Ruin (chaos) and Preservation (order). Ruin is the Big Bad, but it's noted that this is only because he's the one who's ascendant; if Preservation had its way, everything would stay exactly the way it was forever. In the end \|\|Sazed assumes both the Ruin and the Preservation Shard, becoming the new god Harmony.\|\| - Depending on the Writer and when it's not pure Blue-and-Orange Morality, the conflict between the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods in Cthulhu Mythos can be viewed as order vs. chaos. The Outer Gods are also often associated with Chaos, being essentially not-really-anthropomorphic personifications of primal forces, hence Azathoth often being called the Nuclear Chaos and Nyarlatothep's epithet "the Crawling Chaos". - In The Lord of the Rings, - This is played out in the race of Ents: male Ents loved the wilderness and forests, nature untamed, while the Entwives cultivated gardens and loved orchards and farmlands. The two genders drifted apart over the years, and the Ents have since lost the Entwives completely. Less a war and more like contrasting life-styles and preferences that took them awya. - According to J.R.R.'s notes and letters relating to The Silmarillion, Sauron followed the chaotic Morgoth, paradoxically, out of a desire for absolute order. Wanting to impose his will upon everyone and everything, Sauron came to see tyranny as the easiest way to do so. - Downplayed in The Moomins stories, where the protagonists tend to be Chaotic Good and others such as hemulens are often Lawful Stupid. It's never a major conflict, but at least in one book we find Snufkin and his father waging a sort of guerilla war of annoyance against wardens of a park for children who are enforcing such strict rules that no one's having any fun. - In Tad Williams The Dirty Streets of Heaven Heaven is Order and Hell Chaos but while demons are definitely evil Heaven is implied to be a Crapsaccharine World with the higher orders playing Machiavellian games and the "saved" playing forever in the Elysian Fields at the cost of their memories and personalities which has led some on both sides to seek a Third Way. - In Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, the evil forces are Chaos — fairies, dragons, trolls, etc. — and the good ones, Law — humans, some fairies, dwarves. This is a Trope Codifier. - \|\|Grundy\|\| from A Fable of Tonight belives his mission is to ensure balance between Order and Chaos, with healthy dose of Balance Between Good and Evil, through The Multiverse. \|\|When he finds a world where either Order or Chaos gained too much of an advantage, he tries to balance it. But because he's a demon, his methods are both utterly evil - he brings terror to wacky, crazy world of magic and lets criminals from it into our, much more orderly, world, to spread disorder - and bound to upset the balance to much towards the other side. This is when the force Grundy calls the Adversary intervenies, creating a champion of good to truly restore the balance between order and chaos.\|\| - Patrick Tilley's Amtrack Wars series pits the fascistically orderly Amtrack Federation against the chaos of the Mute tribes. it pretty much comes off as Gray-and-Grey Morality with the tribes being the the lighter shade. - A Clockwork Orange uses this to prevent Too Bleak, Stopped Caring, though it's subtle; the main conflict is between Villain Protagonist Alex, a young man who generally dedicates himself to rape, ultraviolence, narcotics, and Beethoven, and the government that wants to torture the criminal impulse out of him. Alex is Chaos; the government is Order. They're both pretty damn bad. - Once you get past the Totally Radical slang, this is the main conflict in The Demon Headmaster series. The title villain has no backstory besides "Lawful Evil on legs", while the heroes are unruly, fun-loving schoolkids who represent everything he despises. In the first book, Dinah notes that if the Headmaster cared about things like money he wouldn't be going to the effort of world domination - he genuinely believes the world would be better off his way. - Atrocitology: Humanity's 100 Deadliest Achievements by Matthew White is a non-fiction example. In the opinion of the author, "Chaos is deadlier than tyranny. More of these multicides result from the breakdown of authority than from the exercise of authority." - In Idlewild, Fantasia has this worldview, dubbed Nutritious and Delicious. Her schizophrenia may have played a role in its adoption. - In The Quantum Thief the Sobornost mind upload collective claims to represent Order and seeks to wipe out all death and uncertainty from the world, and preaches that every thought is worth preserving, but their inner workings are far less orderly than they claim. Their prime opponent is the Zoku collective, who in turn embrace the quantum uncertainty principles, and declare that change is inevitable and positive; the Zokus' identities are fluid and they only define themselves through their interests, which they are free to change any time. - Journey to Chaos: Order and Chaos are in a perpetual Divine Conflict for control over the multiverse contained within Noitearc, the Great Tree That Supports the Worlds. Elves call this "The First War". Chaos desires worlds of infinite possible change and Order desires worlds of permanent and unchangeable stability. - A Mage's Power: Eric reads a story that portrays the founding gods Order and Chaos as family in a multiverse origin story while glazing over their animosity. - Looming Shadow and Mana Mutation Menace see mana mutation become the latest front in the First War. If there is a magical illness in your world that can turn people into savage monsters, what is the best way to deal with it? Accept the danger and find a cure or reject it entirely and accept Order's domination? - The centuries-long war between the Gun and the Line is the whole reason for the plot of The Half-Made World. Neither side is particularly sympathetic — both want the West all to themselves, and everybody else gets caught in the crossfire. - Representing Chaos are the Agents of the Gun, a small and disorganized group of superhuman gunslingers patterned after famous outlaws and folk heroes, each empowered by and in service to the demonic firearms they wield. - Opposing them is the Line, representing Order, which combines all the worst aspects of Industrialized Evil with N.G.O. Superpower, and which is slowly but inexorably extorting, coercing, or outright conquering all civilization in the West. Notably, the balance is tilted decisively in favor of Order — as one Agent puts it, you don't join the Gun to win, but to lose gloriously. - The Traveller in Black by John Brunner is set in a magical land where the struggle between Order and Chaos underlies everything. The Traveller himself is an agent of Order. - In The Dinosaur Lords, Falk justifies to himself fighting against a divinely-ordered Crusade as fighting for Order as opposed to discord represented by the horde. - The Elder Empire: The central conflict. On the Of Sea and Shadow side, the heroes are mostly fighting for Order, as they know that letting the Empire fracture into countless mini-empires will result in nothing but war and bloodshed. On the Of Shadow and Sea side, the heroes are mostly fighting for Chaos, as they believe that the species has evolved past the need for a single omnipotent authority. The problems with both sides are discussed; if there's a single Empire that means there's a single point of failure that can be exploited, while if there are multiple empires there will be no way to force them to cooperate in the face of a major threat. - "The Red Tower" is a force of undirected change and creativity, endlessly producing grotesque and meaningless mockeries of life, in petty rebellion against the surrounding wastes and their entropic return to their natural state of purity and emptiness. Attempting to ascribe moral qualities to such cosmic forces is futile. - In The Ten Thousand Doors Of January, there's a secret society dedicated to maintaining what they call order — the status quo that's comfortable to them while treading on others, particularly The British Empire, and progress in the sense of industrial and economic development — by opposing the change and disruption brought about by Doors leading to other worlds. - Wraith Knight: The primary conflict in the series is this rather than the Black-and-White Morality of Good versus Evil. The Lawgiver represents order with its tyranny, expansionism, and religious control. The Trickster by contrast represents freedom, chaos, and resistance. \|\|It's subverted when it's revealed that it is the Lawgiver and his brother Running Both Sides.\|\| - Our Miss Brooks: At Madison High School, there was order represented by Osgood Conklin, the Dean Bitterman who ran the school in a orderly manner (in "Mr. Boynton's Parents", Miss Brooks has a nightmare of Mr. Conklin telling her to "stay on the ball", "hold the line" and "run the school in an orderly manner"). He goes so far as to hang signs such as "Respect through Power" ("Spare That Rod!) and "No Goldbricking" (The Movie Grand Finale) through the school. Opposed to Mr. Conklin was chaos in the form of High-School Hustler Walter Denton, who played pranks like making Conklin look like a drunk ("Cure That Habit"), blasting an ancient cannon ("Marinated Hearing"), and writing a fraudulent letter forcing Mr. Conklin to let the students act as teachers for the day ("Turnabout Day"). In between these two extremes was Miss Brooks, who disapproved of Mr. Conklin's strict and overbearing manner in running the school - once even calling Conklin the most "unprincipled principal in the country" ("The Novelist"). However, she indeed wanted to teach while shielding Teacher's Pet Walter Denton from the consequences of his more outrageous pranks. The conservative and shy Mr. Boynton, Miss Brooks' Love Interest, was between Mr. Conklin and Miss Brooks' in outlook, although a Nice Guy without Conklin's faults. - Babylon 5 had the Vorlons and the Shadows. Originally they were portrayed as Black-and-White Morality (Vorlons projecting angelic images of themselves vs. the demonic and fear-inducing Shadows). \|\|Later, their millena-old conflict is revealed as rival philosophies run amok: the Vorlons believe the best way to promote growth among the younger races is through order and obedience, while the Shadows believe evolution is best served through chaos and conflict. The Vorlons and Shadows are eventually revealed to be similar, with both groups trying to force the younger races to choose a side or die.\|\| The idea was taken from Babylonian mythology, hence the name of the show. \|\|Sheridan ultimately has to lead the younger races into collectively telling BOTH sides where they can stick their rival philosophies, and to go away and leave the younger races alone to make their own choices.\|\| - Firefly: The chaos-loving Independents (who lead The Heroes) vs. the order-loving Alliance (the antagonists, responsible for a number of nasty things in the name of the greater good, but still more noble-minded and sympathetic than, say, the Empire from Star Wars). The Unification War is a more complicated matter. note : The "Eternal Prohibition" was left on Earth-That-Was, everyone was permitted weapons, and taxes were both the lowest of any government in history and actually treated as charity. A lot of Independents weren't all that nice; thugs and debt slavers right out of Charles Dickens. It was when the war was declared that it got worse. . Then you have the Always Chaotic Evil Reavers \|\|who were created by the Alliance\|\|. - Quite a few pairs in House. Cuddy's job requires her to be the Order to House's Chaos. The fact that House needs to ask Cuddy for approval of his methods doesn't affect much at all since according to House, Cuddy can never refuse him for one reason or another. If she does refuse, he usually gets around this via a loophole either he, Wilson, or one of his fellows can find around policy. - Earlier seasons had Foreman (Order, because he followed policy more in earlier seasons) and Chase (Chaos, because he agreed with House just to kiss-ass). - Pair Kutner + Defibrillator and anyone trying to deal with the subsequent mess. Or Kutner with anyone else really. - In Get Smart, the government spy agency the heroes belonged to was called CONTROL, while their enemies' organization was KAOS. - House of the Dragon: In the mind of the Hightowers, a consistently male line of kings is order, and a ruling queen means chaos to them. - Classic Doctor Who had the Black and White Guardians, cheerleaders for chaos and order, respectively. While the Black Guardian generally appeared as a villian, it was suggested (and confirmed in the Doctor Who Expanded Universe) that the White Guardian was just as bad. (The Big Finish Doctor Who arc "Key 2 Time" introduce the Grace, who seem to be Balance \|\|and are possibly worse than the Guardians put together\|\|.) - The new series and The Sarah Jane Adventures has The Trickster and The Pantheon of Discord. Though an opposite Order aligned group has not been shown. As they share some dialogue, some speculate that the two may be related, if not the same being. - The Doctor himself is a benevolent force of chaos (just look at the effect he has on his companions' lives), and many of his enemies represent cruel order. The Daleks believe in cleansing the universe of all that does not meet their standards of purity and perfection (i.e. themselves), the Cybermen want to achieve harmony and survival by eliminating things like race, gender, and those untidy emotions (by making everyone a Cyberman), and the Master is a counterpart to the Doctor himself, but instead of merely wanting to experience the universe, he intends to run it. - The rest of the Doctor's race, the Time Lords, were "ancient, dusty senators" who were afraid of change and chaos. While they weren't his enemies for most of the original series (though they had their moments), they were nonetheless very law-bound and the Doctor was considered a dangerous renegade, who was tolerated because he occasionally came in handy. - In Yes, Minister, Hacker tries to claim that the role of the government is to do good and fight evil. Humphrey dismisses that notion with a dry laugh, and explains that the government is actually there to maintain order amid chaos. - Even Sister, Sister had this! Tia and Tamera had very different personalities. Tia (order) was the neat, studious one, and Tamera (chaos) was the party girl. - In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine the Dominion's Founders viewed themselves as imposing order upon the chaotic galaxy of the "solids". In Odo, this is tempered somewhat by his upbringing among humanoids, sending him into Lawful Good instead of Lawful Evil. - A mostly subliminal but ever-present theme on Game of Thrones, referenced most directly during a conversation between Varys and Littlefinger. Varys works for the good of the realm, and because of his powerless upbringing understands exactly what happens to the weak when there is no order or realm to protect them. Littlefinger, on the other hand, rebels against a system that would relegate him to a life as an irrelevant hedge lord, and sees chaos as a way to ensure his rise to power. Varys describes chaos as "a gaping pit waiting to swallow us all," while Littlefinger describes it as a ladder for the strong to climb. They're both right. - The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Sauron followed Morgoth out of desire for order and control, but after witnessing what a chaotic, meaningless destruction a nihilistic force like Morgoth can cause, he started to regret the path he chose and felt relived when Morgoth was finally defeated. He than migrated in the Forodwaith with many Orcs and started experimenting on them, in the search of a power that could help him impose the order he so much wants on Middle-earth. And when than doesn't work, he starts projecting into Galadriel, who, in her relentless quest to hunt him down, proved to be just as ambitious and obsessed with control as him, even if their goals are fairly different. - A reoccurring theme in Nowhere Boys. - In Season 1, the Big Bad is an entity known as the Restoring Demon, who is obsessed with restoring order whenever there's a magical disturbance. - In the feature film The Book of Shadows, the Big Bad is a girl named Tegan, who is \|\|revealed to be the personification of Chaos,\|\| and wishes to take revenge on "Bear", \|\|the personfication of Order.\|\| - In The Magicians (2016) Umber and Ember are respectively gods of order and chaos. They joined forces in creating Fillory because their natures would balance out and allow for something greater than they could make on their own. So long as both remained in Fillory the world was stable. After Umber was driven out by the Beast there was nothing to stop Ember from indulging in his darker urges and bringing the entire world to ruin. - The children's educational show Odd Squad pits kid secret agents and the orderly powers of Math against a grab-bag of (silly) chaos-spreading villains and freakish (goofy) phenomena. - Once Upon a Time: Regina (the mayor and all around Control Freak) versus Emma (the woman who came to town and shook it from its foundations). - Oddly enough, shows up perfectly in the country music song "The Reckless Side Of Me" by The Steeldrivers. "There's two angels sittin on my shoulders / All they ever do is disagree / One sits on the side of rhyme and reason / The other on the reckless side of me" - The Rush song "Cygnus X-1: Book II" is about this. It details a war between Apollo (who brings wisdom and order) and Dionysus (of love and chaos) that decimates the human followers. This is ended when the astronaut from Book I (at the end of the previous album) shows up and tells of how he has existed after plunging into the titular black hole. They dub him Cygnus The God of Balance as a result. - "Therein" by Dark Tranquility. From the lyrics: "Order stormed the surface where chaos set norm - had there always been balance?...surely not - therein lies the beauty..." - This is a far more common dichotomy in ancient religions than concepts of "good vs. evil". Consider almost any ancient Pantheon (such as the Norse or Greek Gods) with flawed and often immoral dieties. They aren't exactly "good" in the sense of being moral and upright, but they represent elements of Order and human understanding and were almost always opposed to some rival group representing forces of Chaos and primordial nature. The Norse Gods fought the Frost Giants, the Olympian Gods defeated Giants and Typhon. Over time, and especially under the influence of medieval Christianity, Order became more associated with morality and the divine while Chaos became associated with evil, sin, (where applicable) the devil. - This is the central tenet of Zoroastrianism. Followers worship Ahura-Mazda, the embodiment of truth, order and justice — and oppose chaos and disorder (the Lie). One of the offshoot sects, called Zurvanism, names the Lie as Ahriman, the brother of Ahura-Mazda, and holds that the two are always in conflict over the spirits of mankind. The two are both the sons of Zurvan (Time). - In Egyptian Mythology, the god Set is considered to embody constructive chaos (the forest fire that allows new growth, for example) while the... thing... known as isfet represents chaos taken to its potentially universe-destroying extreme. - Order versus Chaos was the primary division in Egyptian culture, with the word ma'at meaning not just order but also justice and rightness. Isfet meant both chaos and injustice. The Pharaoh was the "Lord of Ma'at" who upheld both social and cosmic order through his combined political and religious authority. Without this authority, the Egyptians believed that the primordial chaos which existed before Creation would overtake the world and dissolve everything. - Discordianism. What else could be expected when the Goddess is Eris, Goddess of Chaos? (Actually, Eris is Goddess of Strife. The Principia Discordia explains that the Greeks were somewhat "off" in their appraisal of Eris.) On the other hand, the Principia recognizes the difference between creative/destructive order and disorder, advocating the "good" version of each. Although it generally prefers the "disorderly" method, as Discordians believe the world is far too organized already. - The Seelie and Unseelie courts of The Fair Folk represent Order and Chaos (or Light and Darkness) respectively rather than Good and Evil, although that is how many modern fictional treatments align them. Both tend to be equally dangerous and unpredictable. - Many creation myths start with a primordial sea of chaos, from which gods and creatures are born that eventually bring order to the chaos and create the earth. - The Taoist creation story from the Zhuangzi is about a chaotic, bag-shaped god named Hundun ('chaos'), who lived before the universe existed, and two emperors called Shu and Hu (Brief and Sudden). Hundun treated Shu and Hu kindly, so they decided to repay his kindness. "All men have seven openings so they can see, hear, eat, and breathe," they said (nostril, nostril, mouth, ear, ear, anus, the other one). "But Hundun has none. Let's try drilling some into him!" Every day they drilled another hole, and on the seventh day, Hundun died. People like the emperors meddle with the primal world by trying to establish rules and regulations for it, thus killing it. - In mythological studies, there is a trope called "Chaoskampf". It is always along the lines of "storm god fights huge serpent/dragon, representing order vs chaos". It appears in the form of Indra vs Vritra, Zeus vs Typhon, Thor vs Jormungandr, Marduk vs Tiamat, YHWH vs Leviathan (followed by Christ vs the Ancient Serpent Satan), and possibly Susano'o vs Orochi as well. Yu the Great killing Xiangliu during his work stopping the Great Flood may also count, although Yu is not a storm god. - This was what came to define the Attitude Era, as the foul-mouthed, bellicose, and totally unpredictable Garbage Wrestler "Stone Cold" Steve Austin feuded with Corrupt Corporate Executive Vince McMahon's slick, soulless media empire. - Another, similar conflict from the Attitude Era was down-on-his-luck Psychopathic Manchild Mankind's running battle with the 'Corporate Champion', The Rock, which involved the clean-cut rising star (and corporate shill) of the WWE getting squashed under forklifts, thrown through tables, and repeatedly gagged with Mankind's Companion Cube, 'Mr. Socko'. - The officials of Ohio Valley Wrestling took frequent measures to help tone down the cheating of the heels and were met with stiff opposition and/or creative interpretations of their new rules every single time. The most frequent offenders were Bolin Services and The Jersey Shore Crew (who existed before the television show). - Every main member of the WWN family (including Ring of Honor but excluding Dragon Gate USA) took some measure to cut back on the "cliches" of pro wrestling and reign in heel cheats. In every case there was a group that formed in response to more or less do what they wanted without reproach, such as The Prophecy, Special K, Generation Next, The Rottweilers, The Embassy, Hangm3n, SCUM, The Kingdom, The Rebellion and probably a few others in ROH, YRR, and "The MSL Universe" Full Impact Pro, The Scene and Premier Athlete brand of EVOLVE, Valkyrie and C4 in SHINE, Christopher Daniels and SoCal Val being habitual offenders. And that's not even getting into outside groups seeking to bring chaos such as The Blackout, The House Of Truth, most obviously New Japan Power Stable CHAOS and most infamously Bullet Club. Although The Second City Saints, Age Of The Fall and Decade were orderly heels, Bullet Club turned face and Las Sicarias were chaotic baby faces from the start. - CM Punk has been on both sides of this in WWE. He's been a force of Chaos operating against the authority in the WWE in the form of John Laurinitis and Triple H from 2011 to 2012. However, in his earlier feud against Jeff Hardy, Punk played the role of Order, contrasting his personal dedication to the Straight Edge lifestyle against Jeff's excessive self-indulgence. - The Old World of Darkness had three cosmic principles in its setting, especially shown in the Werewolf and Mage games: Dynamism/Wyld as Chaos, Stasis/Weaver as Order/Technology, and Entropy/Wyrm as corrupted destruction. Werewolf especially tended to picture Chaos as good, but mostly because it was the underdog of that fight. Mage had the technomancers of the Technocracy to act as Order, the insane Marauders as Chaos, and the diabolic Nephandi to serve as Entropy, with the Player Characters supposed to stand somewhere in between. - The cosmology in the Mage: The Ascension setting stressed the importance of the Unity of these three forces. When in balance, they feed into one other in a perfect harmony of creation, existence, and destruction leading to new creations. The Crapsack World nature of the WoD is a result of that balance having been broken in favor of stasis and corruption. - Incidentally, in the creation myth for Werewolf, the Wyrm was originally supposed to be the blessed end brought to all things that had fulfilled the purpose. Then the Weaver, who'd already been driven batshit crazy by trying to define the limitless Wyld, tried to define the Wyrm, which twisted it and turned its purpose towards unending corruption. - The Were-Spider source book details their more minute distinctions of each force in the way they determine their Auspice. Each were-spider has what amounts to a primary alignment with one of the three forces, and a secondary alignment which determines how they expressed it. An entropic-dynamic character, then, would thus be concerned with spreading/serving entropy and destruction in as chaotic a manner as possible, whereas a static-dynamic character might be more interested in creating and preserving new works. - It is not as hard-written into the story as in the other gamelines, but Vampire: The Masquerade has this kind of conflict too between the three core factions presented, with the Anarchs representing chaos, the Camarilla representing order, and the Sabbat representing destruction, based on their general demeanours and goals. This in itself gets twisted around a through the individuals of each sect a lot, however, so it's definitely not as prominent as the more solid examples in the setting. The Camarilla is generally presented as the good guys in this gameline, with some Anarchs shining through occasionally, though it leans more towards being the lesser evil than actually being good. - In White Wolf's other Tabletop RPG, Exalted, traces of this are also present. The Wyld is a place instead of a force, but one that The Fair Folk inhabit as the representatives of Chaos. Order is represented by the Sidereal Exalted and their Celestial Bureaucracy, as well as by the Realm of the Dragon Blooded. - Dungeons & Dragons has a similar system of moral alignment for characters that opposes Evil to Good, and Law to Chaos. - In the original game, there were only three alignments: Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. Lawful was frequently equated with Good and Chaotic with Evil, so it's not much of a surprise that future editions expanded the system into the nine alignments that we know today — which many people still have arguments about, in large part because of the popularity of Anti Heroes and Anti Villains in fantasy fiction. C'est la vie. - Even in the original edition, the Monster Manual had creatures defined as "Chaotic but good" or "Lawful but evil". This most likely led to the two-axis alignments. - The other alignments are also useful. A Dark Lord's just-following-orders minion or a heretic-burning priest is Lawful Evil (keep the rules whatever the cost to people.) A Thief character is Chaotic Good (screw the rules, be excellent to each other.) - Fourth Edition pared it down to Lawful Good, Good, Unaligned, Evil, and Chaotic Evil. Players have hotly debated whether this means that Lawful Good is somehow "more good" than Chaotic Good, or whether goodness means being naturally chaotic. Wizards' own article on the subject appears here. To summarize for those who don't want the link; Word of God is that Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil are explicitly not The Same, but More of Good and Evil. They simply represent very specific, focused views of good and evil — Lawful Good views law and order as being essential components to goodness, while Chaotic Evil is so psychotic and self-absorbed it goes beyond what even Evil considers appropriate. An "Evil" character has standards and is usually rational about their goals; a "Chaotic Evil" character has no standards and will do whatever they want to achieve their goals, which are often horrific even to Evil beings. - In the older editions, the Blood War was a massive mashup between the demons and the devils on which kind of evil (pure rampaging destructive chaos vs brutal and cunning tyranny) should dominate the cosmos. Now its changed to war of Evil Versus Oblivion between the demons and the devils.Not only are the demons an infinite source of chaos and destruction but they cannot access the material plane until the devils are defeated. This makes the devils Necessarily Evil and are the only thing keeping the endless hordes of demons from overwhelming the cosmos]]. This handily explains why the devils who use order have not defeated the devils and why the forces of good have not intervened to destroy evil it is impossible with the demons and destroying the devils means that death of everything. - In 4e, the equivalent of the Blood War of prior editions is being fought between Bane, god of war and conquest, and Gruumsh, god of destruction and slaughter. Bane is a strategist who plays by the rules of war, while Gruumsh cares only for slaughter. Gruumsh covets Bane's position as god of war, and Bane uses the war with Gruumsh as a cover to make the other deities think he's distracted, occupied, and generally less competant than he actually is, though Gruumsh's unpredictability and bravado keeps the war much more even than Bane would like. - In the Basic/Expert/etc variant of D&D, the Sphere of Matter was generally affiliated with Law, and the Sphere of Energy with Chaos, with Time favoring Neutrality and Thought combining some of each. The four all generally team up to oppose the Sphere of Entropy, a nihilistic variant of Chaos that's looking to eliminate life of any alignment, however. - Curiously, that's how things are in Normal CD&D reality. In the alternate Nightmare reality, it's Chaos (a.k.a. Freedom) that's generally on the side of the angels, and Law (there called Stasis) that's considered a menace. - The Neverwinter campaign setting can get like this with the right Game Master and playing the cynical side of Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. One interpretation of the campaign is do you let Lord Neverember rule knowing that he might use Neverwinter as a stepping stone to conquer the northern lands, or do you dethrone him and risk the rioting that could cause Neverwinter to never recover from the disasters? Tyranny or anarchy, take your pick. - Two products from Lamentations of the Flame Princess, publisher of "Old School Renaissance" supplements for older D&D games, redefine Law and Chaos: - Carcosa defines Law as "sworn enemies the Old Ones" and Chaos as "servants and allies of the Old Ones". - Their flagship RPG, Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Weird Fantasy Role Playing (whew!) defines Lawful beings as (oversimplifying a bit) conscious pawns in a cosmic plan, and Chaotic beings as those touched by magic, a random and amoral force that could overwhelm our so-called "reality" in the blink of an eye. Notably all Clerics must be Lawful, and all Magic Users and Elves must be Chaotic. - Magic: The Gathering: The conflict between White (the color of tradition, society, law and faith) and Red (the color of emotion, liberty, and impulsiveness) is at its heart the conflict between Order and Chaos. Since none of MTG's colors are inherently good or evil, this can take many shapes over different stories, such as a heroic White society fighting back the chaos of Red barbarians and monsters that threatens to destroy it or Red freedom fighters and revolutionaries fighting against an oppressive and hierarchical White regime. - Red and White are not however mutually exclusive, and some of the Guilds from the Ravnica sets explore the mixing of the two colors in some interesting ways. - The Boros Guild, Red/White, is for instance extremely dedicated to promoting White ideals of justice, law and society, but rather than pursuing these goals stoically and/or emotionlessly like White tends to, they do so with a clearly Red passion, fervency and personal, emotional investment. - This is taken a step further in the form of the Rakdos Guild, the Black (the color of selfishness, ambition and amorality) and Red guild; more or less a self-indulgent and frequently psychotically violent chaos incarnate. It is revealed that the entire reason the other nine Guilds allow the Rakdos to exist is to show to the non-guild citizens what a world without the guilds would be like. Furthermore, when a guild wants something done on a large scale that just isn't possible within their respected roles of the guildpact, they often commission the Rakdos to sow a little chaos and do it for them. Or, in the case of the Dimir, they set things up so the Rakdos take the blame. - The Kaladesh arc is a clear example of a story focusing on good Chaos versus evil Order, focusing on the chiefly Red-aligned Renegades fighting against the stifling, tyrannical order of the chiefly White Consulate. - While all the colleges in the Strixhaven Arc have similar oppositions in the vein of an academic debate, this is more directly shown when looking at the Lorehold college, the school that focuses a lot on the past and fittingly produces a lot of Adventurer Archaeologist students. Their outlook on history is a debate on whether it is a series of orderly events (white), or if it is a chaotic mess (red), and the deans that represent each aspect are Augusta and Plargg respectively. - Warhammer had both the Chaos gods and the Gods of Law, the later being obviously so obscure that they not only are barely mentioned, but pretty much absent from the main plot, although their followers are known to be extremistic. There's also several other gods who are either rather neutral, or that side against Chaos, but are not considered Gods of Order. - The Chaos Gods themselves do not simply represent Chaos; they represent corrupted Chaos. All Warp gods are affected by the emotions of their worshippers and all four Chaos gods personify, in part, something much more positive than their normal nature- Slaanesh is the God of Love, for instance, and Tzeentch the God of Hope. The reason they are Chaotic Evil rather than Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Good is largely because the Warhammer universe is just that screwed up. The fact that all the other factions are about as Ax-Crazy as each other is what makes Chaos the worst faction of the lot in the first place. Its not that there is no Good and Evil in this setting- it's that Evil exists, and it has won. - Warhammer 40,000 typically defines itself as Order vs. Chaos (or rather, Order vs. Disorder, seeing as how one of the factions in the universe is called Chaos). There is no real Good vs Evil. Although there are some individuals who could be considered good, as a whole the sides are basically Bad vs Worse. - Normal racial divisions are the Imperium, Eldar, and Tau for Order, and Chaos, Dark Eldar, and Orks for Disorder. Necrons and Tyranids are both off to the side a bit, but as Necron lore becomes more developed, they seem to be leaning towards Order. Their goal is wiping out sentient organic life in order to truly starve the chaos gods. - In the first Necrons codex, the C'tan are essentially the Gods of Order, as they're the complete antithesis of the Chaos Gods. The Chaos Gods exist in the Warp while the C'tan are wholly physical beings (well, energy beings, but they have no connection to Warp whatsoever) The Chaos Gods can substitute reality with their own, while the C'tan have mastery over the laws of physics, allowing both to do seemingly magical things. The followers of the Chaos Gods tend to end up controlled by their emotions and become more and more mutated until they turn into mindless Spawn, while the followers of the C'tan had their minds transferred into unchanging metal bodies and became the soulless and emotionless Necrons. The ultimate goal of the Chaos Gods is to consume the galaxy in chaos by turning it into a giant warp rift, while the ultimate goal of the C'tan is to seal off the warp, turning every sentient being into soulless cattle for them to feed on. note : This angle was dropped in the second Necrons codex because Games Workshop came to the realisation that this made it very hard to give any meaningful character to the Necrons themselves and defined them solely by their relationship to the C'tan. - Similarly to the C'tan mentioned above, in the Fantasy setting perfect order can be seen in the undead armies, the Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings, legions of mindless servants who thoughtlessly serve their masters in "the perfect, unending order of undeath." - With the Warhammer: Age of Sigmar sequel setting to Warhammer Fantasy, the Gods of Law have been dropped entirely (it is implied that they were either defeated by the Chaos Gods or were too weak to interfere during the End Times that ended WHF's world and didn't survive) and the stifling evil absolute Order role is take by the successor to the original undead factions, the Grand Alliance of Death. The healthy order is taken by the Grand Alliance of Order, the Chaos Gods and their followers in the Grand Alliance of Chaos and the Greenskins, Trolls (renamed to Troggoths), Ogres (renamed to Ogors) and Giants are placed in Grand Alliance of Destruction, still on the chaos side, just not capital C Chaos side. - Winterweir has one of its main setting themes as the conflict between the Celestials (Order) and the Demons (Chaos) with neither side being especially good. - F.A.T.A.L.. It stresses that neither is actually related to good or evil. It also calls Order "ethical" and Chaos "unethical" in the Character Alignment section. You may clap sarcastically whenever you like. - In Traveller, the Interstellar Wars are very much about the conflict between Order and Chaos. The Vilani Empire is about ten thousand years old and has done almost nothing new in thousands of years. Yet at the same time, it has highly refined all its techniques and technology and has a political system designed to keep order. It is sometimes oppressive, but it holds thousands of worlds together. The Terran Confederation has a more or less democratic structure, as well as a large number of only half-controlled Intrepid Merchants and Space Cossacks, who are a great help against the Vilani Imperium. - The Zhodani and the Vargr represent a much more extreme example of the "Order versus Chaos" confrontation. Zhodani nobles use their psionics to maintain a vaguely Orwellian police state, while the Vargr have an extremely fragmented society where authority is based on "Charisma". - In the Empire of the Petal Throne, Order and Chaos are called Stability and Change, respectively. They are not exactly at war, but they are often opposed. Interestingly, they tend to mirror each other. There's a Stability Sun Deity and a Change Sun Deity, for example. Neither is necessarily good or evil. - A Meta Game version is the Pink Mohawk vs the Black Trenchcoat in Shadowrun, where Pink Mohawks represents chaotic shadowrunners who goes in with plenty of explosions and gunfire while Black Trenchcoat relies on cold calculation to complete the runs. - The main plot of AdventureQuest Worlds is about Drakath, champion of chaos and the 13 lords of chaos. Order is less obvious, however the constant and stable conflict between good and evil seems to represent order (and considering that it's Lawful Good vs. Lawful Evil, and the predictability of their fight going into something of a tradition, would represent order, an order that Drakath shattered when he came into the story. - In the Metal Gear franchise, Solid Snake would do battle against both terrorists (representing chaos) and politicians (representing law), both of whom threatened to destroy the world with their war with each other. - On a more thematic note, the war between Big Boss and \|\|Zero\|\| ultimately boils down to this. Big Boss's goal is to establish an anarchic perpetual battleground where soldiers are free to serve as mercenaries and do battle without allegiance to any government, ideology, or creed, whereas the latter hopes to unite the world under a One World Order government run by Big Brother A.I.s. - The The Witcher franchise, including both the books and video games, had three wars waged between the Northern Kingdoms (Neutral), the Nilfgaardian Empire (Order) and the Scoia'tael (Chaos). There is even a card game based after those three wars, titled "Gwent"! - Geralt of Rivia, on the other hand, did his best to avoid their three wars with each other, remaining True Neutral to the best of his abilities, just to focus on two things: Killing monsters for profit, and rescuing his adoptive daughter, Ciri. - The virtue system in Serpents Isle is quite different from past games. Unlike the Britannia virtues, based on Infinity, Ophidian virtues are based on Order and Chaos. The Virtues of Order are Logic, Discipline, and Ethicality. The Virtues of Chaos are Emotion, Enthusiasm, and Tolerance. - However, unlike the virtues of Britannia, Ophidian virtues are not good by themselves and must be practiced with its opposite counterpart to achieve balance, otherwise, wrongs are committed, called Banes. The Banes of Order are Ruthlessness (Logic without Emotion), Apathy (Discipline without Enthusiasm), and Prejudice (Ethicality without Tolerance). The Banes of Chaos are Insanity (Emotion without Logic), Wantonness (Enthusiasm without Discipline), and Anarchy (Tolerance without Ethicality). The Order and Chaos counterparts combined together form the Principles of Rationality (Logic and Emotion), Dedication (Discipline and Enthusiasm), and Harmony (Ethicality and Tolerance). - Halfway through the game, the Banes of Chaos possess three major party members, which in turn annihilate the three major cities, which were guilty of practicing the Banes of Order. The three main cities were also notable in that they practiced bastardized forms of the three major Britannia Principles, Truth, Love, and Courage. Monitor practiced a bastardized version of Courage and the Bane of Apathy. With their courage just being merely words and not true actions, they were wiped out by the Bane of Wantonness when he sent goblin hordes to attack Monitor. Fawn, worshipped Beauty, a bastardized version of Love, which caused them to commit the Bane of Prejudice to anything ugly. The Bane of Insanity killed the city with plague and flayed the city's priestess alive (the Avatar restores her however). Moonshade (a bastardized version of Britannia's Moonglow, the city of Honesty) is a city of half-truths where the truth is only good when convienant. This leads them to commit the Bane of Ruthlessness. When the Bane of Anarachy arrived, he had the town's inhabitants kill eachother. - Ogre Battle, Ogre Battle 64, and Tactics Ogre's alignment system. - Order and Chaos have been divided into separate worlds in The Longest Journey. Although generally both sides try to leave each other alone, sometimes someone gets it into their head that their side is the superior. - The Thief games have the Hammerites, a particularly militant group of Knight Templars, as Order, and the Pagans, a demon-worshipping underground Cult of shamans and hippies, as Chaos. Neither are portrayed as particularly nice. The protagonist, interestingly, could be considered a representation of balance: he's a thief, but his livelihood hinges pretty heavily on the institutions of the society he lives in, and he frequently steps in to keep things from going all to hell. - Shin Megami Tensei has this as its central conflict. Pick a game out of the series and despite ever-changing setpieces, backdrops and actors, the script remains the same. Unlike most examples neither side is shown to be better than the other, often becoming two types of evil depending on the game (Neutral is generally treated better and is the canon ending in all instances of direct continuations), but just has different trade offs for humanity and demons. Order tends to result in the eradication of all independent thought and the reduction of reality to a vast machine dedicated to the worship of YHVH, whilst Chaos tends to spawn a twisted world of Might Makes Right and endless war. - It returned as a major mechanic in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, up to and including several bonuses (extra attack combos, price discounts when recruiting demons) and losses (failed negotiations, harder to contact successfully a demon of opposite alignment) depending upon your stance on Order and Chaos. - SMT is an interesting example in that although neutrality is often presented as canon, it is also often presented as not being that great of a choice, which ends up making the choice of endings seem like a 'shades of shit' kind of deal. Strange Journey in particular shows that allowing humanity to go on as it is could be a bad idea... - Spinoff series generally portray the alignments in a much more positive manner. One example is Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon, where it's not them being forced to pick a side but rather how Raidou wishes to live his life. The only game with a Social Darwinist outlook in the spinoffs is Devil Survivor 2's Meritocracy, but it's based on star signs instead of the typical alignments. - Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne has an interesting version of this trope with the Reasons. As one might expect, the Demon ending(leave the Vortex World as it is) and the Freedom Ending (turn the world back to normal) are Neutral, while Shijima(a World of Silence) is Law, but one would assume Yosuga(Might Makes Right) is Chaos. That assumption, however, is incorrect, since following any of the Reasons, including Musubi(everyone lives in isolation) is essentially playing by Kagutsuchi's rules. The real Chaos ending is the True Demon Ending, in which you permanently destroy Kagutsuchi and team up with Lucifer. - Shin Megami Tensei IV adds a fourth option: Nothingness. Screw Order. Screw Chaos. All of your options suck and nothing anyone does will bring an end to the neverending Crapsack World that is the MegaTen universe, so just end it all. \|\|Not that it'll help, as Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse reveals.\|\| - The entire premise of Primal was this. Arella was the literal personification of order. Her polar opposite is Abbadon, who has begun to tip the balance of power towards chaos. - Grandia II portrays the two Gods of the story (Granas and Valmar) as personifications of Order and Chaos, both supposedly created by humans who leaned too far one way or the other. It spells this out, very briefly, and the characters do not comprehend any of the implications. A little robot makes the remark in question. You see, \|\|Granas and Valmar were some ancient civilization's scientific researchers, who jointly discovered how to transmute matter and energy at will, i.e. the key to utopia, and promptly became as gods. Their partnership broke up when they realized their ideologies were split neatly along the line described by this trope — Granas wanted a perfect world full of happy people who never experience anything negative; Valmar insisted that life is made interesting by conflict... so he started one. The details are foggy, but we do find out that the war ended with Granas down for the count and Valmar (or at least his giant bio weapon) still hanging around. Gameplay ensues.\|\| - Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, the direct prequel) have Ashera, the Goddess of Order and \|\|Yune\|\|, Goddess of Chaos. \|\|In an interesting twist, the Goddess of Chaos is depicted as a young child. The two also used to be one being: the original Goddess Ashunera cast out her own emotions, which became Yune, after accidently flooding the world. The Empty Shell that was left behind became Ashera, and lacking emotions causes her to make some... questionable decisions.\|\| - If the words of a certain traitorous bishounen priest are any indication, this may well turn out to be the most primal conflict in the Suikoden series. There are many ways one could wax fauxlosophic about this, but so far most of the writing on the wall seems to be margin notes. For instance, the conflict that created the Suiko-verse was between two embodiments of protection and destruction. Refreshingly, the series chastises both extremes, showing the horrors of "true Order" (dharma, in the words of the aforementioned priest) at least as often as the horrors of "true Chaos." - Indeed, the Empire of Holy Harmonia, the possible Big Bad of the game series, lives up to its name as the embodiment of strict order. On the other hand, recurring Psycho for Hire Yuber is Chaos's standard bearer (oddly enough, the two actually end up on the same side in at least one war). - It's also implied that Pesmerga, whose sole purpose in life seems to be to eliminate Yuber, is Yuber's counterpart on the side of Order. The two look very similar (including their all-black wardrobes), have swords with the same name, and despite their human appearance are apparently immortal demons of some sort. - While Suikoden Tierkreis isn't connected to the main series, it pits the hero against The Order Of The One True Way, an empire with clear parallels to Harmonia, just nastier and with plenty of horror. - In The Elder Scrolls, this is heavily present (though at times significantly played-with) with the series' divine beings. To note: - The primary Creation Myth for most religions of Tamriel generally follows a pattern that, in the pre-creation "void", there were two opposing primordial forces - Stasis (Order) and Change (Chaos). A few of the religions anthropomorphize these forces into beings most commonly known as Anu and Padomay, respectively. The interplay between these two forces led to Creation, sometimes anthropomorphized as the female entity "Nir". Nir favored Anu, which angered Padomay. Padomay killed Nir and shattered the twelve worlds she gave birth to. Anu then wounded Padomay, presuming him dead. Anu salvaged the pieces of the twelve worlds to create one world: Nirn. Padomay returned and wounded Anu, seeking to destroy Nirn. Anu then pulled Padomay and himself outside of time, ending Padomay's threat to creation "forever". From the intermingling of their spilled blood came the "et'Ada", or "original spirits", who would go on to become either the Aedra or the Daedra depending on their actions during creation. (Some myths state that the Aedra come from the mixed blood of Anu and Padomay, while the Daedra come purely from the blood of Padomay). - One of these spirits, said to have been "begat" by Sithis (the embodiment of chaos and, for lack of a better term, Padomay's "spirit"), was Lorkhan (aka Shor, Shezarr, Shep, Lorkhaj, etc.). Depending on the version of the myth, he convinced/tricked some of the other et'Ada into helping him create the mortal plane, known as Mundus, to permanently disrupt the "stasis" of pre-creation with "chaos." (The races of Mer, or Elves, generally believe this was a cruel trick that robbed their ancestors of their pre-creation divinity while the races of Men believe it was a good thing.) Those et'Ada who sacrificed large parts of their being to create Mundus became known as the Aedra, while those that did not participate became the Daedra. For his treachery, the Aedra "killed" Lorkhan and tore out his "divine center" (heart), which they cast down into the mortal world he helped to create. - The Aedra, meaning "Our Ancestors" in the old Aldmeri language, sacrificed a large portion of their divine power in order to create the mortal world. It is said that the et'Ada who would become the Aedra formed from the intermingled blood of Anu and Padomay, giving them some traits of both Order and Chaos. Meanwhile, the Daedra, meaning "Not Our Ancestors," did not sacrifice any of their power during the creation of Mundus and remain truly immortal. The et'Ada who would become the Daedra are said to have formed exclusively from the blood of Padomay, giving them purely Chaotic traits. (Though even this is heavily played with, as two of the Daedric Princes, Jyggalag and Peryite, both govern over spheres which contain elements of Order.) - This is heavily played up in some of the religions of the races of Mer (Elves), especially the Altmer (High Elves). According to Altmer religious beliefs, the creation of Mundus was seen as an act of malevolence as it forced them to experience mortal suffering, loss, and death while removing their spirits from a place of pre-creation divinity. While most are content to toil in this mortal "prison" with "more limitations than not," some extremists, like the Thalmor, actively seek to undo creation to return to that state of pre-creation divinity. According to their beliefs, mankind was made up from the "weakest souls" by Lorkhan to spread Sithis (Chaos) "into every corner," ensuring that there could never be the "stasis" (Order) of pre-creation again. However, they believe that not just the existence of mankind, but the existence of the possibility of mankind keeps them trapped in Mundus. Essentially, the Altmer are oppressed not just by the existence of mankind, but the possibility of mankind's existence. - Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion is based around this trope. Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness will periodically \|\|transform into his original form as Jyggalag, the Daedric Prince of Order, and level the Shivering Isles - Sheogorath's realm of madness, creativity, and free will\|\|. The main quest of the expansion is to bring an end to this Vicious Cycle once and for all. - The main villains of the game Anachronox are revealed to be a species devoted to Chaos, who were sent back to a former universe by a species devoted to Order — though not much is made of this, since the sequel was never made. - Mortal Kombat has the Order Realm/Seido, and the Chaos Realm, who are constantly at war with each other. - Plus, a Lawful Stupid character from Seido and a Chaotic Stupid character from Chaosrealm. They're arch enemies. - Tyrant conquerors Onaga and Shao Khan are associated with order and chaos respectively and are favored by the members of the realm of equivalent alignment. - Dungeon Master features a group of heroes sent on a quest by Lord Order to defeat Lord Chaos. Complete the quest as stated and Lord Order thanks you, \|\|then murders you. To win, you have to defeat them both by merging them back into the one human they were originally created from.\|\| - Very much like the example above, Faery Tale Adventure 2: Halls of the Dead evokes the "too much of either is bad" version. The Big Bad is ostensibly the personification of Chaos, but destroying him will only serve to \|\|allow Order to achieve a perfectly ordered state by encasing the entire universe in lifeless crystal. Destroying Order likewise makes the world uninhabitable, for the opposite reason. The correct solution is to unify them, bringing harmony to the world again.\|\| - Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning had two factions: Order and Destruction (since one of the races is Chaos). With Empire, Dwarves and High Elves on one side and Chaos, Greenskins and Dark Elves on the other. However, it has somewhat been criticised for making the Order side a bit too 'Good', although that could just be in comparison to the pure baby-murdering evil that is Destruction. - In Disgaea, it becomes clear that this is the true conflict, and the idea that it's Black-and-White Morality is some sort of in-universe ideal decay that has happened over millennia. Evidence of this is found in the fact that OTHER demons will chastize demons they see getting "too evil", e.g. Raspberyl's declaring Mao's intent to blow up the Earth, an act for scum. Also in the first game Etna insists on teaching Laharl kindness in her own warped demon way, and this trait was something she admired in his father. - Heroes of Might and Magic series: - The fourth has this and Black-and-White Morality (though it's worth noting that Chaos hates "Life" and Order equally, and Life feels the same about Chaos and "Death.") Order is borderline good, but a spell to protect against that alignment references "what the self-righteous are capable of." Chaos . . . is just evil. Sorry. - In the fifth and sixth games, Order is represented by Asha the creator goddess and her six children, as well as by the Necropolis faction who worship Asha as the 'Spider Aspect', while Chaos is represented by Asha's brother Urgash and the Inferno faction, which consists of the Demons that Urgash created to wage war on his sister. - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl has the very aptly named Duty vs. Freedom, Duty being a highly disciplined paramilitary organization that believes the world needs to be protected from the Zone, and Freedom being a loosely run band of stoners and anarchists who believe the Zone's gifts should be shared with the entire world. - The famous Green Rocks of Sonic the Hedgehog, are called the Chaos Emeralds. They wasted a perfectly bland plot in the scrapped game Sonic X-Treme, which would have featured the Rings of Order. - This is one of the pairs of faiths in Lords of Magic. Order is represented by the standard High Middle Ages style humans, Chaos is represented by barbarians. - This is the most important conflict of the Dept. Heaven series, where order is represented by the gods of Asgard and chaos by the Underworld and its demons. Both sides are far and away on the "extreme" end of what these things represent, and woe betide anyone who gets in the middle. Gray-and-Grey Morality also applies; the Big Bad of the series is a proxy of the gods, and the most messianic character who's appeared thus far is a demon. - Riviera: The Promised Land has its hero Ein find a happy medium by telling both sides of the conflict where they can stick it if they're going to keep recklessly endangering the lives of ordinary mortal people in neutral territory for their own selfish warring. - Yggdra Union and Blaze Union both deal with mortal affairs more than the huge conflict going on in the background, but they go a long way towards establishing the powers that be on both sides as incredibly callous. The antagonist of these games was born to be one of Asgard's soldiers, and was punished horribly for refusing to go to war and asserting his free will despite being what was considered a subhuman class, then exiled to a mortal world—and then completely ignored, even as he started manipulating events on that world for the sake of revenge. (These games, by the way, are the one with the messianic demon.) - Knights in the Nightmare explains that the conflict between the forces of order and chaos has been so bad that a lot of worlds have neutral arbitrators to keep their fighting from damaging mortal worlds. - LEGO Universe doesn't exactly have "order," but Imagination is a channeled chaos, pitted against the completely unfettered Maelstrom. The distinction is similar to that between building a tower of Legos out of bricks from a dozen different sets, and smashing the tower to bits. - Though it (possibly) started out as an Good vs. Evil affair, the revelation of Soul Calibur's true intent in SoulCalibur IV (to force the world into a state of peace and safety by crystallizing all its inhabitants) causes its conflict with Soul Edge to fall into this (because it slips into a "no matter who wins, we all lose" scenario). Fan theory suggests that this happened over the course of the series, rather than Soul Calibur having such a twisted objective from the start. - The closest we have to Word of God on the matter is that Soul Calibur was originally just as evil as Soul Edge, from whence it came, because Algol's Blue-and-Orange Morality gave its spirit no moral compass besides a directive to destroy Soul Edge at all costs. The sword's evil was eventually quieted and purged by its keepers (who are all long dead now), and is speculated to have reawakened after Soul Calibur was temporarily trapped within Soul Edge. Unlike a lot of video game examples of this trope, merging the swords together is a very bad idea, creating a godlike Eldritch Abomination that is pure evil. - Portal 2 plays the conflict between Master Computer GLaDOS and whimsical AI sidekick Wheatley as less Evil vs. Good and more as the aspect of game theory that pits a perfectly logical, experienced player against a completely random one who has no idea what he's doing, what the rules are, what the win condition is, etcetera. The random player can win not because he's good at the game, but because he's so unpredictable that the logical player cannot anticipate his moves. In fact, later in the game, Wheatley does a better job of \|\|being an actual antagonist\|\| than GLaDOS ever did. Interestingly, the randomness doesn't always work in his favour because, well, it's random. \|\|Even his "triumph" would have meant that everyone lost by dying, instead of just him losing by being deposed.\|\| - In The Colour Tuesday, the Others keep everything in a state of mind controlled order so as to prey on humans. This makes the rebellious Alex a perfect candidate for trying to break the Others' control. - In World of Warcraft, the Titans aren't so much "good" as "ordered", and do some pretty morally questionable things in order to keep the balance. On the opposite side is the Burning Legion, which holds it as their sacred mission to bring chaos and destruction to all worlds. - To demonstrate, the Titans created the Halls of Origination which functionally destroys the world by resetting it back to when the Titans first finished making/modifying it. From Algalon's words, it's to be used whenever things go wrong with the Titans plans and seemingly every world visited by the Titans has one. - The Bronze Dragonflight acts much like the Titans, maintaining the "order" of the timelines. This also means ensuring some pretty horrible events happen, as the effects of them not happening might be worse. Their nemesis, the Infinite Dragonflight, wishes to change the timelines greatly to achieve some unknown goal. They do so by disrupting that "order", threatening to destabilize the entirety of time. - Kirby and Meta Knight often fall into this, with the former being carefree and chaotic (often causing a lot of trouble) and the latter imposing extreme order (often in an effort to counteract that trouble). - This is the entire foundation of the Dissidia Final Fantasy, with the Goddess of Harmony (Cosmos) vs the God of Discord (Chaos). - In the first Mass Effect game, Sovereign claims that the Reapers "impose order on the chaos of organic evolution". Two games later, a downed Reaper says something similar, arguing to Shepard that \|\|harvesting organics and uploading them into new Reaper shells\|\| is the only way to "preserve" them. Otherwise, they will eventually create synthetics that have the power to destroy them. \|\|This turns out to be the purpose of the unthinkably old AI overseeing the whole cycle.\|\| - The trio of gods in Runescape, Saradomin, Zamorak, and Guthix represent Order, Chaos and Balance, respectively. While there are few sympathetic Zamorakian NPCs, and most heroes are Saradominists, the distinction isn't clear cut, as groups like HAM and the White Knights can attest to. Armadyl, the only objectively "good" god, was dethroned for being a Suicidal Pacifist, Guthix simply wants to preserve existence, though his followers often act Stupid Neutral, and Zaros is just power personified. - A common theme in the Geneforge series. The Shapers have maintained a fairly peaceful and stable social order for centuries, and kept the worst excesses of their distinctive form of magic to a minimum. Scratch the surface, though, and you'll quickly notice that this relative peace and comfort masks a tyrannical society with next to no social mobility, kept afloat with healthy doses of Fantastic Racism, including the systematic extermination of most sentient nonhuman species. The rebellion against them, in turn, wants to tear down not just the tyranny and racism, but the peace and stability, and all the rules that made it possible in the first place. It doesn't help that the rebels are not exactly in agreement about what should come next, and many of the rebel creations hate humans just as much as humans hate them. Both sides are convinced they're right, and neither side is presented as overwhelmingly better or worse than the other when it comes to morality; both demonstrate plenty of willingness to punt a few canines over the horizon. And you get to choose which side wins. There are a few sides that try to compromise, but these tend to get killed off quickly, or become affiliated with the (chaotic) rebels by default. - A theme in BlazBlue. The game is a very complex Morality Kitchen Sink, but this is an underlying theme of the series. The conflict manifests itself primarily represented in series protagonist, Ragna the Bloodedge and his younger brother/rival, Jin Kisaragi being chaos and order respectively. - Catherine, being a spinoff of Shin Megami Tensei, has this as a running theme but in a much more downplayed scope compared to the parent series, and the Ms. Exposition Trisha even brings up this trope on one occasion. The game follows Vincent, a bored thirty-something Everyman who finds himself in a Love Triangle with two women, with the two women representing Order and Chaos. The protagonist's choice between the two \|\|or not\|\| forms the central focus of his Character Development. - Assassin's Creed: the long conflict between Assassins and Templars is essentially a question of whether the world needs more freedom or more control. The games are generally in favor of the Assassins, though Shaun (an Assassin) doesn't consider them to be "heroes" since they still kill people to accomplish their goals. Most Templars aren't portrayed in a favorable light, especially in the second game. The third game brings both sides closer together on the morality scale. William tells Desmond that both sides have made attempts throughout history to join together, but ultimately their ideologies are diametrically opposed. - Furthermore, the Templars create chaos in their attempts to impose order whereas Assassins contain chaos by minimizing violence, stabilizing threats and building institutions and support systems. So no one side is pure Order or pure Chaos. They even have the same goal, a peaceful world, but disagree on how to get there. - Very much the name of the game in Chaos Reborn, where wizards with reality-warping powers battle each other for claims of godhood, and affect the balance of the entire universe around them. - Blade & Soul has this theme running through its main Player Versus Player factions. The Cerulean Order is a well-intentioned dictatorship which believes society functions best when people are assigned to the role most suited to their natural talents and skill set. The Crimson Legion advocates complete social mobility and believes any form of stable government will naturally lead towards corruption and tyranny. - In Civilization V, you can choose one of three mutually exclusive ideologies as your Civ progresses into the modern age. Freedom (Chaos) represents capitalism, is all about empowering the individual, and is great for giving smaller, more peaceful Civs a much needed leg-up by giving bonuses to culture, happiness, tourism and diplomacy, and also gives some defensive bonuses to the military. Order (you'll never guess) represents Marxist-Communism, works by empowering the state, and is good for sprawling (but not necessarily aggressive) empires with lots of industrial buildings as it gives bonuses to food, production and population, and gives them out on a per-city basis. Autocracy (Omnicidal Neutral), representing Fascism, is all about empowering the great leader at the very top and giving huge bonuses to all things military, allowing you to build armies faster, more cheaply, in greater numbers and even improving the individual combat power of units. Civs tend to get along better with other Civs of the same ideology and some even have preferred ideologies: for example, the Americans and French prefer Freedom, the Chinese prefer Order, and the Germans unfortunately prefer Autocracy. - The choices in Papers, Please side you with the government or the revolutionaries. It's up to interpretation on how good or evil either group is. You can also decide to flee from both of them. - Stellaris: - The Ethos system originally featured, amongst others, the Collectivist-Individualist dichotomy. The exact ideology represented by any given ethic is left intentionally vague for roleplaying purposes, but from what could be gathered, Collectivists favoured autocratic governments and didn't take happiness penalties from slavery and Individualists favoured democracies and personal liberty, gaining bonuses to energy production. This proved to be so controversial that the Collectivist-Individualist axis was eventually replaced entirely by a new Egalitarian-Authoritarian axis. Fanatic Collectivist description: "The purpose of the individual is simple; strengthen the collective. To enter the blackness of space we move as one, and we shall not be weakened by wanton separatism." Fanatic Individualist description: "We must recognise that 'society' is but a convenient fiction, the by-product of individuals working toward parallel, overlapping, and contradictory goals. As it should be." - The Nemesis expansion provides the opportunity to reform the Galactic Community into the Galactic Imperium. In case of a significant weakening of the Imperium's authority, it is very likely that a large-scale uprising will begin, which can quickly turn into an all-galactic Civil War between two hostile coalitions. Conceptually, this conflict directly refers to this trope, since the loyalists defend the Imperium as a bulwark of stability, unity, and development of the galaxy, as well as peace in it, while the rebels want to return to a much more democratic format of the Galactic Community, accusing the Imperium of tyranny and oppression. The war between them can end in victory for either side, or with the signing of a peace treaty, which will lead to the political independence of the two power blocs from each other, and also to a continuation of their conflict in a cold war manner. - The trope forms the main backbone of the conflict between Symmetra (Order) and Lucio (Chaos) in Overwatch. Symmetra believed that order has to be upheld to create a better community. Unfortunately, due to her upbringing and working for Vishkar Corporation, widely believed to be an evil, corrupt company, some tends to miss that she's not a big fan of their underhanded tactics, only interested with order and was led to believe that Vishkar is doing things for an eventual greater good, the restoration of order. On the other hand, Lucio was a victim of Vishkar's attempt to impose their order (with a little help from Symmetra), and as a believer of people's freedom, he rose up by stealing Vishkar's technology and using it against them, granting freedom to the oppressed people and allowing him to do a dual-job between an international DJ by day, a freedom fighter by night. Symmetra obviously do not get along with Lucio, her doubts with Vishkar aside, she still saw him as no better than a thief, a street rat that rose to fame with dubious, unorderly manners and he should at least return the technology he stole, while Lucio justifies himself with how Vishkar was asking for it for oppressing his people first and it's for the oppressed people that needs freedom (which was dubbed by Symmetra as 'anarchy') and generally, he is not aware of Symmetra's personal doubts and thinks that she's just the same as the other corrupt Vishkar guys that oppressed his people, therefore, she has no validities in chastising him when she's showing blind obedience to what he thinks to be Obviously Corrupt company. - SWAT 3 briefly touches on this with the recurring euphemism (deadly or otherwise, depending on how you play) of "bringing order to chaos" - i.e. removing, whether by arresting or neutralizing, any armed and antagonistic individuals who are currently threatening the safety and well-being of your squad of SWAT officers or any civilians. - In WildStar, this is ultimately the conflict between The Dominion and The Exiles; Those that join and become citizens of the Dominion and obeys their laws are granted rights like education. If you don't obey, you get swept aside. The Exiles consist of those who got "Swept aside" and are trying to live their own lives free, but they've become criminals just to survive. - From Melee onward, the Master and Crazy Hands of the Super Smash Bros. series imply this (Master with Order, Crazy with Chaos). But then Ultimate takes it a level higher with \|\|World of Light's Big Bads, Galeem and Dharkon. The hand they control and copy enforces this theme.\|\| - The concepts of Master & Crazy Hands compared to that of \|\|Galeem & Dharkon\|\| shows both sides of both ways Order & Chaos can be taken. Master Hand represents the Order of creation and structure, while Crazy Hand is the Chaos that exists for the sake of change. \|\|Whereas Galeem is Order for the sake of control and tyranny, and Dharkon is Chaos as a purely destructive influence that seeks to erase all life.\|\| The difference is that the Hands can put aside their differences to work together for the good of the universe, while \|\|Galeem & Dharkon\|\| cannot, making this more akin to a Black-and-White Morality story in a way. - In Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, the Mason Order want to overthrow the monarchy for their peasant populist, pseudo-Communist, Social Darwinist ideology, while the Agatha Knights fight to uphold peace, legitimacy, honour and the feudal system. It's an Excuse Plot, just go fight people, it's really fun. - The major factions of Fallout: New Vegas are on sort of a sliding scale of Order vs. Chaos. - Caesar's Legion is a brutal, totalitarian military state dependent on raiding weaker tribes (Evil Order). The New California Republic is an idealistic aspiring democracy ("Good" Order, though not immune to corruption or political exigency). There is no option to make them get along. - Choosing to remain independent of either gets both out of the Mojave and leads the region down the path to anarchy (Chaos, for better or worse). - The fourth option is Mr. House, who's also Order (he desires control, but based on economic monopoly rather than Caesar's military conquest or the NCR's negotiation), but exploits the Chaos between Caesar and the NCR and is largelyp content to take a fairly hands-off approach. - The final Splatfest of Splatoon 2 was themed around this, with Pearl championing Team Chaos while Marina lead Team Order. Rather than influence the next game's story mode, as the final Splatfest of the first game did for Splatoon 2, Splatoon 3 uses Chaos's victory as the basis for its overall setting instead, shifting from Inkopolis to the more blatantly post-apocalyptic wasteland that is the Splatlands and its overcrowded hub city, Splatsville. - In Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, this is the conflict between Marle and \|\|Squares\|\|. The former is a downplayed representation of chaos, since she embraces the spontaneous nature of fun; the latter \|\|goes as far as to take control over Marle and threatening to erase the main cast from existence in his efforts to maintain his idea of "order", all a result of him thinking the Puyo and Tetris worlds merging isn't "right"\|\|. - Indefensible Positions (a finished webcomic) is largely about a group of heroes dealing with a war between Idiotic Order and Idiotic Chaos Knight Templar demigods. The issue with having "Forces of Chaos" is referred to when one of the main characters says to the Chaotic demigod, "I will serve Chaos" — then adds under his breath, "but not you". - Last Res0rt - The series dances around this with the Chaotic Djinni-si (a collection of vampires, shapeshifters, telepaths, and other Things That Go "Bump" in the Night) and the Orderly Celeste (a hybrid species of angels and demons who are "often" associated with the good side, even though they're collectively the Villain with Good Publicity). - Veled, the Big Bad, is a Celeste best defined as a force of Chaos and Evil. - Word of God also says that the bullethole-and-skull logo of Last Res0rt is named "Chaos". No clue what an alternate logo for "Order" might look like... - Codename: Kids Next Door had the Delightful Children From Down the Lane and their Father as Evil Order, and more widely, the adult world in general. Interestingly, the KND could themselves be highly Knight Templar-ish, erasing the memories of their own operatives once they got "too old". - To quote The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, "The world has almost completely fallen into order. It's up to us to restore chaos." Eris, the goddess of chaos, is a recurring character. The one time she was ever calm, life was becoming so routine that it might as well not exist. However, her plans are as chaotic as she is, varying from pranks to antagonizing people to massive upheaval of all life, and involving everything from brainwashing dolls to giant flying babies to giant alien zombie lobsters. - Æon Flux is all about order vs. chaos to the point of being a gender-flipped version of Moorcock's Cornelius stories, with Aeon as chaos/Jerry and Trevor as order/Miss Brunner. - ReBoot has a case of Evil Versus Evil, as Hexadecimal is The Queen of Chaos and Megabyte represents Order in the form of tyranny. The one time that Hexadecimal executed a successful Evil Plan, she snapped her fingers and undid the damage because Victory Is Boring. Megabyte, with the same opportunity, imposed an eternal dystopia. note : Dot saw a vision of it and prevented it from happening. Interestingly, Hexadecimal was never portrayed as Capital E evil in the same sense as Megabyte, but more as a force of nature with a dark sense of humor. - In The Simpsons, Bart is Chaos while Lisa is Order. In one of the Simpsons comics (Issue 111) the kids even represented them. - On Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Equinox has the powers of both Order and Chaos Magic. Eventually it's revealed that \|\|the Lords of Order and the Lords of Chaos made a deal, tasking him to keep balance between the two forces\|\|. Finding this impossible, he decided to restart the universe from scratch. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is weird about this trope. - In place of standard Order, it has "Harmony," which emphasizes unity and compromise rather than strict discipline. Opposing it is "Disharmony," which is occasionally referred to as Chaos and emphasizes arbitrariness and strife. Discord, its primary representative, acts according to random whims. - Fittingly, this means that the Mane Six have actually battled against both Chaotic foes, such as Discord or the magic-eating monster Tirek, and Orderly ones, such as the tyrannical King Sombra and Starlight Glimmer. - The episode "Feeling Pinkie Keen" has Twilight Sparkle as Order and Pinkie Pie as Chaos. Twilight is the Element of Magic, and firmly believes that everything has an explanation, even magic (since works in ways you direct it in, and creates the expected effect). Pinkie is the Element of Laughter, and despite being an earth pony, is seemingly able to bend space and glimpse the future due to the Rule of Funny. - The 2-part opening episode of season 5 is based on this, with the villainess, the aforementioned Starlight Glimmer, having determined that even so minor a form of chaos as "ponies having individual talents and specialties" is an evil she cannot tolerate. Leading her to strip all ponies under her rule of their cutie marks and with these, their special talents. Naturally, the Mane Six have to stop her and give them all back. - Subverted in Phineas and Ferb. Candace thinks of herself as representing order but her own behavior is at least as chaotic as the boys'. Played straighter with the regimented OWCA versus the whimsically evil Doofenshmitrz. - As revealed in The Legend of Korra: Beginnings, there were two major spirits: Raava the order spirit, and Vaatu the chaos spirit. Each 10,000 years, they wrestle around, the former keeping the latter in line just in time for the Harmonic Convergence. But it was thanks to Wan \|\|accidentally releasing Vaatu\|\| that the balance of the world gets out of control. So he spends the rest of his life working with Raava to fix what he accidentally did. - Season three has the Red Lotus, a splinter group of the White Lotus who are essentially anarcho-primitivists that revered Vaatu and wish to destroy all governments and establish a new, more spiritual world. In the words of their leader, "The natural order is disorder". Season 4's main villain is Kuvira's Earth Empire, a force of absolute order. - Depending on the region, the game Pai Sho, which both Lotus groups draw their names from, is considered either a fast-paced and exciting game, like the Red Lotus, or one about strategy and waiting for the proper time to make a move, like the Earth Empire (and as presented with Asami and Bolin, order beats chaos almost every time). - In The Owl House, Belos and \|\|the Collector\|\| basically represent the extremes of Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil villains. Belos is a \|\|genocidal\|\| fascist dictator, while \|\|the Collector is a deranged maniac who would rip apart the world for a chuckle.\|\| - This is the conflict in physics between the theories of General Relativity, which describes an orderly and predictable universe, but is only applicable to large scales, and Quantum Mechanics, which describes a chaotic, random, near-nonsensical universe, but is only applicable to small scales. Both theories are correct, even though they contradict each other. The purpose of a Unified Field Theory would be to resolve these conflicts and unite both theories. - Real life asymmetric/guerilla wars tend to be this trope. Although the chaos is usually less of a choice than in most fiction, and more of a necessity, born from a lack of options. - Judging vs. Perceiving preference pair in MyersBriggs tests. Judgers prefer more order in interactions and frequently lay out plans, Perceivers have more flexible rules and do not keep plans as much. In the Big Five Personality Traits, people high in conscientiousness lean more toward order, and those who are lower tend toward flexibility. - The order-chaos dynamic is what the dimensions on the political compass amount to, designed in order to illustrate a slightly more complex graph of political ideologies compared to the traditional left-right spectrum. The X-axis measures the extent to which economic enterprise is controlled (far left is extreme central market planning, far right is extreme unregulated market capitalism), the Y-axis measures the extent to which moral norms are enforced (the far top is extreme authoritarian social control, the far bottom is extreme atomization of social mores). It has been derided as too simplistic, and is more popular for memes than any serious discourse. Attempts to amend it include adding new axes such as one for social conservatism and progressivism with the extremes representing flat out racism and/or anti-LGBT behaviour and potentially self destructive multiculturalism against integration in that order.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrderVersusChaos
Original Position Fallacy - TV Tropes "When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." — Abraham Lincoln , Statement to an Indiana Regiment passing through Washington (17 March 1865) A situation in which a character promotes an action, revolution or social system that harms or will harm other people, under the assumption that it will not harm them. They will invariably discover that they were wrong, with the double whammy of knowing they supported the measure that caused their suffering when they thought it would happen to 'somebody else'. Imagine that Bob attends a banquet for 200 people at the mayor's house. When he arrives, he is informed that they made an error when ordering the food: there is enough steak for the first 100 guests, but everyone else will have to make do with vegetables. Bob, looking around and seeing the room less than half full, says he thinks this is fair. Only afterward does he see the second dining room, filled up with people who arrived earlier, and realize that he isn't going to be in the group that gets a full dinner. Poor Bob. He would have been wiser to remember the thought experiment from which this trope takes its name: John Rawls' "original position", which says that the only fair laws are those passed from behind the hypothetical "veil of ignorance" (i.e. you don't know whether you'll benefit or suffer from the change). If he had realized he could be in the group that wouldn't get a steak, he might have suggested serving half portions so everyone could have some meat. Instead, he refused to share 'his' steak, and that was his missed steak. The main use of this trope is to show that blind self-interest is a bad thing Bob shouldn't have been so quick to give "someone else" a steak-less dinner when he thought his meal would be fine. If he is fortunate, the plot will hand him a second chance to approach the question presumably with a bit more compassion this time. But in many cases it's too late for regrets: Bob has his vegetables, and now he must eat them. Of course, it is also possible that the mayor who did know the outcome and could assign the menu options steered Bob into making a choice that was worse for him, perhaps to damn him by his own words. Call it an "Original Position Gambit" if you will. This trope is also one of the places where Off the Table doesn't shift sympathy away from the person who refuses to re-extend the offer. ("Oh, Bob wants everyone to share their steak now? Too bad.") A character whose thinking falls into the Original Position Fallacy may start out as a Hell Seeker, end up as a Boomerang Bigot, Dirty Coward, or any combination thereof. One category of person particularly vulnerable to this thinking is the Sub-Par Supremacist. If someone pulled the gambit version on Bob, it was probably a Magnificent Bastard skilled in Gambit Speed Chess. See also The Window or the Stairs, which weaponizes this trope by disguising the worse option as the better one. This fallacy also drives a Prophecy Twist or two - someone hearing a prophecy thinks it'll come true on terms that'll be favourable to them, or that they'll never be in a situation where the prophecy might screw them over. May result in a Karmic Transformation or a Color Me Black situation; sometimes forms the 'twist' of a Karmic Twist Ending. Contrast Who Will Bell the Cat?, where a change that would benefit most at the cost of a few never gets implemented because no one wants to be "the few." Closely related to Moral Myopia and Protagonist-Centered Morality. Compare A Taste of Their Own Medicine, where one receives the same poor treatment they inflicted on others as a form of revenge. The Inverted Trope is of course The Golden Rule: Only do things unto others that you can agree would be fair if done unto you. ## Examples: - Cross Ange: Humans exile Norma (humans who cannot use Mana and negate Mana that comes into contact with them) to an island in the middle of nowhere to act as Slave Mooks to protect their Crapsaccharine World, making them Un-person. Princess Angelise of the Mitsurugi Empire considers this entirely appropriate... until it turns out in the first episode that she's a Norma herself and her royal parents had covered it up. The fallacy is pointed out to her face in episode three. - In Death Note, Light Yagami spends much of the series as The Social Darwinist, believing that anyone he assassinated with the Death Note deserved it. Naturally he doesn't believe the same of himself. \|\|In the manga, at least, he screams and pleads with anyone to try to extend his own life once Ryuk writes Light's name into his own Death Note. In other versions, once he's been identified as the wielder of the Death Note, Light makes a run for it.\|\| - In Fullmetal Alchemist, both the Emperor of Xerxes and the military leadership of Amestris fall victim to this. They both conspire with Father, the original Homunculus, to commit mass human sacrifice in order to achieve immortality; none of them realize that their immortality will consist of having their souls transmuted into a Philosopher's Stone. - Monster Rancher: Allan wants to join Moo, assuming that he'll get to be in charge because he's human. He fails to consider that Moo might not want human followers, or that many of the monsters working for Moo want Revenge on abusive trainers like him. He's shocked beyond belief when the Seed Sisters immediately betray him and offer Worm the chance to do the same. - Naruto: Danzo was all in favor of instructing his ninjas to sacrifice themselves if need be, in part because his own high rank made his chances of doing so himself extremely low. In a rare variation of this trope, he was aware of this hypocrisy and hated himself for it. Even more so because when he was younger, he hesitated at a crucial moment and instead it was his master the Second Hokage who sacrificed himself for the sake of the village. \|\|Ultimately he does end up making one to stop Tobi from getting Shishui's eye.\|\| - In Chick Tracts, one of the most common types of Straw Loser is the guy who isn't afraid of Hell. One variant of this is that he believes that hell exists and that it is a horrible place for the damned, but also believes that he'll be one of Satan's demons reigning in hell. His fate invariably turns out to be much crueler. (The two other main variants are those who don't believe that hell exists and those who think that it's not such a bad place.) - One pre-Comics Code horror story ("The Pit of Horror!", Adventures into Weird Worlds #10, September 1952) features the Devil noticing that hell isn't much of a scary place anymore, so he abducts and hires a human efficiency expert to whip the place into shape. After a few months, the demons are sadistic torturers and hell is once again filled with the screams of the damned, so the Devil pays the expert with a chest of jewels — and informs him he had only a few minutes left to live on Earth, so not much point in going back! The expert's soul is judged and sent to hell... where his former students (who resent him for making them work hard when they'd gotten used to slacking off) are very eager to show off their progress. Read it here. - Judge Dredd: The worldwide nuclear war behind most of the setting's problems was started by the American president, certain as he was that the US's radiation shields would prevent fallout from affecting them. He was disbelievingly disabused of this notion after the nukes started flying. - The Walking Dead: From the fall of the prison safe zone onwards, Rick and Abraham stress that survival is the most important thing and that morals simply hold people back. They end up profoundly shaken when they meet those who take such ideas to their natural conclusion; Gabriel, who abandoned his congregation to hide in his church, The Hunters, who cannibalized survivors, and Eugene, \|\|who lied about being able to cure the zombie virus to save his own skin\|\|. In the end, they conclude that they have to set better examples and that the zombie apocalypse cant be an excuse to do otherwise. - Watchmen by Alan Moore tackles this with his superheroes Rorscharch and the Comedian. - Both of them are Sociopathic Heroes who take on positions of Straw Nihilist and The Antinihilist respectively. They keep telling people that Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!, that they alone know "the truth" about the absurdity and harshness of the world. Then they come face to face with someone who internalizes their sayings and decides to do something about it, and their facade of cynicism cracks. - Rorschach earlier espoused support of Harry Truman using the atomic bombs to end World War II, saying it was a terrible act that saved millions. \|\|When he comes across Ozymandias who uses a similar justification to unleash an attack on New York City (as a Genghis Gambit to end the Cold War and avert an incipient nuclear war), he denounces this action and states that he will expose the truth instead, only for him to be killed by Dr. Manhattan, one more sacrifice for the greater good. It's implied that this is sort of Suicide by Cop due to Rorshach being unable to reconcile the outcome of Ozymandias's actions with his own Black-and-White Morality.\|\| - Calvin and Hobbes: - There's one Non Sequitur arc wherein Danae visits an alternate reality where every person on earth had one wish come true. She and her alternate come across an Acceptable Target politician, and the alternate Danae explains that he'd wished that slavery would become legal again. Danae then asks "And what about the guy who owns him?" The alternate says that he made the same wish. - Humorously averted in a Dutch Sjors & Sjimmie comic. Their guardian the Colonel is outraged when hearing the news that a Disco has opened in their town, while in another town's disco a man causing a violent disturbance was given a mere slap on the wrist. But as part of his attempts to get the title characters to not go to their town's disco, he's arrested for causing a violent disturbance in that disco. The comic ends with The Colonel on a medieval execution platform, complete with an axewielding headsmen... and him being happy that at least in their town they don't just give violent offenders a slap on the wrist. - Happens quite a lot in fairy tales. The usual scenario is that at the wedding of the long-suffering female protagonist, the king will ask whoever tormented her what the proper punishment should be for a series of crimes (these crimes inevitably being the ones they did to her). The evil characters grab the Idiot Ball and callously suggest something horrible (e.g. "They should be put into red hot iron shoes and forced to dance until dead"), which is promptly done to them. - "The Three Little Men in the Wood": After his son's baptism, the king asks his mother-in-law what should be done to someone who drags another person out of their bed and throws them in the water. The old woman answers, "The wretch deserves nothing better than to be taken and put in a barrel stuck full of nails, and rolled downhill into the water." And so it is done. - The Brothers Grimm's The Goose Girl: The chambermaid impersonating a princess is asked how to punish a servant who deceived her master — not realising that her deception is already known. She vindictively calls for the false servant to be dragged around in a barrel studded with nails until death, and so she meets her end. - Giambattista Basile's The Myrtle ends with six jealous murderesses Buried Alive, just as they suggested should be done to anyone who dared harm the prince's lovely bride (she came Back from the Dead). - There is a fairy tale where a Lazy Bum hears about an island of one-eyed men, so he decides to go there, kidnap one, and make a living from The Freakshow. He didn't even consider the fact that two-eyed man is quite the freak show for the one-eyed... - One Eastern European folktale features a married couple who become upset when the wife's aged father comes to live with them. When the old man drops and breaks a ceramic bowl, they angrily scold him, give him a wooden bowl to use, and banish him from the table to eat alone. Later, the husband sees their young son playing with some scraps of wood and ask what he's doing; the boy innocently replies "I'm making a wooden bowl, so that when you and Mama are old, I can feed you from it!" The husband and wife have a quick Heel Realization, apologize to the grandfather, and welcome him back to the table without another word of complaint. - A variant of this story is also told in Japan: this time, the patriarch of a large family becomes upset with his aged father's feebleness and tells his children to bring him a large basket so he can take the old man to the river and drown him. The man's youngest daughter promptly replies "When you have finished, bring back the basket — we will need it for you someday." - Harry Is a Dragon, and That's OK: Professor Umbridge puts up a number of blatantly and aggressively pro-human and authoritarian posters around Hogwarts — without putting her name on them, so even Hermione feels no qualms about pulling them down. When Professor Umbridge complains to the Headmaster about it, he agrees that letting people put up anonymous posters might be worth a try — so he announces that anyone can put up posters, and that people should please not take them down. Umbridge soon has reason to regret her request, as large numbers of much more creative and impressive posters appear in support of the "unusually shaped" students, including many that express thanks to them for how helpful they've been, along with some that poke fun at Umbridge herself. Then there was one which asked if anyone had seen an escaped toad, adding that the toad in question had a Dreadful on its Defence course and seemed to think it could teach the subject anyway. - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: This is the one thing that pragmatic and bitterly cynical Professor Quirrell actually likes about democracy, that it brings Laser-Guided Karma to people who don't think it through. Quirrell : You see, Mr. Potter, no one ever quite believes that they will go to Azkaban, so they see no harm in it for themselves. As for what they inflict on others... I suppose you were once told that people care about that sort of thing? It is a lie, Mr. Potter, people don't care in the slightest, and if you had not led a vastly sheltered childhood you would have noticed that long ago. Console yourself with this: those now prisoner in Azkaban voted for the same Ministers of Magic who pledged to move their cells closer to the Dementors. - He Can Only Blame Himself: Since Adrien already knew Lila was a Manipulative Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, he assumed that she'd never be able to trick him. As adults, Lila drives a wedge between him and Marinette by claiming his overworked girlfriend is intentionally choosing her career over their relationship, seducing him into cheating on Marinette with her. - The Karma of Lies: Adrien presumes that Lila's scheming and scamming doesn't really matter because he's already aware of her true nature; thus, nothing she does can really impact HIM. The fact that she's conning his classmates isn't a big deal since he's not personally affected (and he's too rich to understand how much they're losing). Naturally, Lila exploits his Moral Myopia to string him along, luring him into helping her out despite knowing what she's like, then stabs him in the back for a major payday. Then and only then is he willing to tell the others that she's a Con Artist, with his classmates abandoning him when they learn that he's known from the start and happily watched her grift them of their most prized belongings. - Two Letters, a Spiritual Successor story by the same author, also invokes this trope with Mayor Bourgeois. He wanted a Ladybug who could be bribed into supporting his corrupt activities, but he forgot that he's not the only person around who wants Ladybug's endorsement, and that the original Ladybug's honesty was the only thing stopping her from being paid by those other people to destroy him. So, when Marinette retires and her Sketchy Successor \|\|also known as Lila Rossi\|\| takes over and begins accepting bribes, Bourgeois finds himself going broke making bigger and bigger payments just to keep her from being bought by someone else who wants her to denounce him. - Knight of Salem: Vernal gets incredibly tired with Tyrian's threats to fight her to the death whenever she doesn't do something he wants, and as such calls him out on it. His retort? He's merely following the Branwen Tribe's own rules, and rightfully points out she's upset because she's on the losing end of the argument. Tyrian: Make a society where I can win arguments by stabbing people to death and I'm going to start stabbing. - In Mutant Storm, Pansy Parkinson spends a lot of time claiming that other girls should be happy and pleased with their place in life once Voldemort takes over. Then, Bellatrix Lestrange gets killed, and Pansy gets a letter demanding she take her place as the Dark Lord's concubine without anyone caring about her opinion. The next day, she's groveling at the knees of the other side. - The Rigel Black Chronicles: Daphne Greengrass \|\|is a proud pureblood — until an ancestry potion reveals that her mother had an affair with a muggle-born wizard and she's actually a half-blood, causing her to be expelled from Hogwarts\|\|. Harry calls for compassion and understanding from her friends (some of whom are rather scathing of Daphne), pointing out that it could in theory happen to them too. Harry: What if it had been you? How would you feel if \|\|you found out tomorrow that you were a halfblood and your family lied to you? Would you feel like you didn't deserve to be here? Like it was okay to rip four years of hard work out from under you for something that wasn't your fault\|\|? Would you feel like a monster? Or would you feel exactly the same as you do today, and the world would seem monstrous instead? - Superman vs. the Elite: Manchester and his team operate under a philosophy of Might Makes Right and consider it the best response to kill anyone who's threatening violence against others. They're horrified when Superman (who's stronger than all of them) responds to their violence in kind \|\|or so it seems\|\|. - Played with in Avengers: Infinity War. Thanos plans to kill half the universe to prevent an Overpopulation Crisis. When Doctor Strange asks how he'll ensure that he doesn't die, Thanos bluntly responds that he won't; the deaths will be entirely random. note : To a point: he appears to halve the population of each world individually (rather than have the deaths be randomly distributed across the universe as a whole) and spares specific people he promises will live and any world he's already purged through old-fashioned genocide. His plan also doesn't take collateral damage into consideration, as shown in The Stinger and Avengers: Endgame. However, at another point, Thanos states he will gaze upon a grateful universe, suggesting he knows he'll be around after killing half of the universe. \|\|When he succeeds at the end, Thanos is still around, but using the completed Infinity Gauntlet is shown to take its toll on him (and moreso in Endgame), implying he anticipated the backlash and wasn't sure if he'd survive.\|\| - The "I was a celebrity in a past life" variant is humorously discussed in Bull Durham. Annie: I think probably with my love of four-legged creatures and hooves and everything, that in another lifetime I was probably Catherine the Great, or Francis of Assisi. I'm not sure which one. What do you think? Crash: How come in former lifetimes, everybody is someone famous? (Beat, then they both bust out laughing) I mean, how come nobody ever says they were Joe Schmoe? Annie: Because it doesn't work that way, you fool! - In H-E Double Hockey Sticks, a hockey player obsessed with winning the Stanley Cup makes a Deal with the Devil so that his team wins the cup. Yay, right? Nope. The demon's boss then has him traded to the worst team in the NHL. So now, not only will he not get the trophy, he's also sold his soul for nothing. Luckily, said demon has a change of heart and points out a loophole - if another team wins the cup, the contract is null and void. So the player has to beat his team of losers into shape in order to win the cup and regain his soul. - In the first X-Men film, Magneto attempts to invoke this trope with a machine that can turn humans into mutants; the idea is to use it on a gathering of world leaders, many of whom have anti-mutant sentiment, to show them what it's like to be persecuted and feared. However, the machine only works using Magneto's own mutant gift, and the process nearly kills him, so he kidnaps the power-copying Rogue to forcibly transfer his ability into her body and use her as the fuel source. Wolverine calls Magneto out for falling into the same line of thinking he claims he's trying to avoid: if he really cared about mutant rights, he would willingly sacrifice himself in the machine. - The wife pull out her suitcase and starts packing as well. "Uh... what are you doing?" "Packing, I want to see how you manage to get by on $20 a month." ## By Author - Isaac Asimov was acutely aware of this phenomenon, both when selectively pining for the Good Old Days and when imagining the societies of the future. - A dinner conversation with his wife about the time "when it was easy to get servants", in which Asimov claimed that they themselves would be the servants, was later incorporated into one of Asimov's essays as an example. - The short story "The Winnowing" describes a global food shortage which the World Food Council intends to remedy by poisoning the most famine-struck areas all of them comfortably distant from their own homes with a biological agent that would kill 70% of the population at random. Their high-minded platitudes about "the finger of God" selecting the victims evaporate when the scientist they coerced into assisting reveals that he added the agent to the sandwiches they've just eaten. note : And when someone on the Council points out that he also ate some of the same sandwiches, he (effectively) replies "Yes - and the agent was matched to my DNA, so I'll almost certainly die. Everyone else will be random." He was willing to die to prove his point. - In C. S. Lewis's commentary on the Book of Psalms, Lewis points out that the Psalmists asking God to strike down the wicked rarely think that they themselves could be wicked (though in other Psalms the tone is more humble), and that in real life, some people's reaction to discovering a system to be unjust and exploitative is to work towards being on top of the heap so they can take advantage of it. - In a short story by Robert Sheckley, in an anthology compiled by Isaac Asimov, a young man, obsessed with sex, finds a magical text that will allow him to assume the job of feeding griffins, aware that griffins' favorite food is young virgins (thinking he might have some fun with offering a girl the obvious way out). It turns out that the young man is actually a virgin, and that he is not serving food for the griffin, he is the food. - In one of the stories of Ooka Tadasuke, a famous Japanese judge of the 18th century, he has to divide a father's estate between twin sons. One is known as greedy and selfish; the other is known as having helped the father and for being honorable. No one can tell which son is which. Ooka picks one son at random and tells him to divide the estate using tokens representing the various assets. The chosen son starts giving himself all the money and property, and gives his brother merely the good will of the neighbors. The crowd thinks Ooka made a huge mistake \|\|until Ooka announces that he told the son to divide the estate, but that only Ooka has the power to award the items. Ooka gives the money to the honorable son and tells the greedy son that he needs the neighbors' good will more\|\|. ## By Work - Ascendance of a Bookworm: - The series' basic concept plays with the trope. Our heroine is reincarnated into a Medieval European Fantasy world, But unlike many other Light Novel protagonists, ends up born to a family of commoners. - A knight named Shikza finds himself needing to guard a person of lower status than himself, whom he happens to resent. The only other two people present are of lower status than him, as well. Because of this, Shikza assumes he can do as he pleases with the person he's meant to guard and attacks her. Tables are turned on Shikza when he's reminded that the person who asked him to stand guard is of higher status than him. - Averted in Atlas Shrugged. The population of Galt's Gulch consists entirely of people who were either wealthy in the outside world or aspired to be. Clearly, a functioning society requires menial laborers, and some people will be at the bottom of the heap. But because Galt's Gulch is part of Ayn Rand's utopian Author Filibuster, everyone's presented as very happy with this system: former CEOs who end up as underlings claim to be completely satisfied, as long as their boss is more skilled and qualified than they are. - The Beast Arises: After the Astra Militarum, Mechanicus, and every Imperial Fists successor chapter join forces to defeat the ork invasion of Terra, they mount a Military Coup against the High Lords of Terra with the help of the Inquisition and the Adeptus Arbites and appoint Captain Koorland, the Sole Survivor of the Imperial Fists, as Lord Commander of the Imperium. The High Lords are understandably miffed at this, so when Vulkan, Primarch of the Salamanders, is discovered, they try to get him to take over, hoping he will give them their power back. Vulkan agrees to accept the Lord Commandership... and then immediately orders the High Lords to obey Koorland's orders as if they were his own and goes into seclusion. - Discussed in Colonel Butler's Wolf by Anthony Price. Butler compares himself to one of his more liberal-minded colleagues, noting that the colleague assumes he'd have been one of the masters in the old days but prefers modern society anyway, while Butler himself thinks the old ways were better even though he knows perfectly well he'd have been one of the servants. - Discworld: - Inverted for (pre-Ridcully) wizards and Assassins, who view their respective hierarchies as stifling and extremely unfair, but are very happy with it once they become high rankers themselves. Those who don't achieve high ranks... let's just say their complaints are unlikely to matter. - In The Last Continent, the Chair of Indefinite Studies darkly mutters that in "the old days" they used to kill wizards like Ridcully. The Dean points out that they also used to kill wizards like them. This is also a bit inaccurate. Ridcully was originally recruited as a useful hick who could take the job and not make waves but be easily assassinated if he was a problem. Turns out that, as a country wizard, he's in alarmingly good shape and a crack shot with a crossbow. - The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman tackles this head-on. Sophie — a girl from 1960 — gets to travel back in time to 1860 and visit her ancestors' plantation. She assumes they'll recognize her as part of the family. They do, but her tan skin, frizzy hair, and lack of 19th-century manners mean they figure her mother must have been black, and so she winds up as a slave by the one-drop rule. - In the novelization of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), the main human antagonist Alan Jonah genuinely doesn't realize once he decides to let King Ghidorah destroy the world that him and his men will surely die with everyone else in that scenario regardless of how well they hide themselves underground. He says that he and his men will live like kings once Ghidorah's apocalypse has finished, and Madison mentally calls out the absurdity of such a notion. - In one of the books of Guardians of Ga'Hoole, the main character Nyroc is born to Nyra, head of the "Pure Ones", an organization of owls made up of the family Tytonidae (the barn owls) whose goal is to eliminate the Guardians of Ga'hoole and purify the owl kingdoms. One of Nyroc's friends is Phillip, a member of species of Tytonidae called greater sooty owls. When he and his father were starving, they decided to join the organization as new recruits in hopes of a better life. Unfortunately, as Phillip discovers, not only are the Pure Ones racist towards other owls, but discriminate among their own kind based on feather color, with the white Tyto albas at the top of the hierarchy. Phillip (or Dustytuft as the other owls called him) ended up on the lower ranks of the social ladder, just above lesser sooty owls, forced to do the most menial and worst of jobs. - Harry Potter: - Many people who joined the Death Eaters were merely in it For the Evulz, or the chance to get ahead in wizarding society, or because Voldemort's victory seemed certain (and many were half-bloods masquerading as pureblood). Some found out that his evil was far beyond the bullying and Muggle-baiting they were used to, some tried to claim they'd been mind-controlled the entire time, and others still found themselves too deeply compromised to do anything but keep serving him. - In the backstory, Severus Snape turned on the Death Eaters and became a Double Agent for Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix after Voldemort targeted Lily Potter (nee Evans), with whom he had been in a Love Triangle with James Potter when they were all students at Hogwarts. Meaning that he was all on board with Voldemort's plans until they affected somebody he actually cared about. Worse yet, he openly begged Voldemort to let her live after killing her husband and son, which best case scenario would've left her to live in grief. He only turned to Dumbledore for help when Voldemort refused to do even that, causing Dumbledore to call him out for his immense selfishness. - The goblins welcomed Voldemort's upheaval of the wizarding world at first, thinking it the end of wizardkind's casual contempt on nonhuman magic beings. Instead, they seemed to have been reduced to menial work (quoth Griphook, who escaped: "I am no house-elf."). You'd think going with an organization that prides itself on purity of wizarding lineage would have set off more warning bells. - Discussed in the Heralds of Valdemar novels, where "May you get exactly what you deserve" is considered a curse. The implication is that the target might initially accept it, thinking they deserve better than what they have, but will shortly discover that they deserve worse. - Robertson Davies once wrote a short story (collected in the anthology High Spirits) in which a group of academics, after being bored to tears listening to a newly minted literature graduate student gush about how cool it would be to go live in the past, proceeded to summon the minds of their ancestors to inhabit their present bodies. And it turns out none of them had a particularly interesting past. - How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: - Amidonia's Prince Gaius VIII attempts some Loophole Abuse of the Mankind Declaration's ban on military conquest for the duration of the conflict with the Demon Lord: he argues that since Elfrieden is not a signatory, then trying to reconquer some of the territory Amidonia lost in their last war is not illegal. King Souma Kazuya soundly defeats Amidonia, killing Gaius in action and occupying his capital, so his heir Julius goes running to the Gran Chaos Empire (the western superpower that backs the Declaration). The Imperial heir apparent agrees to negotiate on their behalf to end Souma's occupation to save the credibility of her sister's treaty... and then, after negotiating with Souma, informs Julius he can either accept Souma's perfectly reasonable demand for war reparations and handover of war criminals for prosecution, or else be kicked out of the treaty entirely and have to risk other neighboring countries making the same Loophole Abuse argument to prey on a now much-weaker Amidonia. Julius takes the deal. - In a scene reminiscent of Henry V Act II, Scene 2, while deciding the sentences of convicted traitors Castor and Carla Vargas, Souma asks the jury of nobles what should be done with them. Two of them suggest clemency and are escorted out of the room. The others call for the Vargas' heads—and are promptly decapitated for their own treasonous activities by Souma's Black Cat ninjas who had infiltrated the room. Souma then sentences the Vargases to enslavement, while the two nobles who called for clemency are given jobs in Souma's administration. - One Judge Dee story has the judge attend a play, in which two brothers are complaining about their inheritance, each claiming they got shafted while waving the paper that lists their share. The judge of the play tells the brothers to exchange lists. - Played for Laughs at the start of KonoSuba. After dying in a freak accident, Kazuma is offered the option to Reincarnate in Another World by the goddess Aqua, and told he can pick any item or power as his New Life in Another World Bonus. Annoyed at her flippant attitude towards his circumstances, Kazuma picks Aqua herself out of spite, and Heaven ratifies the Loophole Abuse, much to Aqua's dismay. - Shirley Jackson's townspeople in "The Lottery" are perfectly fine with the annual Lottery of Doom that will end in a Human Sacrifice (it's traditional!). Only the victim protests, and only when it becomes clear that her life is at stake. - In the Nemesis Series, man-hating female mage Graywytch casts a spell to kill off all men, defined for the purposes of the spell as having a Y chromosome. She nearly dies herself, which Danny (a trans-girl and target of Graywytchs transphobic tendencies) theorizes that she's actually intersex, i.e. genetically XY male with androgen insensitivity. Though Graywytch refuses to accept this explanation, insisting she accidentally Cast From Hitpoints instead. It's never explicitly confirmed which is true, but the book seems to lean to Danny's explanation. - Slave World: - In the first novel, the heroine is horrified with how naively her colleagues embrace the Alternate Timeline world they have found. The scientists join the society, believing that they will get to be part of the aristocracy and thus accept the social order where the aristocrats have absolute power over everyone else. \|\|And yes, they do end up enslaved.\|\| - Zigzagged in the third novel, as Sarah seems to be falling in the same trap as her predecessors. \|\|She's actually setting herself up for permanent enslavement, although her plan is to belong to the woman she loves... who then gives her the basic "thanks but no thanks" and auctions her off to a random aristocrat... a young lady who grows to become the true love of her life.\|\| - In These Words Are True and Faithful, Cassilda advocates for government to constrain others' lives, assuming that she and people like her will be the beneficiaries. Her opponents invoke the same government powers whose expansion she advocates to shut down her pet project. - In the Thursday Next novel One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, Thursday is trapped in the Oral Tradition aboard the ship Ethical Dilemma, which is the setting of an ethics lecture about the morality of killing or torturing one person to save a larger group. Thursday chooses to give the lecturer an aneurysm in order to save the ship. - The War of the Worlds was partially written as a critique of Social Darwinism. Many people who believed that superior people should be in power would be extremely unhappy if a superior race of alien invaders took over. - "The Destiny of Milton Gomrath" has a garbage collector being convinced all his life that there's something wrong with the world and his position in it. One day he's visited by a being who says there's been a mistake and he actually belongs in an Alternate Universe, a Medieval European Fantasy world of brave knights, beautiful princesses, and heroic deeds. The garbageman eagerly agrees to go there instead, where it turns out his job is to clean the manure out of the castle stables, and his home is a pile of straw in the corner. - X-Wing Series: - Played for Laughs in Rogue Squadron. At Bror Jace's instigation, the unit holds a mock Court Martial of Ensign Newbie Gavin Darklighter, Jace arguing that he should be "apprenticed" to the highest-scoring pilot (currently himself) on the grounds that he has, as yet, scored only one kill in three engagements. Nawara, a former defense attorney, defends Gavin to Wedge, Tycho, and a bit character, and reaches a "plea deal" where Corran agrees to split his nine kills with Gavin and judge the best and worst pilot by percentages. Wedge then wryly points out that, having been awarded four additional kills in the plea deal, Gavin is no longer the worst pilot in the squadron: Nawara himself, with one kill, is. - Wraith Squadron: After ambushing the Wraiths, resulting in \|\|Jesmin Ackbar dying and Myn Donos having a PTSD break\|\|, the leader of a gang of Space Pirates tries to argue to Wedge Antilles that the battle had taken place in an unclaimed star system, and so there were no laws there and they had the right to defend themselves. Wedge sarcastically agrees and says in that case they were free to go—but if there were no laws, that also meant there were no laws against the Wraiths killing all the pirates and looting their supplies. The pirate leader quickly changes his mind about whether there are any laws in the star system. - In The Bible: - In the Book of Esther, King Ahasuerus asks his advisor Haman what a good reward would be for someone who had done the king a great service. Haman assumes it's for him and suggests an elaborate display, with the honored person riding the king's horse, wearing the king's robe, and being led by a noble shouting "See what is done for the man the king wishes to honor!" Ahasuerus thinks it's a great idea — and then tells him to go do just that for Mordecai, Haman's hated rival who had foiled a coup attempt against Ahasuerus but was never rewarded properly. And it just gets worse for Haman after that. - In 2 Samuel chapter 12, the prophet Nathan invokes this to guilt-trip King David after learning that David had Uriah killed and took Uriah's wife Bathsheba for himself in the previous chapter. Nathan tells a story about a rich man with many sheep, whose neighbor is a poor man with only one lamb, and the rich man steals his neighbor's lamb and slaughters it for his dinner. David angrily says that such a man deserves to be put to death. Nathan replies "You are such a man!" David isn't killed, but he is horrified at what he's done and immediately sets about trying to repent, and the Kingdom of Israel is cursed to fall as a consequence of his misdeed (first by the split between Israel and Judah in the reign of his grandson Rehoboam, then by the Babylonian conquest). - The Book of Mormon: When Laman asks his relative Laban to give him the brass plates containing their genealogy and scriptures, Laban angrily accuses him of being a robber and tries to have him killed on the spot. However, when Laman flees, returns with his brothers, and offers all their family's wealth in exchange for the plates, Laban gets greedy and takes all their valuables by force without handing the plates over, making him a robber. God later arranges for the youngest brother, Nephi, to come across Laban passed out drunk, and tells Nephi that it's acceptable to kill Laban. - Brent Butt (of Corner Gas fame) had a bit where he recalled encountering an extremely scrawny guy wearing a shirt bearing the anarchy symbol, and naturally mocked how unlikely he'd be to survive if he ever got his wish. Butt: You think he's thought this through? You think he wants to live in a world without rules? All 74 pounds of him? Think he's gonna do well in a Mad Max society? They're gonna give him the Grand Puba horns and let him call the shots, you figure? Or is he gonna be the hood ornament on a dune buggy around Day 2? Some 300-pound biker eatin' soup out of his skull, that's what's gonna happen. - Ars Magica: Some diabolists are Hell Seekers in the belief that their loyalty to Satan will get them promoted to devilhood when they die, so they can be the torturers instead of the tormented. Hell offers no such accommodations. - In BattleTech, Brett Andrews, Khan of Clan Steel Viper, was elected ilKhan of the Clans and declared his intent to purge them of the "taint" of the Inner Sphere. This led to the Wars of Reaving, which saw the destruction of many of the Clans and several others being forced to flee to the Inner Sphere. Finally, he declared that all the tainted Clans had been destroyed, only for Khan Stanislov NButa of Clan Star Adder to remind him that there was one Clan that had been tainted by its time in the Inner Sphere left: Clan Steel Viper. Andrews challenged him to an unarmed duel, then killed him with a laser pistol, violating both the prohibition of carrying weapons into the Clan Council and the honor of the duel, which the other assembled Khans used as evidence that N'Buta was right. The Steel Vipers promptly became the final Clan to be destroyed for being tainted by the Inner Sphere; Andrews himself, meanwhile, was beaten to death by Star Adder saKhan Hannibal Banacek. For added irony, the Steel Vipers were the only Clan that had actually occupied a part of the Inner Sphere that were wiped out in the Wars of Reaving, as all the other Clans that invaded the Inner Sphere either survived (Clan Jade Falcon, Clan Wolf, Clan Ghost Bear, Clan Snow Raven, Clan Diamond Shark, Clan Nova Cat) or were destroyed prior to the Wars of Reaving (Clan Smoke Jaguar, Clan Ice Hellion). The other Clans that were destroyed were ones that had never gone to the Inner Sphere. - Dungeons & Dragons: - This is a common ploy of the Lawful Evil alignment, inviting people to join a system that benefit the strong at the expense of the weak. The regular adherent is an Asshole Victim who overestimated his strength and is really unhappy with finding himself as one of the despised and exploited weaklings. Similarly, Fiendish Codex II explains this is why someone would willingly sell their soul in a Deal with the Devil — they expect their natural ability or special relationship with their fiendish patron will lead them to swiftly take positions of power and prestige in the diabolic hierarchy after their deaths, allowing them to pursue their mortal ambitions as a mighty pit fiend. Unfortunately for them, as soon as mortal souls arrive in Baator they're tortured until they suffer a Death of Personality and have been twisted into the very least of devils. "No tyrant looks upon a wretched lemure and thinks that this will be their afterlife." - In the Dark Sun setting's history, the Companions helped the insane Absolute Xenophobe Rajaat execute his genocide of all the "impure" sapient races of Athas, right up until they realized that he wasn't actually human and counted humans among the impure races. Cue a collective Oh, Crap! and hasty ploy to seal his evil in a can. - In the Mutant Chronicles book Ilian, there are two short-stories on this theme. Humans who joined the cult of Ilian because they wanted to become the exploiters rather then the exploited. And their futures are so bright, since Ilian will smile upon them forever... until they fail or get backstabbed by each other, that is. Suckers. - In Book of the Dead, a book for the New World of Darkness (mostly Geist: The Sin-Eaters and Mage: The Awakening), all the underworld realms presented are designed so the gamemaster can play them this way. It's outright encouraged in general, and one of the realms is designed so it's hard to NOT play it this way. This realm is called Oppia, and is a place of abundant soul-energy in the form of delicious food. The rulers are very generous and hospitable, and their rules seem simple enough. Sure, the system runs on enslavement of souls, but those idiots are bad guests who broke the rules. Seems easy enough to accept... until you realize how very easy it actually is to break the rules. Including by accident. - Pathfinder: Defied by the Gray Gardeners, the secretive order of executioners that maintains the Final Blades of Galt—the magical guillotines upon which accused enemies of the Red Revolution are beheaded. note : Galt is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture for France at the height of the Reign of Terror. As the only lasting power center amidst the Red Revolution, the Gray Gardeners keep their own identities secret to lessen the risk that the mob might turn on them as well. - Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy Battles: - Many who devote themselves to the Gods of Chaos do so for personal gain, with the most ambitious hoping to be rewarded with immortality as daemon princes. Unfortunately for them, their patrons are just as likely to ignore them, drive them insane, give them what they want in a cruelly ironic way, or subject them to awful transformations. Many instances of Chaos Spawn were once up-and-coming champions of Chaos until they washed out and mutated beyond control, becoming little more than feral attack-animals herded into battle by their former subordinates. - In 40K, the fall of the Eldar was brought about by the psychic Space Elves' continuous hedonism creating a new Chaos god/dess in the Warp. Some pleasure cults actually did their best to accelerate this process, believing they'd be rewarded with an eternity of new sensations. The Dark Eldar are now a race of Klingon Promotion-enforcing combat sadomasochists who need to hide in the Webway lest the Chaos god Slaanesh devour their souls, and can emerge into realspace only long enough to conduct quick raids for slaves. - In Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, mutants are hated and feared for their obvious taint of Chaos; but one book points out that, while many denizens of the Empire have little problem condemning mutants if they're someone they don't know (or like), attitudes change fairly quickly once they or their loved ones experience mutation themselves. In particular, families that experience the birth of mutant children usually decide to either hide the baby or abandon them in the woods, rather than kill them or consign them to the witch hunters as is their duty. - In Act II of William Shakespeare's Henry V, a trio of nobles are secretly plotting against Henry. In Scene 2, Henry mentions he plans to forgive a man who spoke against him in public, attributing it to drunkenness. The three nobles say the man should be punished, at which time Henry reveals that he knows about their treachery. They beg for mercy, and Henry says they'll get the mercy they wanted for the drunk and sentences them all to death. - In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock demands that the court award him the Exact Words of the contract, thinking it will be in his favor and allow him to dispose of a hated enemy. Portia, disguised as a lawyer, asks him to choose mercy, but all in vain. After the judgment, she springs the trap — he can carve a pound of flesh from Antonio, but he can't take any blood. Shylock, understandably, tries to either accept a different offer or drop the suit, but both of those options are now Off the Table. - BioShock: - BioShock: In one of the Apocalyptic Logs, the speaker says that when intelligent, hard-working, and powerful individuals from the surface are invited to come to Rapture and help build a world of freedom from rules and regulations, they accept because they think they'll be captains of industry like they would be on the surface. They then find out that "someone needs to clean the toilets". It seems that nobody, not even Andrew Ryan, fully realised that if you have a city comprised solely of the human race's elite, those who could be great leaders when surrounded by normal people to do the menial work, won't be special any more when everyone is just as clever and driven as they are. Apparently, this unwelcome discovery contributed heavily to the people's rapid disillusionment with Rapture, and Ryan realising that there were people who could compete with him as equals helped spur an already self-centred narcissist past the Moral Event Horizon to stay on top. - This is also discussed in BioShock 2 where you find out the backstory of the railroad that connects the various parts of the city. Ryan and his supporters invested heavily in the railroad, but it was quickly upstaged by the invention of the bathysphere and the railroad went bankrupt. Ryan's followers never considered that their own investments could go sour and were confronted by the fact that they were about to find themselves broke and on the bottom of the economic and social system of Rapture. Faced with losing his power base, Ryan forced a bank bailout for the railroad, which saved the investors' fortunes but destroyed the savings of everyone else. Rapture's economy went into a downward spiral, which resulted in the civil war that wrecked the city. - While not as prevalent, the fallacy is also reflected in Bioshock Infinite regarding Comstock's flying paradise for the American People. Fink realized that none of the white, wealthy, religious patrons who'd flock to Comstock's city as "God's Kingdom" would be eager to do manual labor or menial tasks to maintain the 'heavenly' city, so he brought in "Cherubs for every chore", i.e. a massive foreign labor force that would eventually revolt and become the Vox Populi. This didn't end well for anybody. - The plot of Devil May Cry 5 is kicked off by \|\|Vergil's\|\| decision to split himself into his human and demon halves. He discovers seconds later that he is not The Unfettered demon Urizen but the helpless human V and spends most of the rest of the game trying to find someone powerful enough to defeat Urizen so they can reunite. - Dragon Age: Inquisition: - One of your mage companions, Vivienne, is strongly in favor of reinstating the Circle of Magi, under the reasoning that mages must be imprisoned and controlled by Templars for their own safety and the safety of the general public, and that so long as the mages behave themselves they'll be allowed to live. However, she submits to none of those restrictions, being the Court Mage to the Orlesian court and essentially living the free life of a noble while claiming every other mage should be contained for their own good. - Toyed with regarding the Venatori, one of the main antagonist factions. Their leader the Elder One wants to enter the Fade and claim the power of a god and use it to reshape the world and restore the Tevinter Imperium to its glory days. \|\|The Bad Future you see in one quest line is not hospitable to human life, let alone Tevinter's restoration\|\|, and several of the Venatori seem to think they'll be made the sole ruler of the world for their service while the Elder One takes up the position of deity, rather than simply another slave. However, it's unclear how much they know of his plans and their actual effects. - In the Jaws of Hakkon DLC, the First Inquisitor Ameridan \|\|who was an elven mage was fine with his close personal friend Emperor Drakon leading religiously-motivated imperial expansionist campaigns against neighboring human kingdoms because Drakon assured him he and his descendants would always honor Dales elven sovereignty. When Ameridan learns that Drakon's own son annexed the Dales one short generation after he disappeared\|\| he's horrified, as he'd assumed that \|\|his people would be exempt from Drakon's imperial expansionism\|\|. - Dragon Quest VI: One optional area in the dreamworld is a "Groundhog Day" Loop of a king who decided to deal with the threat of the Archfiend by summoning an even bigger demon to kill it. The idea that they wouldn't remain in control past the first five seconds of the ritual didn't occur to them at all. \|\|If you actually fight and defeat this demon quickly enough, it turns out the plan wasn't as stupid as it seems: the demon cheerfully destroys the Big Bad in a humiliating Curb-Stomp Battle without taking any damage. The problem being that the demon will only respect anybody strong enough to beat him, and if you're strong enough to beat him that means you're also strong enough to Curb Stomp the Big Bad even without his help.\|\| - Fallout: New Vegas: Vault 11's sadistic social experiment, revealed by their Overseer after they permanently sealed the exit, was to force the citizens into sacrificing one person a year or the vault would self-destruct. They unanimously decided to sacrifice their Overseer. This turned into a tradition of sacrificing their elected overseer at the end of every year, under the premise that the one with all the power is / will become an asshole and should pay the price. Which turned corrupt as the majority formed voting blocs to target minorities and annoyances, and the Justice Bloc's leader took full advantage of their influence to bully anyone into submission with threats of getting them or their loved ones elected, then get them elected anyway. Except one pissed-off victim intentionally got herself elected in a landslide with a string of bloc serial killings, and used her overseer powers to make all future sacrifices selected at random, screwing the blocs over with their own voting power and belief in electing a Strawman Political to blame. Which went horribly wrong as the formerly smug, untouchable Justice Bloc went berserk and launched an armed coup to reinstate their voting entitlements, sparking a bloody civil war that ended with the decimation of the vault. When the vault sang its final insult - unlocking the vault doors and praising the citizens for not sacrificing anyone that year (because they were too busy shooting each other) - four of the five survivors committed suicide from the realization that they only passed the Secret Test of Character by failing every other test of basic human decency. The sole survivor begged them to listen to the announcement that they could just leave, even after he personally insulted the Vault's AI and demanded it do their worst to try to make them listen to it (and oh, it did). - Knight Eternal: The people of Zamaste worship Zamas in the hopes that he'll spare them, but it's clear that Zamas has no intention of doing so and that he hates all mortals equally. - The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: Chancellor Cole's plan rests on finding a suitable host for his master Malladus, but he breaks down in fear \|\|once Malladus chooses him after losing Zelda\|\|. - Neverwinter Nights 2: The Faceless Man, Big Bad of the Mask Of The Betrayer expansion, was once \|\|Akachi, the high priest of the dead god Myrkul, until he renounced his devotion to Myrkul and tried to storm the afterlife to liberate his wife's soul from the Wall of the Faithless.\|\| It sounds noble, and to an extent it was, but it is pointed out that \|\|Akachi had been gleefully condemning souls to the Wall for decades before his wife ended up there.\|\| He knew full well what Myrkul was doing (and what he was doing in Myrkul's service), as well as how corrupt the whole system was; he just didn't care until that corrupt system affected him and someone he cared about. - In Persona 5, many members of the Conspiracy are like this. They're fine with \|\|Shido\|\| causing people to have mental breakdowns as long as those breakdowns are people who are their rivals and enemies. However, few stop to think about the fact that his targets tend to be people who are dangerous to him. Such as people who know he's the one causing the breakdowns. They're far less happy when they realize (as they die) that they're on the chopping block as well. - This tends to be a problem with online trading in the Pokémon games. Players will often put up a freshly-caught and untrained Mon for offer while demanding you give them legendaries or max-levels in return, a trade they would've never accepted if made by someone else (a problem exacerbated in early iterations by a search UI that wasn't designed well enough to let players screen out bad offers properly). The addition of Wonder Trading, in which you trade Pokémon with a random player without knowing what you're going to get, has only made this worse, with everyone assuming THEY will be the one of the lucky ones. - Rise of the Third Power: Prince Gage initially bought into Emperor Noraskov's rhetoric of how some people are chosen as fate and others are disfavored by fate, and that the former group is morally superior to the latter regardless of circumstances. \|\|As a result, he's complicit in Noraskov's purge of dissenters and undesirables. He is eventually labeled a traitor for stopping the assassination of his fiancée, Princess Arielle, making him disfavored by fate according to this ideology.\|\| - The premise of Sea Salt. A seaside town has prospered by making a deal with Dagon. The game opens with the Archbishop praying to Dagon to find out which people need to be sacrificed for continued blessing. As soon as his own name is mentioned, he goes from happy obedience to stammering excuses about how he's too important. It's up to the player to command Dagon's minions and collect the payment the hard way. - Most representatives of the Chaos alignment in Shin Megami Tensei support the creation of a world where Might Makes Right because they believe they're strong enough to end up on top in such a world. Many don't take it well when the protagonist defeats them in battle, thus proving themselves stronger. - Accentuated in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. The Chaos ending is the typical scenario, transforming Earth into a a world of survival of the fittest, though Humanity fails to take into account that demons are inherently stronger than them, so they're quickly wiped off the face of the earth. You're urged to take a plan B to do something similar, but by taking demons out of the equation. - Silent Hill 3: There's a notebook in the hospital that envisions the writer (most likely Leonard Wolf), as some righteous crusader defending the world from all the "unnecessary people" in it. As Heather reads the journal, she scornfully notes that she'd like to meet the lunatic who wrote it and ask if they think they're "one of the necessary ones". - Several of the debates in Exile Election involve this. For instance, Miori's debate revolves around the concept of a world where everyone's abilities are translated into stats, with this information being widely known. Most of her supporters naturally believe that their stats would be high enough that they'll be recognized as special and be treated accordingly. \|\|Ironically, Miori believes the exact opposite. She thinks her stats would be low enough that she'd be dismissed as worthless, and everyone would leave her alone and stop expecting anything from her.\|\| - 8-Bit Theater: - Several times, including with the final boss, Black Mage has attempted to cozy up to whatever force of evil is attempting to destroy the world under the belief that they'll team up and get to do it together. Then said evil force makes it clear that this is not a case of Evil Is One Big, Happy Family and Black Mage will get destroyed along with everything else, forcing Black Mage to go back to the heroes. - At the end of the comic with it looking like the end is imminent, Thief attempts to back out thinking his wealth will allow him to live the good life in whatever's left. Black Mage and Red Mage have to point out to him that Money Is Not Power if there's no economy to support it. Thief is quick to return to world-saving as a result. - Freefall: A man discusses this when he refuses to attack someone for a large bribe: "The Needs of the Many" sounds good until you're designated one of the few. - Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger: Referenced when a group of Space Pirates who were fighting Quentyn find themselves helpless against a single Kvrk-Chk until Quentyn saves them. Quentyn: Omnibus, pirates and gangsters and other "outlaws" are nothing but arrogant children. They think that the rules are just there to spoil their fun, and that only wimps and losers live by them. And so they figure that being an outlaw makes them the biggest, baddest predators in the universe. They're dead wrong. What it makes them is rightful prey. Of the civilization they spurned, and of the things their civilization protected them from without their ever knowing. There are powers and principalities out there that pick their teeth with the bones of "big, bad outlaws" that wander out past the fence. Our three eyed buccaneers just learned that their worst nightmare is true: The bars on the cage aren't there to protect the tiger ... and the tiger isn't them . - SomethingPositive* has an already-frustrated Davan makes a goth clubber start hitting himself for his desire for "divine Anarchy", giving an object lesson in this trope in the process. - Played With in this article for The Onion, where a man expresses his desire to see all Mexicans deported from the United States, despite his love of Mexican food and being on good terms with all of the Mexicans that he knows. "But the rest of you, the ones I don't know personally, I won't miss you at all." - From Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance, an expectant mother's mother-in-law decided "grandparents deserve a vote" on the names of the grandkids. OP agreed... and invited the other grandparents to the vote as well. Mother-in-law lost 4 to 2. - A thread on StarDestroyer.net's forum concluded that of various fictional worlds, Star Trek's United Federation of Planets is probably the best one to live in, on grounds that, since you're far more likely to be some random average guy than one of the heroes of The 'Verse, the Federation's standard of living has a lot to recommend it. - Lampooned in a widely-shared tweet by Adrian Bott: "I never thought leopards would eat MY face," sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party. - This quote serves as the inspiration for the subreddit r/LeopardsAteMyFace, which documents several posts about this occurring in real life, as well as the "Leopards Eating People's Faces" Party meme. - The Dragon Prince: When King Harrow was crowned, he told his wife about a dream he had where Lady Justice came to him and offered him a gift. He took her blindfold, and she explained how he should try to imagine he was not born with the wealth or position he has, or even the culture or skin color. Later in the episode, he tries to make good on this promise by offering supplies to a nearby kingdom suffering a famine — they don't have much to spare, so the same amount of people will starve, but half of them will be from his kingdom instead of all from his ally. However, he stumbles a bit when his court wizard offers him an alternative; kill a powerful magical creature and use its heart to bring fertility to the land. His wife points out that they don't even know if the creature is intelligent. They ultimately go through with it and it works, but it kicks off a Cycle of Revenge that results in Harrow's wife dead, the queens of the allied kingdom dead, himself dead years later, and brings the land within inches of war. - In the Family Guy episode "Padre de Familia", Peter, driven by Patriotic Fervor, demands that his company institute a policy of only hiring American citizens in order to weed out illegal immigrant workers. When the policy is passed, he approaches his mother to ask for a copy of his birth certificate, only for her to reveal that she was across the border at the time of his birth, and he was born in Mexico... and since he can't provide a birth certificate that demonstrates his citizenship of the USA, he gets fired as a result of the policy he helped implement. - In The Owl House, this is why several characters - including \|\|Odalia Blight and most of the nine Coven Heads\|\| - support Emperor Belos' plans for the Day of Unity despite knowing of its true purpose as \|\|a means of committing genocide\|\|. They naively assume that Belos will allow them to join him in the "paradise" that the Day of Unity will supposedly create, not realising that \|\|Belos fully intends to kill every single witch and demon on the Boiling Isles, without exception\|\|. - Sonic Boom: In the episode "Mister Eggman", Eggman signs up for the class of the Sadist Teacher Professor Kingsford and is eager to see who the "goat" - the student turned into the professor's Butt-Monkey - will be, not realizing that as one of his students, he's just as vulnerable to getting that position himself. Sure enough, it's Eggman who ends up being the goat. - Many Tom and Jerry shorts have Jerry seeming to favor having an Angry Guard Dog around since it usually gets Tom off his back and often getting kicks from watching a cat getting chased and tormented by the larger beast. Though, there are a few shorts where "said dog" doesn't just settle on the cat but then shows every bit of animosity on wanting to do the same to the mouse. Thus, Jerry then finds himself teaming up with Tom, with the two of them having to work together in order to deal with an aggressive and large canine bent on chomping them both.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalPositionFallacy
Original Video Animation - TV Tropes Animated shows produced for the Direct to Video market, almost universally abbreviated "OVA", or more rarely "OAV" (for "original(ly) animated (for) video"), and even more rarely OAD (same for DVD). The term is almost always associated with anime; however, this form of storytelling is beginning to become popular in the anglosphere with recent animation based on comic characters and TV shows. Unfortunately, these still labour under the shadow of the term "direct-to-video". While the terms "direct-to-video" and "direct-to-DVD" have negative overtones, essentially being synonyms for Shovelware in the United States, "OVA" has almost exactly the opposite connotation. This partially arises from the view that Western "direct-to-video" releases are not good enough (or too explicit) for theaters; OVAs, on the other hand, are seen as a step up from regular television production. Because the production house need not adhere to the rapid-fire schedule or constrained budget of a TV series or feature-length film, more effort and care can be applied to an OVA, resulting in a much higher level of quality. Additionally, since OVAs aren't aired to the public, censorship is a moot point, which allows shows for older audiences to avoid ducking more mature subject matter, and shows for younger audiences to faithfully adapt some of the more violent or risqué aspects of the manga they were derived from without censorship toning it down. On the flip side, the vast majority of hentai series are produced and released as OVAs, just like much live-action pornography is released directly to home media or online. Given the general lack of a clear-cut production schedule, the time duration of an OVA is rather varied— some are 26 minutes long, while others are 60-80 minutes, but the idea of an OVA being up to two hours long is uncommon, with the longest examples typically reaching around 90 - 100 minutes at the very most. In most cases, rather than produce one single, extended-length instalment, production houses typically produce a 'miniseries' when adapting longer manga, ranging from between 2 to 5 or even 10 individual episodes. There are some caveats to the increased freedom, though. OVAs are often produced "on speculation", with no guarantee that the story they tell will ever be completed— and many are not. At least one OVA series ends with a plaintive plea for more money so the creators can continue making the show. However, even this is not always a guarantee— the Hellsing OVA series managed to adapt the entire ten volume manga it was based on. One trend which has become evident recently is the continuation of broadcast television series in OVA form after they complete their initial run; the aforementioned lack of broadcast standards also allows writers to work in anything they couldn't put into the original TV show. Inversely, the exposure of a broadcast initial run may be a lure for viewer interest in the less censored, more serious story continuing on home media. Due to the heavy market decline of physical media in the west during the late 2000's and early 2010's, both the broadcast and OVA-exclusive material are typically carried over via streaming services, thus removing the physical distinction between them (said decline was also responsible for the heavy downturn in the animated hentai industry during the 2010's, which previously used the western DVD boom to accrue more money and support more technically ambitious projects). A common thread of discussion online happens whenever a manga which received an OVA as its first adaptation goes on to have a full anime series produced for television later down the line. Fans will often debate for quite some time as to which one is better, and which one is the definitive adaptation. OVAs were most common in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly during the 1986-1991 asset price bubble (which, up until its bursting the following year, resulted in studios having a lot more money to back up the prospect of huge creative freedom), during which many well-known series were released in this fashion. The idea of this era as "the Golden Age of Anime" stems in part from the OVA boom, which led to a large number of unique stories being produced unrestricted and without a specific target audience and brought a level of creative freedom comparable to New Hollywood's effects on the American film industry. With the recent rise of 12-Episode Anime series as an alternate short format, as well as streaming video over the Internet, OVAs have come to be less frequently released, though by no means extinct; the aforementioned Hellsing, Code Geass: Akito the Exiled and Ghost in the Shell: Arise are a sampling of recent OVA releases. Anime made for release on the Internet are called Original Net Animation, or ONA for short, and act as a Spiritual Successor of sorts to the OVA format (with some works, like the 2002 Azumanga Daioh anime adaptation, using the ONA format to gauge audience interest with a pilot). The model would also inform direct-to-streaming animation in the west, with those works carrying over the OVA format's association with higher-quality production values and less rigid content standards compared to cable television. Fittingly, some anime even debut on streaming services before hitting airwaves, such as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalNetAnimation
Orient Express - TV Tropes A variety of rail services have used the name "Orient Express" — we're covering all of them here: - The original route, shut down in 2009 and originally created by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits ("International Sleeping-Car Company"), known as CIWL for short, in 1883. The classic route was from Istanbul to Paris via Belgrade and Vienna (there were two versions, three a week each, taking different routes between Vienna and Paris.) This was truncated over the years to Paris-Vienna and ended as Strasbourg-Vienna. The final death knell was the introduction of High Speed Rail along most of the by then remaining line. - In 2021, the Paris-Vienna service was resurrected as part of the Nightjet sleeper network operated by Austria - with the successors to CIWL, Newrest Wagons-Lits, providing the on-train staff. This does not bear the name "Orient Express", but does use the 468/469 numbers that service used in its final years. - After WWI, the primary route was the "Simplon-Orient-Express", which was routed through Italy and Yugoslavia in order to avoid Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria. A clause in the Treaty of Versailles helped establish the train's route. This is the version of the Orient Express featured in Murder on the Orient Express. After 1962, this route was known as the "Direct-Orient-Express", finally ending in 1977. - The "Arlberg-Orient-Express" operated from Paris to Budapest via Zurich, Innsbruck, and Vienna, with connecting coaches to Bucharest and Athens. This route operated from 1930 to 1939, resuming after WWII and ending in 1962. - Various other Wagon-Lits services criss-crossed Europe, including the "Ostend-Vienna Orient Express", which exchanged cars that went on to Istanbul. The Vienna-Istanbul sleeping cars were cut in the 1960s, at which point it was renamed the "Ostend-Vienna Express". It was renamed again to the "Austria Nachtexpress" in 1991 and "Donau Walzer" in 1993. After the Channel Tunnel was opened, it was cut back to Brussels, finally being cancelled in 2003. This train is featured in the Graham Greene book Stamboul Train. - The luxury London-Venice service (although there are longer journeys available including to Verona, Berlin and Istanbul), the Venice Simplon Orient Express, which uses vintage engines (on occasion) and carriages. This is actually split into two - The Belmond British Pullman (another luxury service) that takes passengers to Folkestone West. - Passengers are then taken by coach via 'Le Shuttle' trains through the Channel Tunnel. The service historically never ran across the Channel, although there was a sleeper service known as the "Night Ferry" that ran with carriages transported across by boat - this ran from 1936 to 1980 (with a 1939-1947 gap because of the Second World War). The Night Ferry itself turns up in a number of works, most notably a 1976 children's film of that name featuring Bernard Cribbins as the villain. - They then board the Orient Express at Calais for an overnight journey to Venice. - As the name indicates, the VSOE was launched in 1982 following the route of the Simplon-Orient-Express via the Simplon Tunnel as far as Venice. The owners changed the route in 1985 because the train's tight schedule meant the best scenery was passed by at night, though they did maintain the Simplon route as a winter route before giving up winter operation some time in the 1990s. It now operates via the Arlberg Tunnel route to Innsbruck, then turns south to go to Venice, mostly following the route of the Arlberg-Orient-Express. The rerouting also allowed the company to introduce occasional runs to Vienna and Budapest. There is an annual service to Istanbul too. The original endpoint of the route, Sirkeci Terminal on the European side of Istanbul is a sight to behold and while it does not see train service for the duration of construction work during the Marmaray project, its orientalist architecture is still a modern marvel. The route was famed for its luxury sleeping and dining cars, having a general air of opulence about it. This said, there were no en-suite toilets - these were found at the end of the carriages. It should be pointed out that this was not one 'complete train', but a series of through carriages coupled on and uncoupled at various points in the journey, with locomotives changed at national borders. The most modern traction was generally used, so diesel and electric locomotives were increasingly common as time went by. For more information, see here. Also here. As mentioned above, this was by no means the only CIWL operation, with Le Train Bleu aka the Blue Train (which turns up in another Agatha Christie novel, The Mystery of the Blue Train) from Paris to the South of France, with a through carriage from Calais, being very popular with the British upper classes. The TGV service from Paris to Nice took much of its passengers away and it was gradually reduced to a seated and couchette service only, stopping entirely from 2017 to 2021. The examples below feature the Orient Express in fiction, and fictional railway services clearly inspired by it. ## Examples - Case Closed has the Bell Tree Express, a clear expy considering that it's a train with a deliberate retro look and they arrange a murder mystery game on board every time it runs. - Avalanche Express, a Cold War Spy Fiction novel by Colin Forbes (also made into a movie starring Lee Marvin) involves a team of agents escorting a high-ranking Soviet defector on a service akin to the Orient Express, while fending off various attempts at murder and sabotage. Bad weather conditions prevent the team from flying him directly to the United States, but they're also using the defector as The Bait to flush out the Soviet sabotage network in Europe (which would otherwise only be activated in time of war). - In A College of Magics, the heroine and her friends travel on the Orient Express part of the way back to her Ruritanian homeland. - In Dracula, when Dracula escapes from England to Varna by sea, the cabal sworn to destroy him travels to Paris and takes the Orient Express, arriving in Varna ahead of him. - Alec and Magnus take the Orient Express to travel from Paris to Venice in The Eldest Curses. While there they get attacked by a bunch of demons. - Flashman and the Tiger by George MacDonald Fraser: Sir Harry Paget Flashman travels on the train's first journey as a guest of the journalist Henri Blowitz. - In the Diesel Punk story Leviathan, the Orient Express appears as a heavily armed high-tech train. - "The Napoli Express", a Lord Darcy mystery deconstructing the story of Murder on the Orient Express. - Murder on the Orient Express, where Hercule Poirot has to investigate a murder on the train. Adapted a number of times for film, including a modern-day adaptation. Christie did her research: Poirot tries to get a first-class berth on the Istanbul-Calais coach but this is full, so he takes a second-class berth until the Athens-Paris coach can be attached in Belgrade. In the end, his travelling companion, who is only going as far as Switzerland, moves into the Athens coach and gives Poirot his compartment. She also includes mention of the ordinary day coaches attached to the train by the railways along the line, a cost saving measure because of the Depression. A Wagon-Lits Pullman lounge car was typically attached to the train in Italy; the 1974 film used dramatic licence by having the Pullman on the train from Istanbul. - Also the Parker Pyne short story "Have You Got Everything You Want?" is set on board the train. - The Altiplano Express between Ankh-Morpork and Uberwald in Raising Steam. - The Solar Pons story "The Adventure of the Orient Express" takes place in 1938, when the coming war is hanging overhead like a thunderstorm ready to burst. For once without his detective partner, the narrator Dr Lyndon Parker is on the famous train leaving Prague, in the company of an abrasive and mysterious spy called Von Ruber. Also aboard are a bunch of Nazis, spies and adventurers looking for some hidden microfilm. - Stamboul Train by Graham Greene. - Michael Palin's Around the World in Eighty Days opens with a trip on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. It's cut short when the train reaches Italy in the middle of a railway workers' strike. - Mentioned in an episode of the 11th Doctor's run in Doctor Who. Apparently there was an Egyptian Goddess on the loose on it, and it was IN SPACE!. This Noodle Incident is elaborated on in the 12th Doctor story "Mummy on the Orient Express". It's a Mummy on the Orient Express IN SPACE!. - In the British soap opera EastEnders, in 1986, characters Den and Angie Watts spent their honeymoon on the train. - Get Smart had an episode titled "Aboard the Orient Express". - The Goodies: In "Daylight Robbery on the Orient Express", the Goodies set up a fake Orient Express for a convention of famous detctives. Things go even more spectacularly awry than they usually do. - Minder on the Orient Express (1985): a special episode of the long-running ITV sit-com Minder. - The Jason Alexander episode of Muppets Tonight had a skit called "Murder on the Disoriented Express", which mostly consisted of Alexander's Hercule Poirot trying to explain he wasn't Hercules. - Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Emergence": the train appears on the Enterprise's holodeck. - "Orient Express" is the title of a piece of music Jean-Michel Jarre composed for his 1981 Concerts In China. The video clip features footage of the classic train. - The role-playing game Call of Cthulhu used the train for one its more famous scenarios. - Tabletop Game/Twilight 2000 has a scenario for its alternative setting of Merc 2000 called "Mess on the Orient Express", in which the PCs must retrieve a stolen ancient statute during a journey on the train. - The Backyardigans episode "Le Master of Disguise" features the Orient Express, showing Uniqua, Pablo, Austin, Tasha, and Tyrone going to Istanbul from Paris. - In one episode of the British cartoon series Danger Mouse, called "Danger Mouse on the Orient Express", DM and Penfold travel on the train on their way back to London from Venice. DM's arch-enemy Greenback is also on the train. They're both vying for a document that could lead to disaster for Europe's tourist industry. - Also, Victor & Hugo: Bunglers in Crime also made by Cosgrove-Hall, has an episode 'Blunder on the Orient Express' where the brothers try to rob a train but accidentally end up on the Orient Express instead. A Hercule Poirot expy also appears. - Rugrats paid homage to Murder on the Orient Express with a (fake) murder mystery on the "Ornery Express". - The 1987 cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has an episode entitled "Turtles on the Orient Express". As the title suggests it is primarily based on the train. - In 1994's Season 1 episode of Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? called "The Gold Old Bad Days", Carmen Sandiego and her V.I.L.E. gang are given a challenge to do something low tech by The Player. Carmen's goal is the train.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrientExpress
Orifice Evacuation - TV Tropes A variation of Body Horror, where a creature is inside someone else, and then leaves through an established opening of the body (as in naturally, not a cut or piercing), even if it's not really an opening (like the navel). It could be the mouth, the nostrils, the ear, or through orifices below the belt. Pores could even count. The point is that the orifice is pretty much intact when the creature leaves. Sometimes this can kill the "host", sometimes the host lives, or sometimes the host can already be dead. Sometimes this can be horrific, but sometimes not. It depends on the nature of the evacuation. As the picture shows, it can even be Played for Laughs. Compare Chest Burster (when the creature makes its own orifice to leave, or mutilates an orifice to get out), Giving Up the Ghost. Contrast Orifice Invasion, Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong. ## Examples - Ayakashi Triangle: - Matsuri's wind-based exorcism can remove spirits through the host's mouth, though it's not shown directly. Usually it's sucked up and blown out his pinwheel like a straw, while he once removed an ayakashi mouth-to-mouth before passing it through his body and out his hand. - After Une's Pocket Dimension collapses, the one object left inside is mentioned to have come out of her face when she sneezed. (Though since Une has a two-dimensional "face" on a mirror, there might not have technically been an orifice involved.) - A small devil leaves through a guy's mouth in an episode of YuYu Hakusho. Strangely enough, The Abridged Series let that moment slide by without a comment. - In Naruto: - When the tailed beasts are shown being removed from their hosts they exit from their mouth and eyes. - In the anime, Itachi uses a genjutsu that makes the victim feel like a crow is crawling out of their mouth. - When his body is about to be maimed beyond being able to simply reattach (via snakes... somehow), Orchimaru throws up himself with his clothes undamaged (thank Nicolas Cage), which usually works. He is very fond of this technique. - Sasuke also uses this technique to escape being burned alive by Amaterasu, although his clothes don't regenerate. - Namekians in Dragon Ball are a One-Gender Race of Little Green Men (though as adults they tend to be quite tall and don't fly ufos) that give birth to their kin by putting out eggs through the mouth. It tends to be quite Squicky to look at, especially since they visibly struggle with it. It's even possible (though not seen) that they can choke to death from it. - In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Kakyoin uses his stand to control the body of a school nurse from the inside, before Jotaro uses his stand to pull it out of her mouth in the most dramatic fashion ever. - The recent Titans Annual #1 has Kid Eternity being wrapped around a computer output input cable kind of combining this with naughty USB inputs, disabling his powers by going down his throat. Or summink. - In the penultimate Story Arc of The Sandman (1989), "The Kindly Ones", Cluracan spawns the wild Hart, his nemesis (and a full-grown stag), from his mouth. Its exit leaves him bleeding profusely but he survives. - A common fairy tale punishment for rudeness and deceit is to have the afflicted spew toads and reptiles from their mouth when they try to speak. - It's often paired with a good person rewarded by having roses and diamonds come out. Although the reward seems like Blessed with Suck, since roses and diamonds seem like they would be even more painful in one's throat then something smooth like a snake. - A whole roomful of roaches leave Mr. Pratt's mouth, wounds, and so on in Creepshow. - In Bruce Almighty, a gang pushed Bruce around, and he later got revenge by taking the leader's comment about monkeys flying out of his ass literally. And after Bruce sets the other members away, he "returns home"... - Don't Listen: Whenever \|\|the witch's ghost possesses someone\|\|, we see a fly enter that person's ear. When \|\|she's done with them\|\|, the fly exits that person through the other ear. - In the movie Evolution, Dr. Harry Block finds himself the unwilling home of a parasitic alien. It's not shown how it went in, but it was extracted through his ass. Not willingly, either. - In the second segment in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, a cat kills a hitman (sent to kill that very cat) by leaping into his mouth and crawling all the way inside as the hitman chokes. In the Stephen King story it was based on, the cat burrows out of the stomach, but in the movie, the cat waits there until morning, and crawls back out of the guy's mouth, just after its real intended victim comes home to witness this (and then has a heart attack). - In Class of Nuke 'Em High, Chrissy smokes marijuana tainted by nuclear waste, and discovers later that it caused a rapidly-growing mutant creature to take up residence in her stomach—which she quickly vomits up. - In Snakes on a Plane, a snake is shown slithering out of a victim's mouth just to drive home the fact that he's dead. - The Ceti eel crawling out of \|\|Chekov\|\|'s ear in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. - A spider crawls out from a corpse's nose in Arachnophobia. - In Poltergeist II: The Other Side, the father swallows an evil-possessed worm from a bottle of tequila, then barfs it back up when it starts growing larger inside him. - A remarkably silly version in the 1988 film Uninvited: a mutant cat monster that hides inside a normal cat. It's about the size of a rat when it crawls out of the cat's mouth (although the cat looks like a toy puppet), then grows to about the size of a dog. - In Resident Evil: Afterlife \|\|Albert Wesker\|\| is infested with... something that occasionally peeks out of his mouth. Much like the Plagas from the video games, it has four insectile pincers and would probably take your head off. - In Fantastic Voyage , the shrunken crew escapes via the patient's tear duct after the sub is destroyed. - Sputnik. The alien lives in the host's esophagus and stomach, and secretes a toxin that knocks out the host and relaxes his muscles so the alien can exit via the mouth to hunt and feed, which it does every night. Once outside the body and ingesting oxygen it grows from a snakelike form to a multi-limbed Starfish Alien. - Harry Potter: - The Slug-Vomiting Charm makes the target puke out slugs. In Chamber of Secrets, Ron tries to cast it on Draco after the latter insults Hermione, but because Ron's wand is broken, it promptly backfires. This scene was gruesomely recreated with loving detail in the second movie adaptation. - The Death Eaters' symbol, a snake emerging from the mouth of a skull, is a variant of this. - \|\|In book seven, after hiding inside the digestive tract of Bathilda Bagshot's reanimated corpse, Nagini the snake attacks Harry and Hermione after crawling out the corpse's mouth.\|\| - Animorphs: - The Yeerks enter through the ear to take control of the host's brain, and leave the same way every three days to feed on Kandrona rays. - Rachel's burping up of the crocodile in "The Reaction". We aren't told exactly what orifice it came from, but she's definitely intact once it leaves. - In one of Danish writer Jorn Riel's books, a parasitic worm leaves its host's body through his tear duct. It's not particularly painful or dangerous...at least for the host. Most of the damage is incurred by his mates, who argue about it so much the whole thing ends up in a fist fight. - An episode of CSI had a rat leave a body through the mouth. This was the Cold Open, so it inspired a Quip to Black by Grissom. - Another episode had a tapeworm crawl out of a corpse's mouth. - Bones did the same thing with a crab, and averted it with a boa constrictor (which exited via a corpse's torn-open gut instead). - On Buffy the Vampire Slayer Willow's resurrection of Buffy is accompanied by her choking out a large snake, apparently as a trial by Osiris. - In Primeval, the parasites crawl out of the mouths of their victims' corpses. - In the "Bound" episode of Fringe, a drink is spiked with a genetically altered cold virus that expands into a giant slug (about the size of a rabbit) within the victim's body before exiting via the throat, choking the victim in the process. - In the Merlin (2008) episode "The Witchfinder" one of the witnesses \|\|the Witchfinder drugs to make hallucinate\|\| claims to have seen a sorcerer cough up a toad. Later on, \|\|Merlin makes the Witchfinder cough up a toad.\|\| - In a real life incident recounted on Monsters Inside Me, a man who'd gone swimming in a pond in India started getting nosebleeds. Several days later, the leech that was causing them revealed its presence, extending its mouth out of the man's nostril. - A popular trick for witches in Supernatural. Always involving Squick—one witch killed a man by hexing him to cough up . razorblades - One of the escaped souls in Reaper could do this. While the soul could and did turn entirely into insects, one of the times was prefaced by the soul releasing a swarm of insects from a Skyward Scream. - The X-Files: The Monster of the Week in the episode "Travelers" is a guy with... some sort of... spider creature... implanted inside by ex-Nazi scientists on orders of The Conspiracy. The creature leans out of his mouth, does the killing, then hides back in. - In Falling Skies one of the things the invaders use to attack the survivors is a mass of spiders that seem to be able to infect someone, multiply inside their body and finally tens of them erupt from the victim's mouth. The victim is awake for much of this. - In the music video for "Melancholy Hill" by Gorillaz, Cyborg Noodle throws up a live octopus after the group make their way underwater, squicking out her companion 2-D. - The music video for Papa Roach's "Between Angels And Insects", in which cockroaches come out of Jacoby Shaddix's mouth when he screams. Don't search for that scene. - This goes all the way back to the Hittite myth called Kingship in Heaven. The god Kumarbi decided to overthrow the sky god Anu, wrestling him and biting off his genitals. This made Kumarbi pregnant with three deities: Teshub (the storm god), Tigris (the river), and Tasmisus. Since he had no actual birth canal, they had to emerge by other means. Teshub came out via "the good place", although it's unstated where that is. - SCP Foundation, SCP-695 ("Eels"). After SCP-695 eggs have grown to juvenile size inside a female human host, they may escape by exiting through her vagina, anus or mouth. - Dungeons & Dragons: - The spell Vipergout lets its casters do this to themselves on purpose as a weapon, for those problems that can be solved by projectile-vomiting snakes at them. - The Vasharan worm pod is a gruesome Bio-Augmentation implant that lets its owner spit deadly parasitic worms. - The first LEGO Island game. There's an in-game mission where you drive an ambulance around the island, making the occasional stop here and there. Apparently one of them is at the Pizzeria where you see a choking guy who after being helped by paramedics, barfs up a whole live Shark that's bigger than he is, and that shark then barfs up a live dog, and then the dog barfs up a live cat, and so on. - In a Tradewinds Caravans story, the eldest Jasaret daughter's "curse" is to have all manner of frogs, insects, and other small animals constantly flowing from her mouth when it is open. (At least one NPC notices her sneeze out a hawk.) - In Aliens vs. Predator (2010), Weyland-Yutani is farming aliens in human hosts, using canisters over the hosts' chests to capture the creatures as they emerge. One alien circumvents this trap by emerging through its host's mouth. - In Resident Evil 5 the Majini are all infested with variant Plagas parasites. Occasionally one of these will emerge from the victim's mouth as a much larger mouth with four pincers that will tear your head off if you let it. - Ouroboros emerges as a black slime creature from every pore of the victim's body. Then there's what it does to \|\|Excella, which you can watch here.\|\| - In Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location Ennard uses this trope to expel themselves from \|\|Eggs Benedict in a cutscene that plays after finishing the 'Golden Freddy' challenge on Custom Night.\|\| Fortunately for the player, the cutscene is animated in an 8-bit, Atari-esque style. - In one of Spirit Hunter: NG's Bad Ends, \|\|Kaoru\|\| is found dead in a bathtub with tiny, blood-soaked turtles spewing out of their mouth, the same ones that infest the Urashima Lake. - In Xiaolin Showdown, Omi escapes from Evil Dojo's body by shrinking himself and escaping through a sweat gland. - Mr. Slave from South Park enjoys forcing small animals to crawl up his ass. Most of these animals die, but one gerbil named Lemmiwinks manages to traverse Mr. Slave's entire digestive system and crawl out his mouth. Later, Paris Hilton has to try escaping the same way. - In Futurama, Fry accidentally drinks the emperor of a race of liquid people. Several options are discussed for extracting the emperor, most of which he deems too undignified (although he did like the idea of being squeezed out by a bone-crushing centrifuge). He eventually settles for exiting via Fry's tear ducts. - Lena's attempts to wrestle control of her body back from Magica in the season 1 finale of DuckTales (2017) has Magica's shadowy essence pouring out of her mouth and eyes◊. Made worse by the fact that she can't sever the connection, which leaves tendrils hanging from her lower eyelids and makes it look like she's both physically ill and weeping. - Rick and Morty: A giant space worm is forced out of Morty through his mouth by The Power of Love. It goes on for some time. - Squicky in the extreme, but some internal parasites eventually leave the body this way, either as part of their life cycle or upon the death of their host. - In 1726, a woman named Mary Toft became (in)famous in England, as she'd reportedly begun giving birth to rabbits. Investigation revealed that she was "birthing" pieces of dead rabbits, which she eventually confessed her husband had purchased; she'd inserted them into her birth canal for later expulsion, in a weird attempt to gain fame and a possible pension from the king. - It's not unheard of for people with tapeworms to, ahem, expel, in whole or in part, their uninvited guest during a visit to the toilet.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrificeEvacuation
Origins Episode - TV Tropes "What? You want to know my secret origins? Well... maybe another time..." When you are writing a work of fiction you often want the audience to know how a particular character came to be. Often this is achieved in the first episodes or issues, but almost as often, for whatever reason, this can't happen. Perhaps the character was originally meant to be mysterious, a figure robed in secrets and mystique, and now their past has emerged. Alternatively the writers might not have had an origin laid out for them, perhaps due to the fact that they were meant as a minor character and gained a fanbase or were simply a Monster of the Week that happened to come back once or twice. Or it could be that the thing without the background is more than just a character; perhaps the entire universe has a history that the author wants to get across, and there is no way of doing that at the same time that a first episode finds its audience. An origins episode is an episode, issue, chapter, or a multi-part story arc that exists primarily to examine the origin of a character or setting after the work has been going for a while. Many prequels qualify, but not all. Likewise whilst many things have had extended flashbacks it does not necessarily count. However the episode or issue need not be all set in the universe's past to qualify, so long as exploring that past is the point. Done well, these works help build the universe's mythos and continuity; done badly, they just feel like the author trying to show how clever they are. Worse still are the origins episodes where the writer does not bother to check their own continuity and creates a mess of plot holes and poor characterization. Often takes the form of a Whole Episode Flashback or Flashback B-Plot. Compare with a Pilot Episode, which usually sets up the origins of the main characters and setting in the first episode. Television characters can have an Origin Episode of sorts if they receive A Day in the Limelight or a Lower-Deck Episode. See also Start of Darkness, for when a segment of the story shows the decisive point where a character becomes evil. See also No Origin Stories Allowed, which is when the creator(s) ban this from happening. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - Lamput: - The third season episode "Origins" is a Whole Episode Flashback of how Fat Doc and Slim Doc came to meet and become friends. The flashback, which begins when the docs find a picture of them from when they were kids while being carried away in a police car, also provides the origins of a couple other characters. - When Fat Doc and Slim Doc arrived at the same school, the latter was quite a bully to the former, only making friends with him after an incident involving the two accidentally messing up a science experiment their teacher was performing. - A science incident is also \|\|the catalyst for the birth of Lamput himself, who is seen at the end of the episode having formed from within a beaker\|\|. - Once the docs befriend each other, they decide to bully a specific round-looking kid in their school. \|\|That kid grows up to be the policeman who makes recurring appearances throughout the series and often arrests and beats up the docs - including in this episode where he thinks they robbed a jewelry store and brings them to the police station for it. Guy's held quite a grudge on the docs for all the bullying they subjected him to.\|\| - Before the Batman serves as one for The Batman (2022), covering the journeys of Bruce Wayne and Edward Nashton before they became The Batman and The Riddler respectively. - The Cat in the Stacks Mysteries: When Charlie Met Diesel, a short story included as a bonus feature in book 6. It's exactly what it sounds like, showing how Charlie found Diesel, wet and shivering in the parking lot of the library where he volunteers, and promptly took him to the vet to get checked out before adopting him. - The Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventures novel Business Unusual by Gary Russell told the story of Mel's first meeting with the Doctor, which her introductory TV season had neglected to depict due to Timey-Wimey Ball shenanigans in-universe and Troubled Production chaos behind the scenes. - The Q Continuum shows where a few of the enemies the crew of the original starship Enterprise faced came from. They were summoned through the Guardian of Forever by 0. - RWBY: Roman Holiday reveals how a young girl became Neopolitan, how Roman Torchwick became the greatest criminal in Vale, and how the two formed a lasting partnership. - Star Wars Expanded Universe: Thrawn gives the new-canon backstory of the titular Grand Admiral, including how he attained the rank. It ends shortly before his formal introduction into new canon in the third season of Rebels. - Star Wars Legends: Outbound Flight deals with the origin of Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn, and ties The Thrawn Trilogy with the prequel film trilogy and the New Jedi Order. - Tortall Universe: The Numair Chronicles is an interquel telling the backstory of The Archmage Numair Salmalín, who first appeared in The Immortals. - Warrior Cats: - Narnia has its origins told in the sixth book in the series, The Magician's Nephew. Just in time too; the series ends with book seven. - The Alchymist's Cat, a prequel to the Deptford Mice trilogy, reveals the origins of Big Bad Jupiter. He started out as an ordinary kitten called Leech in 17th century London, the runt of the litter who was mistreated by the evil alchemist who took them in. His brother Jupiter, on the other hand, was adored and became the alchemist's familiar. Leech grew envious of his brother's growing powers, and wished he could learn magic too, only to find out that just one in every family is allowed to use it. In the end, Leech kills Jupiter and assumes his identity, rising to power as a living God of Evil in the sewers. - The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes details how President Snow became the Big Bad of The Hunger Games trilogy. - Hannibal Rising is a poorly-executed Start of darkness for Hannibal Lecter, giving him a Freudian Excuse for many of the things he's famous for, even though he explicitly stated in the first movie that there wasn't any past trauma behind his deviant behavior—making him yet another intellectual in blatant denial. Rather sadly, this was an enforced case—Hannibal's creator, Thomas Harris, wanted to leave him an enigma with no real reason behind his crimes, but he was flat-out told by his publishers that if he didn't write it, they'd find someone else to do so. - VC Andrews wrote a prequel to Flowers in the Attic called Garden of Shadows that helps explain the motivations and backstory of the Evil Matriarch Olivia Foxworth. - The House of Night: The plot of Neferet's Curse, which details how an innocent girl named Emily Wheiler grew up in 1893 and ended up broken and vengeful as a result of being abused and eventually raped by her own father. She ultimately changes her name to Neferet, upon becoming a vampire, and vows to never again be used by anyone. - The Jane Eyre prequel, The Wide Sargasso Sea, shows the early life of a character thought of as villainous, but ultimately revealing them as well-intentioned and victimized by others. - The Magic: The Gathering novel The Thran is this for Yawgmoth, showing him rise from an exiled doctor into becoming first dictator of Halcyon, and then the Big Bad God of Evil he's mostly known as. It is important to mention that Yawgmoth was originally exiled for a reason: he performed many unethical experiments on different species to see the results and was in exile for doing so. - The Crippled God in Malazan Book of the Fallen was just a foreign god who fell to earth as the result of a trap meant for Kallor. And went stark raving mad as a result of his torture and imprisonment in this foreign world. He is currently trying to destroy the world just so he can be free again. - Old Kingdom: Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen, prequel to the main trilogy, depicts how its title character was set on the path to becoming \|\|Chlorr of the Mask, an evil necromancer who served as one of the main villains of the second and third books\|\|. - The Origin of Laughing Jack: As the title suggests, this is an origin story for Laughing Jack, taking place in the 1800s, likely 2 centuries before the events of his first story. It provides the details of how Laughing Jack became a murderous Monster Clown. - The Princess Bride devotes self-titled sections to the two mercenary henchmen of Vizzini, "the Sicilian"; how the giant Fezzik was beaten by other children and pushed to fight professionally by his misguided parents into rings where audiences booed him when he won until he found someone who understood him... slightly better; how the swordsman Inigo Montoya saw his father killed in front of him, spent years training and searching and becoming gradually more lost in his cups until he was found in obscurity. How Vizzini himself became the man he is now is left to the imagination, given only a few lines with a broad picture that he knew he would have to rely on his mind rather than his physical power; though the reader may expect it, there is no "VIZZINI". - A Song of Ice and Fire: Catelyn Stark's memories of her old friend Petyr Baelish are that of a sweet, romantic kid. Despite the fact that she was never interested in him that way, his romantic idealism spurred him on to duel her betrothed Brandon Stark for her hand, which resulted in Petyr nearly dying and getting sent packing back to his own poor home \|\|although that quite probably had more to do with the outcome of him being rejected and raped (whilst drunk and believing himself in bed with Cat, by her sister, Lysa, resulting in her pregnancy, which their father forces her to abort.\|\| In the present, Petyr is a full-on Magnificent Bastard and chessmaster, \|\|in control of both the Vale and Riverlands after having manipulated, married, and murdered Lysa, sparked the massive and destructive War of the Five Kings, and has taken on Cat's lookalike daughter Sansa, herself a Broken Bird, as both protegé and potential love interest.\|\| - The Star Trek: Destiny trilogy reveals the origins of the Borg Collective. - A minor example in the Star Trek: The Lost Era novel The Art of the Impossible. Corbin Entek, a Cardassian Obsidian Order villain from a highly popular episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is a lowly junior probationist in this book, albeit a promising one. The novel features a sub-plot in which he settles into the Order and earns the admiration of Enabran Tain. - Star Wars Legends: - Outbound Flight serves as a Start of Darkness of sorts for Grand Admiral Thrawn. Although he isn't exactly evil, it does explain why he took Palpatine's side. Eventually. Well, it introduces him to Darth Sidious and shows how perilously close he is to being exiled for his tactics. We know from the short story "Mist Encounter" that after he was exiled some Imperials found him and brought him back. - ''Outbound Flight" shows the start of darkness for Jorus C'baoth, who fell to the dark side near the end of the novel and went insane. This would then lead to his clone, Joruus C'baoth, also being an insane dark-sided Force wielder. - The novel Dark Rendezvous has several flashback scenes that explore Count Dooku's past and gives him a very convincing backstory. - The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin features a character who appeared first in Dark Empire, the comic book series set years after the novels but released years earlier. In Dark Empire, readers learned that he was an old friend of Han's, and also that he was willing to throw away that friendship by leading Han into a trap just for the reward. Crispin shows us in her prequels what a good and heroic guy he used to be, and eventually what happened to change him: he was captured, tortured, and crippled for life. - Darth Plagueis is an origin story for Palpatine, Dooku, and Nute Gunray. Though unlike the other two, Palpatine was evil from the beginning, and the book merely shows how he became a Sith. - Tortall Universe: The Numair Chronicles, while mainly being an interquel about Numair Salmalín, also shows how Ozorne Muhassin Tasikhe went from a "leftover prince" who was a personable, average student who only wanted to do mage-work with his best friends to the Evil Overlord Emperor Mage of Carthak seen in The Immortals. - Warriors: - The Rise of Scourge. It turns out that Scourge was, at first, just a cute little kitten with a crappy childhood. Desperate to impress the world around him, he is driven to first scare a dog away, then eventually actually kill a cat to maintain his peers' respect, which he claims to be his Moral Event Horizon. - Brokenstar was bullied by his foster siblings and resented by his foster mother as a kit in Yellowfang's Secret. It's subverted, however, at his birth, when he is born with a look of rage and hatred on his tiny face. - Whateley Universe: - "Mimeographic" covers Mimeo's origin story. Interestingly (and possibly self-servingly), it mostly portrays him as a sort of higher-order Punch-Clock Villain, who just does it to finance his lavish lifestyle - he plans out heists in detail to minimize collateral damage, and tries to avoid fights with heroes until he's ready to get whatever Power Copying buffs he needs for the specific caper. We also get to see why he adopted his Thou Shalt Not Kill policy (beyond the obvious wanting to get rematches for more power-ups, that is). - In "Intervention", we get a "This Is Your Life" style look at the events that soured Tansy Walcutt into the Alpha Bitch Solange, as part of her Redemption Quest. - In "The Road to Whateley", part 3, we get some flashbacks which set up the conflict between the Witch Queen and her longtime rival Sycorax. It isn't really a full Start of Darkness for either of them, but it does give us the background of their feud. - Wisdom's Daughter: The Life and Love Story of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed by H. Rider Haggard details the origins of Ayesha, the Big Bad of She. - Through excerpts from the novel Descarta is reading and \|\|Virgil\|\|'s own flashbacks we see how Kalthused of Within Ruin went from hero to utterly corrupt. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Angel's origin was first showed in both parts of "Becoming" but Angel elaborated on it in "The Prodigal" and "Five by Five". - "Becoming" also gave some more of Buffy's origin story (at least, within the TV show, given the movie is largely considered discontinuity by the TV series) showing her first meeting with her Watcher, Merrick, and her first patrol and slaying. - "Fool For Love" was Spike's official origin episode. "Lies My Parents Told Me" gave more details about that origin. And the cross-over episode with Angel that "Fool For Love" was a part of, called "Darla", was the origin episode for, well, Darla. - Related - Drusilla's origin and siring are described on Buffy in "Lie To Me", and shown in flashbacks in the Angel episode "Dear Boy". - While Anya talked about past exploits often, it wasn't until the Season 7 episode "Selfless" that we saw her full origin story. - Notably averted in Burn Notice: the made-for-TV-movie "The Fall of Sam Axe" pointedly showed how Sam managed to get his honorable discharge from the Navy SEALs despite his womanizing attitude, but in the timeline of the movie, he already knows Super Spy Michael Westen, seeking advice with his personal problems. Throughout the entire series, it's never been revealed exactly how a CIA spy and a Navy SEAL met and became best friends. - "Behind the Squeak," a promotional video for The Chica Show, is mainly about Chica's birth and rise to stardom on The Sunny Side Up Show. Kelly also explains that she and Chica first became animated due to one of Mr. C's magic tricks. - Chuck eventually showed us the backstory as to how Sara became a CIA operative, starting as a young teen when she was a grifter with her father. - "Chuck Versus the Tic Tac" reveals Casey's origins: \|\|A Marine Corps sniper in Honduras named Alexander Coburn who faked his death to join a special forces unit\|\|. Unfortunately, it left quite a Continuity Snarl that was never really addressed. - Community had the aptly titled "Heroic Origins", in which Abed charts the group's connection through random interactions before they all started at Greendale, eventually leading to reveal how they all came to choose the school. - Criminal Minds has several flashback episodes—a particular one being "Tabula Rasa", when Reid, JJ, and Garcia were still new to the BAU—but the one that fits the trope best is "Nelson's Sparrow", which shows the very earliest days of the BAU (or the BSU, as it was known then) in The '70s when there were still just three people (Jason Gideon, David Rossi, and Max Ryan) on the team, and follows one of Gideon's and Rossi's earliest unsolved cases. In particular, we see Gideon and Rossi coin a few terms that are commonly used by the present-day team (most notably "signature" by Rossi and "profiler" by Gideon), discover that this case is what inspired Gideon's previously-seen interest in ornithology, and is also the first time that the two characters appear onscreen together (since, in the present-day story, their actors are on the show at different times). - On Doctor Who: - The Second Doctor story "The War Games" finally revealed Gallifrey and the Time Lords, after six years of the Doctor's species being unknown. - It only took 11 years and four Doctors battling the Daleks before we finally got to see how they were created by Davros, after which point he became a recurring villain in Dalek stories. - Between the Doctor Who TV series and Big Finish Doctor Who audio adventures, we've had the Ice Warriors' origin story with the Second Doctor, the Daleks' origin story with the Fourth Doctor, the Cybermen's origin story with the Fifth Doctor, the Sontarans' origin story with the Sixth Doctor. - Nearly everyone who worked on the series prefers to avert this with the Doctor. Even after 50+ years and 38 seasons (as of 2021), the number of formal revelations of who they were before running away from Gallifrey and became the Doctor and why they fled the planet can be counted on one hand, and their real name remains a mystery. Their granddaughter Susan remains the only relative of theirs depicted onscreen or even named, even though they had to have had a wife and children. Occasionally hints are dropped about their past — the Twelfth Doctor confessed in "Heaven Sent" he fled Gallifrey out of fear of something rather than the boredom he usually claims — but nothing more, leaving the title of the show a never-to-be-answered question. The two attempts at this trope for the Doctor, the novel Lungbarrow in The '90s' Doctor Who Expanded Universe and the episode "The Timeless Children" at the beginning of The New '20s, both provoked very mixed fan reactions, and both retcon the depiction of Gallifrey in preceding televised canon. - The Firefly episode "Out of Gas" features flashbacks showing how each of the main characters ended up on Serenity (except for Book, Simon and River, who came aboard in the pilot episode). Zoe was Mal's old Army buddy from the Unification Wars, Wash signed on as pilot right after Mal and Zoe found Serenity, Jayne was a bandit who tried to kill Mal (until Mal convinced him to turn against his two partners by offering to pay him better), and Kaylee replaced the ship's original engineer after Mal found her having sex with him, and discovered that she knew more about engines than he did. - Forever Knight: Nick's vampire origin was shown in the pilot, "Dark Knight". - Frasier had this in the episode "You Can Go Home Again" which is also the season 3 finale. In this episode, Frasier celebrates his show's three-year anniversary and Roz offers him a videotape which contains his first broadcast. As he goes home, Frasier listens the tape and we see what happened when he arrived to Seattle, met Roz for the first time and reconciled with Niles and later Martin. - The Greek episode "Freshman Daze" gave the background stories for Casey, Cappie and Evan (with more information on Ashleigh and Frannie) through flashbacks to their freshman year, including the origins of the love triangle that drove most of their storylines. - Highlander had "Family Tree" and later "Homeland" for Duncan. For recurring characters, there was "Legacy" for Amanda, "Comes A Horseman" showed Cassandra's origin and there was one for Fitz ("Star Crossed"?). - "Three Stories", a Season One episode of House, reveals how House's leg turned out in such a bad state: he suffered an aneurysm while playing golf. His drug-seeking behavior caused the other doctors to brush off his pain as a withdrawal symptom. Soon, however, the aneurysm caused an infarction and muscle tissue to die. House refused to have the leg amputated, even though the bypass he demands and ultimately undergoes causes such severe pain that it gives him a heart attack. While in a medically-induced coma, his girlfriend and proxy authorized him to undergo a partial amputation that would only remove the necrotic tissue while leaving the rest of his leg intact, but it leaves his leg's mobility compromised on top of leaving him in chronic pain. - How I Met Your Mother has the episode "How I Met Everyone Else", which showcases how the core group (except Robin, who joined the group in the pilot) met and became friends note : Marshall and Ted met as roommates in college, Lily and Marshall met when she was "inexplicably drawn" to his dorm room one morning, Ted met Lily the night before at a party and that's why she showed up at their dorm (or so he thinks), Barney and Ted met in the bathroom at a bar, and Barney and Marshall met at the same bar some time later. They all met Robin at the same bar as well.. - Kamen Rider Double has nearly half their riders be given Origins Episodes, mostly as part of a movie (or in the case of Kamen Rider Eternal, a whole movie). - Kamen Rider Ex-Aid has Snipe Episode Zero. It depicts events leading to the Zero Day and Start of Darkness of Taiga Hanaya. - One of the main gimmicks of Lost, was that each episode had a flashback plot delivering information about a specific character's past. Many of the major characters ended up having several. - S1 E4 of Misfits has a bit of this, in that it expands on how some of the characters ended up with community service. - The Season 8 NCIS episode "Baltimore" depicts how DiNozzo and Gibbs met while the former was a detective with the Baltimore police department. - Odd Squad: The Season 1 episode "Totally Odd Squad" is an origins episode for Oprah, as she explains to Olive, Otto and Oscar about her time as an Investigation agent back in 1983 and how she became the Director of Precinct 13579. - Another Season 1 episode, "Training Day", reveals who Olive's previous partner was before Otto, and how she grew from being a Shrinking Violet as an agent-in-training to an eventual Shell-Shocked Veteran as an Investigation agent. It also has a brief scene that shows how Otto became her partner. - "Oscar of All Trades" shows how Oscar came to be the Lab Director of Precinct 13579. - The first part of the Season 2 finale, "Who is Agent Otis?", reveals how Otis became an Odd Squad agent and explains how life was for him before joining the organization. - The Season 3 episode "The Weight of the World Depends on Orla" shows how the eponymous agent became the guardian of the 44-leaf clover. - Once Upon a Time: - "The Stable Boy" does this for Regina. Her ambitious and cold-blooded mother wanted her to marry up, but she was in love with a stable boy. When Snow White, then an innocent child, tried to help Regina by letting the ambitious mama know her stepmother-to-be was with the stable boy... Well, let's just say someone's True Love ended up dead, and Snow White ended up on the wrong end of a vendetta. - "The Miller's Daughter" showed how Cora became who she was. When she was a young woman, \|\|she was tripped by an immature Eva (Snow White's mother before she married Snow's father) who claimed Cora hurt her.\|\| The King of the land forced Cora to apologize on her knees or he wouldn't pay her for the flour. She would later use the emotions she felt here to channel her magic to spin gold. - "It's Not Easy Being Green" shows how Zelena discovered in the course of one day that she was adopted, her stepfather never loved her, her mother abandoned her at birth and she had a sister who got everything she never had. \|\|When she's passed over as Rumpelstiltskin's student\|\|, her envy corrupts her and turns her into the Wicked Witch of the West. - "The Snow Queen" shows how the eponymous girl became evil. Born as Princess Ingrid, she discovered her ice powers one day while protecting her two sisters. The powers grew as she got older and she opted to hide herself away to protect the kingdom. \|\|When she accidentally killed her sister Helga, her other sister Gerda trapped her in an urn and had all memories of her erased from the kingdom\|\|. - "Poor Unfortunate Soul" reveals that Ursula used to be a mermaid, forced to use her singing voice to sink ships by her father. She rejected him and transformed herself in the sea witch after \|\|Hook stole her singing voice, her only memory of her dead mother\|\|. Ironically this same episode combines this with \|\|a HeelFace Turn, as Hook returns Ursula's voice and she reunites with her father\|\|. - In episodes "Best Laid Plans" and "Unforgiven" which act as the opposite for \|\|Maleficent\|\|. Originally established as an evil sorceress, discovering she was about to become a mother and \|\|eventually getting separated from her child\|\| prompts a sort of HeelFace Turn, showing her as a sympathetic character. - "Broken Kingdom" shows how \|\|King Arthur\|\| became a Knight Templar, due to his obsession with \|\|reforging Excalibur\|\|, which he sees as the only way he can truly rule his kingdom. This drove him utterly mad, as he was even willing to brainwash the woman he loved (and his whole kingdom, for that matter) and betray his best friend, in order to ensure his rule. - Power Rangers: - Power Rangers Samurai even went so far as to have its Origins episodes titled "Origins". It probably has something to do with the fact that said episodes were delayed until midseason, instead of being shown at the beginning as usual. - Power Rangers RPM had origin episodes for the Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green Rangers as well as for Dr. K. All ended with them going to or arriving at Corinth (except Green, who had to leave) and don't include how they were selected as Rangers (again, except Green who we already saw acquire his powers. - Suits episode "Rewind" shows Mike starting using his Photographic Memory to earn money cheating at tests, his friend Trevor start dealing marijuana and Harvey blackmailing Hardman into resignation. Also doubles as a Start of Darkness episode. - The Tales from the Crypt episode "Lower Berth'' provides the odd origin of \|\|The Crypt Keeper.\|\| An unholy product of the love between a (literal) two-faced freakshow attraction, and a 4000-year-old mummy. - In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, "Today Is the Day"/"The Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter" is a two-part origin episode for \|\|Jesse Flores, and possibly also Weaver note : There's a character in the past sections of the episodes who is almost universally believed by fans to be Weaver, but it's not explicitly stated.\|\|. - Torchwood has the episode "Fragments", giving the back-story of how the main team members note : other than Gwen, whose origin was revealed in "Everything Changes" were recruited to Torchwood Three. - The Tribe had two of these in the second season; one focused on Zoot and Ebony; the other focused on Lex and Ryan (though the latter example was submerged as a very long flashback). - Uchuu Sentai Kyuranger has the origins of Stinger/Sasori Orange and Champ/Oushi Black in Episode of Stinger. - WandaVision's next-to-last episode, "Previously On...," uses flashbacks to tell the origin story of Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch. - The West Wing had several of these: - "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen" is a series of flashbacks to the 1998 Presidential Election [sic], showing how the main characters met and got involved with Bartlet's campaign. When the story begins, Leo is a former cabinet secretary serving as Bartlet's campaign manager, Josh is campaign manager for Bartlet's biggest rival (and future VP) Senator John Hoynes, Sam is a frustrated lawyer for an unscrupulous oil company, CJ is a PR specialist for a movie studio, Toby is a talented (but unsuccessful) political operative looking for a chance to prove his skills, and Donna is a campaign volunteer. - "Two Cathedrals" features an extended flashback to Bartlet's childhood, showing how he met Mrs. Landingham and first got interested in politics. As we learn, Mrs. Landingham started out as a secretary at the New Hampshire prep school where Bartlet's father was Headmaster, and she convinced him to confront his father about the wage gap between male and female employees at the school. \|\|He tried, but lost his nerve after his father slapped him for protesting his decision to ban several classic novels from the school library.\|\| - "Bartlet for America" goes into more detail about Bartlet's election, mostly from Leo's perspective. We see how Bartlet convinced Hoynes to become his running mate by telling him the truth about \|\|his multiple sclerosis\|\| as a gesture of good faith, and we learn about Leo's last alcoholic relapse. It turns out that a campaign donor pressured him into drinking again, and he fell off the wagon so hard that \|\|he wasn't able to come to Bartlet's aid when his MS flared up again\|\|—an incident that has clearly haunted him ever since. - White Collar episode "Forging Bonds" dedicated to how Neal started his Con Man career with Mozzie, how he met Kate, how Peter started pursuing Neal and how Peter and Neal first met. - Xena: Warrior Princess had several over the course of the show, showing how she developed from a village girl into an evil Warrior Princess. (She had a HeelFace Turn during her guest appearances on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys before she got her own show.) - The Incredible Hulk (1977): The original pilot episode detailed how David Banner became the eponymous monster and how he ended up on the run. - The X-Files had several origin episodes, including one for the Big Bad ("Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man") and the Lone Gunmen trio ("Unusual Suspects"). - Our Miss Brooks: - The first episode, appropriately enough titled "First Day", relates Mr. Conklin's arrival as newly appointed principal. - In "Borrowing Money To Fly", it's Miss Brooks' arrival in Madison that's explained. In this version, Mr. Conklin has already long been comfortable ensconced as principal of Madison High School. - The Season 4 Bravest Warriors two-part episode "It Shouldn't Ever Have to End This Way" reveals the exact circumstances under which the Bravest Warriors' parents and predecessors the Courageous Battlers were banished to the See-Through Zone by Beth's father. - The Homestar Runner short "Hremail 7" explains the origin of Strong Bad Email. And, in the process, messes up what little continuity the HR-verse has. - The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: The third episode serves as this for Epic-Man, explaining how he got his powers and started his superhero career. - Season 14 of Red vs. Blue has three examples: - The Blood Gulch Prequel Trilogy episodes - From Stumbled Beginnings, Fifty Shades of Red, and Why Theyre Here - all show how how the members of the Red and Blue Teams met and ended up in Blood Gulch. - The Merc Trilogy episodes - "Club", "Call", and "Consequences" - show what Locus and Felix were up to prior to Chorus as well as their \|\|Protagonist Journey to Villain\|\|. - It's heavily implied that the Freelancer Prequel Duology episodes - The Triplets and The Mission - \|\|concern the origin of the Red vs. Blue simulation war\|\|. - RWBY: - The aptly named "Beginning Of The End" from Volume 3 explains the backstories of both Emerald and Mercury, and how they came to work for Cinder. Cinder herself doesn't get an Origins Episode until Volume 8, in "Midnight." - "The Lost Fable" in Volume 6 reveals the history of both \|\|Salem and Ozpin\|\|. - The Shut Up! Cartoons segment Oishi High School Battle has Oishi Orgins, or, as the title says, Oishi High School Battle Orgins. Oishi Orgins explains several things, such as \|\|how Oishi's father got fired (like the intro song says) and how Oishi got her dog Noodles. (Which was due to the creature transporter machine going haywire after a demon attack, thus resulting in this event.)\|\| - The Cocoon Academy arc of Brawl in the Family is one for Dedede and \|\|Meta Knight\|\|. - Everyday Heroes: Oddly, Mr. Mighty's wife, Jane, got to tell her origin story before Mr. Mighty did. Then again, maybe the author just enjoyed drawing all those Stripperiffic outfits. - Gunnerkrigg Court: Chapter 40, "The Stone", delves into the history of the Inexplicably Awesome Jones, showing the various identities she's had \|\|throughout human history and beyond\|\|. \|\|Also The Unreveal, since it shows that while she's as old as the planet, she's never learned what she actually is or how she came to be.\|\| - The Order of the Stick: - On the Origin of PC's explores the back stories of the members of the Order of the Stick, and how Roy originally gathered them together to delve into the Dungeon of Durokan. - Start of Darkness is one for the bad guys, showing how Redcloak and Xykon first met and how Xykon became a lich. - Sleepless Domain: The Flashback Theater following Chapter 10 tells the story of how Melty Frost and Melty Flame first met, in the form of a temporary shoujo romance. The two girls were childhood friends who had since drifted apart, but reconnected after their powers awakened, and have been Sickeningly Sweethearts ever since. - The Shaker Woods story arc in Yehuda Moon & the Kickstand Cyclery, which makes everything look Harsher in Hindsight.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginsArc
Origins Episode - TV Tropes "What? You want to know my secret origins? Well... maybe another time..." When you are writing a work of fiction you often want the audience to know how a particular character came to be. Often this is achieved in the first episodes or issues, but almost as often, for whatever reason, this can't happen. Perhaps the character was originally meant to be mysterious, a figure robed in secrets and mystique, and now their past has emerged. Alternatively the writers might not have had an origin laid out for them, perhaps due to the fact that they were meant as a minor character and gained a fanbase or were simply a Monster of the Week that happened to come back once or twice. Or it could be that the thing without the background is more than just a character; perhaps the entire universe has a history that the author wants to get across, and there is no way of doing that at the same time that a first episode finds its audience. An origins episode is an episode, issue, chapter, or a multi-part story arc that exists primarily to examine the origin of a character or setting after the work has been going for a while. Many prequels qualify, but not all. Likewise whilst many things have had extended flashbacks it does not necessarily count. However the episode or issue need not be all set in the universe's past to qualify, so long as exploring that past is the point. Done well, these works help build the universe's mythos and continuity; done badly, they just feel like the author trying to show how clever they are. Worse still are the origins episodes where the writer does not bother to check their own continuity and creates a mess of plot holes and poor characterization. Often takes the form of a Whole Episode Flashback or Flashback B-Plot. Compare with a Pilot Episode, which usually sets up the origins of the main characters and setting in the first episode. Television characters can have an Origin Episode of sorts if they receive A Day in the Limelight or a Lower-Deck Episode. See also Start of Darkness, for when a segment of the story shows the decisive point where a character becomes evil. See also No Origin Stories Allowed, which is when the creator(s) ban this from happening. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - Lamput: - The third season episode "Origins" is a Whole Episode Flashback of how Fat Doc and Slim Doc came to meet and become friends. The flashback, which begins when the docs find a picture of them from when they were kids while being carried away in a police car, also provides the origins of a couple other characters. - When Fat Doc and Slim Doc arrived at the same school, the latter was quite a bully to the former, only making friends with him after an incident involving the two accidentally messing up a science experiment their teacher was performing. - A science incident is also \|\|the catalyst for the birth of Lamput himself, who is seen at the end of the episode having formed from within a beaker\|\|. - Once the docs befriend each other, they decide to bully a specific round-looking kid in their school. \|\|That kid grows up to be the policeman who makes recurring appearances throughout the series and often arrests and beats up the docs - including in this episode where he thinks they robbed a jewelry store and brings them to the police station for it. Guy's held quite a grudge on the docs for all the bullying they subjected him to.\|\| - Before the Batman serves as one for The Batman (2022), covering the journeys of Bruce Wayne and Edward Nashton before they became The Batman and The Riddler respectively. - The Cat in the Stacks Mysteries: When Charlie Met Diesel, a short story included as a bonus feature in book 6. It's exactly what it sounds like, showing how Charlie found Diesel, wet and shivering in the parking lot of the library where he volunteers, and promptly took him to the vet to get checked out before adopting him. - The Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventures novel Business Unusual by Gary Russell told the story of Mel's first meeting with the Doctor, which her introductory TV season had neglected to depict due to Timey-Wimey Ball shenanigans in-universe and Troubled Production chaos behind the scenes. - The Q Continuum shows where a few of the enemies the crew of the original starship Enterprise faced came from. They were summoned through the Guardian of Forever by 0. - RWBY: Roman Holiday reveals how a young girl became Neopolitan, how Roman Torchwick became the greatest criminal in Vale, and how the two formed a lasting partnership. - Star Wars Expanded Universe: Thrawn gives the new-canon backstory of the titular Grand Admiral, including how he attained the rank. It ends shortly before his formal introduction into new canon in the third season of Rebels. - Star Wars Legends: Outbound Flight deals with the origin of Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn, and ties The Thrawn Trilogy with the prequel film trilogy and the New Jedi Order. - Tortall Universe: The Numair Chronicles is an interquel telling the backstory of The Archmage Numair Salmalín, who first appeared in The Immortals. - Warrior Cats: - Narnia has its origins told in the sixth book in the series, The Magician's Nephew. Just in time too; the series ends with book seven. - The Alchymist's Cat, a prequel to the Deptford Mice trilogy, reveals the origins of Big Bad Jupiter. He started out as an ordinary kitten called Leech in 17th century London, the runt of the litter who was mistreated by the evil alchemist who took them in. His brother Jupiter, on the other hand, was adored and became the alchemist's familiar. Leech grew envious of his brother's growing powers, and wished he could learn magic too, only to find out that just one in every family is allowed to use it. In the end, Leech kills Jupiter and assumes his identity, rising to power as a living God of Evil in the sewers. - The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes details how President Snow became the Big Bad of The Hunger Games trilogy. - Hannibal Rising is a poorly-executed Start of darkness for Hannibal Lecter, giving him a Freudian Excuse for many of the things he's famous for, even though he explicitly stated in the first movie that there wasn't any past trauma behind his deviant behavior—making him yet another intellectual in blatant denial. Rather sadly, this was an enforced case—Hannibal's creator, Thomas Harris, wanted to leave him an enigma with no real reason behind his crimes, but he was flat-out told by his publishers that if he didn't write it, they'd find someone else to do so. - VC Andrews wrote a prequel to Flowers in the Attic called Garden of Shadows that helps explain the motivations and backstory of the Evil Matriarch Olivia Foxworth. - The House of Night: The plot of Neferet's Curse, which details how an innocent girl named Emily Wheiler grew up in 1893 and ended up broken and vengeful as a result of being abused and eventually raped by her own father. She ultimately changes her name to Neferet, upon becoming a vampire, and vows to never again be used by anyone. - The Jane Eyre prequel, The Wide Sargasso Sea, shows the early life of a character thought of as villainous, but ultimately revealing them as well-intentioned and victimized by others. - The Magic: The Gathering novel The Thran is this for Yawgmoth, showing him rise from an exiled doctor into becoming first dictator of Halcyon, and then the Big Bad God of Evil he's mostly known as. It is important to mention that Yawgmoth was originally exiled for a reason: he performed many unethical experiments on different species to see the results and was in exile for doing so. - The Crippled God in Malazan Book of the Fallen was just a foreign god who fell to earth as the result of a trap meant for Kallor. And went stark raving mad as a result of his torture and imprisonment in this foreign world. He is currently trying to destroy the world just so he can be free again. - Old Kingdom: Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen, prequel to the main trilogy, depicts how its title character was set on the path to becoming \|\|Chlorr of the Mask, an evil necromancer who served as one of the main villains of the second and third books\|\|. - The Origin of Laughing Jack: As the title suggests, this is an origin story for Laughing Jack, taking place in the 1800s, likely 2 centuries before the events of his first story. It provides the details of how Laughing Jack became a murderous Monster Clown. - The Princess Bride devotes self-titled sections to the two mercenary henchmen of Vizzini, "the Sicilian"; how the giant Fezzik was beaten by other children and pushed to fight professionally by his misguided parents into rings where audiences booed him when he won until he found someone who understood him... slightly better; how the swordsman Inigo Montoya saw his father killed in front of him, spent years training and searching and becoming gradually more lost in his cups until he was found in obscurity. How Vizzini himself became the man he is now is left to the imagination, given only a few lines with a broad picture that he knew he would have to rely on his mind rather than his physical power; though the reader may expect it, there is no "VIZZINI". - A Song of Ice and Fire: Catelyn Stark's memories of her old friend Petyr Baelish are that of a sweet, romantic kid. Despite the fact that she was never interested in him that way, his romantic idealism spurred him on to duel her betrothed Brandon Stark for her hand, which resulted in Petyr nearly dying and getting sent packing back to his own poor home \|\|although that quite probably had more to do with the outcome of him being rejected and raped (whilst drunk and believing himself in bed with Cat, by her sister, Lysa, resulting in her pregnancy, which their father forces her to abort.\|\| In the present, Petyr is a full-on Magnificent Bastard and chessmaster, \|\|in control of both the Vale and Riverlands after having manipulated, married, and murdered Lysa, sparked the massive and destructive War of the Five Kings, and has taken on Cat's lookalike daughter Sansa, herself a Broken Bird, as both protegé and potential love interest.\|\| - The Star Trek: Destiny trilogy reveals the origins of the Borg Collective. - A minor example in the Star Trek: The Lost Era novel The Art of the Impossible. Corbin Entek, a Cardassian Obsidian Order villain from a highly popular episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is a lowly junior probationist in this book, albeit a promising one. The novel features a sub-plot in which he settles into the Order and earns the admiration of Enabran Tain. - Star Wars Legends: - Outbound Flight serves as a Start of Darkness of sorts for Grand Admiral Thrawn. Although he isn't exactly evil, it does explain why he took Palpatine's side. Eventually. Well, it introduces him to Darth Sidious and shows how perilously close he is to being exiled for his tactics. We know from the short story "Mist Encounter" that after he was exiled some Imperials found him and brought him back. - ''Outbound Flight" shows the start of darkness for Jorus C'baoth, who fell to the dark side near the end of the novel and went insane. This would then lead to his clone, Joruus C'baoth, also being an insane dark-sided Force wielder. - The novel Dark Rendezvous has several flashback scenes that explore Count Dooku's past and gives him a very convincing backstory. - The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin features a character who appeared first in Dark Empire, the comic book series set years after the novels but released years earlier. In Dark Empire, readers learned that he was an old friend of Han's, and also that he was willing to throw away that friendship by leading Han into a trap just for the reward. Crispin shows us in her prequels what a good and heroic guy he used to be, and eventually what happened to change him: he was captured, tortured, and crippled for life. - Darth Plagueis is an origin story for Palpatine, Dooku, and Nute Gunray. Though unlike the other two, Palpatine was evil from the beginning, and the book merely shows how he became a Sith. - Tortall Universe: The Numair Chronicles, while mainly being an interquel about Numair Salmalín, also shows how Ozorne Muhassin Tasikhe went from a "leftover prince" who was a personable, average student who only wanted to do mage-work with his best friends to the Evil Overlord Emperor Mage of Carthak seen in The Immortals. - Warriors: - The Rise of Scourge. It turns out that Scourge was, at first, just a cute little kitten with a crappy childhood. Desperate to impress the world around him, he is driven to first scare a dog away, then eventually actually kill a cat to maintain his peers' respect, which he claims to be his Moral Event Horizon. - Brokenstar was bullied by his foster siblings and resented by his foster mother as a kit in Yellowfang's Secret. It's subverted, however, at his birth, when he is born with a look of rage and hatred on his tiny face. - Whateley Universe: - "Mimeographic" covers Mimeo's origin story. Interestingly (and possibly self-servingly), it mostly portrays him as a sort of higher-order Punch-Clock Villain, who just does it to finance his lavish lifestyle - he plans out heists in detail to minimize collateral damage, and tries to avoid fights with heroes until he's ready to get whatever Power Copying buffs he needs for the specific caper. We also get to see why he adopted his Thou Shalt Not Kill policy (beyond the obvious wanting to get rematches for more power-ups, that is). - In "Intervention", we get a "This Is Your Life" style look at the events that soured Tansy Walcutt into the Alpha Bitch Solange, as part of her Redemption Quest. - In "The Road to Whateley", part 3, we get some flashbacks which set up the conflict between the Witch Queen and her longtime rival Sycorax. It isn't really a full Start of Darkness for either of them, but it does give us the background of their feud. - Wisdom's Daughter: The Life and Love Story of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed by H. Rider Haggard details the origins of Ayesha, the Big Bad of She. - Through excerpts from the novel Descarta is reading and \|\|Virgil\|\|'s own flashbacks we see how Kalthused of Within Ruin went from hero to utterly corrupt. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Angel's origin was first showed in both parts of "Becoming" but Angel elaborated on it in "The Prodigal" and "Five by Five". - "Becoming" also gave some more of Buffy's origin story (at least, within the TV show, given the movie is largely considered discontinuity by the TV series) showing her first meeting with her Watcher, Merrick, and her first patrol and slaying. - "Fool For Love" was Spike's official origin episode. "Lies My Parents Told Me" gave more details about that origin. And the cross-over episode with Angel that "Fool For Love" was a part of, called "Darla", was the origin episode for, well, Darla. - Related - Drusilla's origin and siring are described on Buffy in "Lie To Me", and shown in flashbacks in the Angel episode "Dear Boy". - While Anya talked about past exploits often, it wasn't until the Season 7 episode "Selfless" that we saw her full origin story. - Notably averted in Burn Notice: the made-for-TV-movie "The Fall of Sam Axe" pointedly showed how Sam managed to get his honorable discharge from the Navy SEALs despite his womanizing attitude, but in the timeline of the movie, he already knows Super Spy Michael Westen, seeking advice with his personal problems. Throughout the entire series, it's never been revealed exactly how a CIA spy and a Navy SEAL met and became best friends. - "Behind the Squeak," a promotional video for The Chica Show, is mainly about Chica's birth and rise to stardom on The Sunny Side Up Show. Kelly also explains that she and Chica first became animated due to one of Mr. C's magic tricks. - Chuck eventually showed us the backstory as to how Sara became a CIA operative, starting as a young teen when she was a grifter with her father. - "Chuck Versus the Tic Tac" reveals Casey's origins: \|\|A Marine Corps sniper in Honduras named Alexander Coburn who faked his death to join a special forces unit\|\|. Unfortunately, it left quite a Continuity Snarl that was never really addressed. - Community had the aptly titled "Heroic Origins", in which Abed charts the group's connection through random interactions before they all started at Greendale, eventually leading to reveal how they all came to choose the school. - Criminal Minds has several flashback episodes—a particular one being "Tabula Rasa", when Reid, JJ, and Garcia were still new to the BAU—but the one that fits the trope best is "Nelson's Sparrow", which shows the very earliest days of the BAU (or the BSU, as it was known then) in The '70s when there were still just three people (Jason Gideon, David Rossi, and Max Ryan) on the team, and follows one of Gideon's and Rossi's earliest unsolved cases. In particular, we see Gideon and Rossi coin a few terms that are commonly used by the present-day team (most notably "signature" by Rossi and "profiler" by Gideon), discover that this case is what inspired Gideon's previously-seen interest in ornithology, and is also the first time that the two characters appear onscreen together (since, in the present-day story, their actors are on the show at different times). - On Doctor Who: - The Second Doctor story "The War Games" finally revealed Gallifrey and the Time Lords, after six years of the Doctor's species being unknown. - It only took 11 years and four Doctors battling the Daleks before we finally got to see how they were created by Davros, after which point he became a recurring villain in Dalek stories. - Between the Doctor Who TV series and Big Finish Doctor Who audio adventures, we've had the Ice Warriors' origin story with the Second Doctor, the Daleks' origin story with the Fourth Doctor, the Cybermen's origin story with the Fifth Doctor, the Sontarans' origin story with the Sixth Doctor. - Nearly everyone who worked on the series prefers to avert this with the Doctor. Even after 50+ years and 38 seasons (as of 2021), the number of formal revelations of who they were before running away from Gallifrey and became the Doctor and why they fled the planet can be counted on one hand, and their real name remains a mystery. Their granddaughter Susan remains the only relative of theirs depicted onscreen or even named, even though they had to have had a wife and children. Occasionally hints are dropped about their past — the Twelfth Doctor confessed in "Heaven Sent" he fled Gallifrey out of fear of something rather than the boredom he usually claims — but nothing more, leaving the title of the show a never-to-be-answered question. The two attempts at this trope for the Doctor, the novel Lungbarrow in The '90s' Doctor Who Expanded Universe and the episode "The Timeless Children" at the beginning of The New '20s, both provoked very mixed fan reactions, and both retcon the depiction of Gallifrey in preceding televised canon. - The Firefly episode "Out of Gas" features flashbacks showing how each of the main characters ended up on Serenity (except for Book, Simon and River, who came aboard in the pilot episode). Zoe was Mal's old Army buddy from the Unification Wars, Wash signed on as pilot right after Mal and Zoe found Serenity, Jayne was a bandit who tried to kill Mal (until Mal convinced him to turn against his two partners by offering to pay him better), and Kaylee replaced the ship's original engineer after Mal found her having sex with him, and discovered that she knew more about engines than he did. - Forever Knight: Nick's vampire origin was shown in the pilot, "Dark Knight". - Frasier had this in the episode "You Can Go Home Again" which is also the season 3 finale. In this episode, Frasier celebrates his show's three-year anniversary and Roz offers him a videotape which contains his first broadcast. As he goes home, Frasier listens the tape and we see what happened when he arrived to Seattle, met Roz for the first time and reconciled with Niles and later Martin. - The Greek episode "Freshman Daze" gave the background stories for Casey, Cappie and Evan (with more information on Ashleigh and Frannie) through flashbacks to their freshman year, including the origins of the love triangle that drove most of their storylines. - Highlander had "Family Tree" and later "Homeland" for Duncan. For recurring characters, there was "Legacy" for Amanda, "Comes A Horseman" showed Cassandra's origin and there was one for Fitz ("Star Crossed"?). - "Three Stories", a Season One episode of House, reveals how House's leg turned out in such a bad state: he suffered an aneurysm while playing golf. His drug-seeking behavior caused the other doctors to brush off his pain as a withdrawal symptom. Soon, however, the aneurysm caused an infarction and muscle tissue to die. House refused to have the leg amputated, even though the bypass he demands and ultimately undergoes causes such severe pain that it gives him a heart attack. While in a medically-induced coma, his girlfriend and proxy authorized him to undergo a partial amputation that would only remove the necrotic tissue while leaving the rest of his leg intact, but it leaves his leg's mobility compromised on top of leaving him in chronic pain. - How I Met Your Mother has the episode "How I Met Everyone Else", which showcases how the core group (except Robin, who joined the group in the pilot) met and became friends note : Marshall and Ted met as roommates in college, Lily and Marshall met when she was "inexplicably drawn" to his dorm room one morning, Ted met Lily the night before at a party and that's why she showed up at their dorm (or so he thinks), Barney and Ted met in the bathroom at a bar, and Barney and Marshall met at the same bar some time later. They all met Robin at the same bar as well.. - Kamen Rider Double has nearly half their riders be given Origins Episodes, mostly as part of a movie (or in the case of Kamen Rider Eternal, a whole movie). - Kamen Rider Ex-Aid has Snipe Episode Zero. It depicts events leading to the Zero Day and Start of Darkness of Taiga Hanaya. - One of the main gimmicks of Lost, was that each episode had a flashback plot delivering information about a specific character's past. Many of the major characters ended up having several. - S1 E4 of Misfits has a bit of this, in that it expands on how some of the characters ended up with community service. - The Season 8 NCIS episode "Baltimore" depicts how DiNozzo and Gibbs met while the former was a detective with the Baltimore police department. - Odd Squad: The Season 1 episode "Totally Odd Squad" is an origins episode for Oprah, as she explains to Olive, Otto and Oscar about her time as an Investigation agent back in 1983 and how she became the Director of Precinct 13579. - Another Season 1 episode, "Training Day", reveals who Olive's previous partner was before Otto, and how she grew from being a Shrinking Violet as an agent-in-training to an eventual Shell-Shocked Veteran as an Investigation agent. It also has a brief scene that shows how Otto became her partner. - "Oscar of All Trades" shows how Oscar came to be the Lab Director of Precinct 13579. - The first part of the Season 2 finale, "Who is Agent Otis?", reveals how Otis became an Odd Squad agent and explains how life was for him before joining the organization. - The Season 3 episode "The Weight of the World Depends on Orla" shows how the eponymous agent became the guardian of the 44-leaf clover. - Once Upon a Time: - "The Stable Boy" does this for Regina. Her ambitious and cold-blooded mother wanted her to marry up, but she was in love with a stable boy. When Snow White, then an innocent child, tried to help Regina by letting the ambitious mama know her stepmother-to-be was with the stable boy... Well, let's just say someone's True Love ended up dead, and Snow White ended up on the wrong end of a vendetta. - "The Miller's Daughter" showed how Cora became who she was. When she was a young woman, \|\|she was tripped by an immature Eva (Snow White's mother before she married Snow's father) who claimed Cora hurt her.\|\| The King of the land forced Cora to apologize on her knees or he wouldn't pay her for the flour. She would later use the emotions she felt here to channel her magic to spin gold. - "It's Not Easy Being Green" shows how Zelena discovered in the course of one day that she was adopted, her stepfather never loved her, her mother abandoned her at birth and she had a sister who got everything she never had. \|\|When she's passed over as Rumpelstiltskin's student\|\|, her envy corrupts her and turns her into the Wicked Witch of the West. - "The Snow Queen" shows how the eponymous girl became evil. Born as Princess Ingrid, she discovered her ice powers one day while protecting her two sisters. The powers grew as she got older and she opted to hide herself away to protect the kingdom. \|\|When she accidentally killed her sister Helga, her other sister Gerda trapped her in an urn and had all memories of her erased from the kingdom\|\|. - "Poor Unfortunate Soul" reveals that Ursula used to be a mermaid, forced to use her singing voice to sink ships by her father. She rejected him and transformed herself in the sea witch after \|\|Hook stole her singing voice, her only memory of her dead mother\|\|. Ironically this same episode combines this with \|\|a HeelFace Turn, as Hook returns Ursula's voice and she reunites with her father\|\|. - In episodes "Best Laid Plans" and "Unforgiven" which act as the opposite for \|\|Maleficent\|\|. Originally established as an evil sorceress, discovering she was about to become a mother and \|\|eventually getting separated from her child\|\| prompts a sort of HeelFace Turn, showing her as a sympathetic character. - "Broken Kingdom" shows how \|\|King Arthur\|\| became a Knight Templar, due to his obsession with \|\|reforging Excalibur\|\|, which he sees as the only way he can truly rule his kingdom. This drove him utterly mad, as he was even willing to brainwash the woman he loved (and his whole kingdom, for that matter) and betray his best friend, in order to ensure his rule. - Power Rangers: - Power Rangers Samurai even went so far as to have its Origins episodes titled "Origins". It probably has something to do with the fact that said episodes were delayed until midseason, instead of being shown at the beginning as usual. - Power Rangers RPM had origin episodes for the Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green Rangers as well as for Dr. K. All ended with them going to or arriving at Corinth (except Green, who had to leave) and don't include how they were selected as Rangers (again, except Green who we already saw acquire his powers. - Suits episode "Rewind" shows Mike starting using his Photographic Memory to earn money cheating at tests, his friend Trevor start dealing marijuana and Harvey blackmailing Hardman into resignation. Also doubles as a Start of Darkness episode. - The Tales from the Crypt episode "Lower Berth'' provides the odd origin of \|\|The Crypt Keeper.\|\| An unholy product of the love between a (literal) two-faced freakshow attraction, and a 4000-year-old mummy. - In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, "Today Is the Day"/"The Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter" is a two-part origin episode for \|\|Jesse Flores, and possibly also Weaver note : There's a character in the past sections of the episodes who is almost universally believed by fans to be Weaver, but it's not explicitly stated.\|\|. - Torchwood has the episode "Fragments", giving the back-story of how the main team members note : other than Gwen, whose origin was revealed in "Everything Changes" were recruited to Torchwood Three. - The Tribe had two of these in the second season; one focused on Zoot and Ebony; the other focused on Lex and Ryan (though the latter example was submerged as a very long flashback). - Uchuu Sentai Kyuranger has the origins of Stinger/Sasori Orange and Champ/Oushi Black in Episode of Stinger. - WandaVision's next-to-last episode, "Previously On...," uses flashbacks to tell the origin story of Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch. - The West Wing had several of these: - "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen" is a series of flashbacks to the 1998 Presidential Election [sic], showing how the main characters met and got involved with Bartlet's campaign. When the story begins, Leo is a former cabinet secretary serving as Bartlet's campaign manager, Josh is campaign manager for Bartlet's biggest rival (and future VP) Senator John Hoynes, Sam is a frustrated lawyer for an unscrupulous oil company, CJ is a PR specialist for a movie studio, Toby is a talented (but unsuccessful) political operative looking for a chance to prove his skills, and Donna is a campaign volunteer. - "Two Cathedrals" features an extended flashback to Bartlet's childhood, showing how he met Mrs. Landingham and first got interested in politics. As we learn, Mrs. Landingham started out as a secretary at the New Hampshire prep school where Bartlet's father was Headmaster, and she convinced him to confront his father about the wage gap between male and female employees at the school. \|\|He tried, but lost his nerve after his father slapped him for protesting his decision to ban several classic novels from the school library.\|\| - "Bartlet for America" goes into more detail about Bartlet's election, mostly from Leo's perspective. We see how Bartlet convinced Hoynes to become his running mate by telling him the truth about \|\|his multiple sclerosis\|\| as a gesture of good faith, and we learn about Leo's last alcoholic relapse. It turns out that a campaign donor pressured him into drinking again, and he fell off the wagon so hard that \|\|he wasn't able to come to Bartlet's aid when his MS flared up again\|\|—an incident that has clearly haunted him ever since. - White Collar episode "Forging Bonds" dedicated to how Neal started his Con Man career with Mozzie, how he met Kate, how Peter started pursuing Neal and how Peter and Neal first met. - Xena: Warrior Princess had several over the course of the show, showing how she developed from a village girl into an evil Warrior Princess. (She had a HeelFace Turn during her guest appearances on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys before she got her own show.) - The Incredible Hulk (1977): The original pilot episode detailed how David Banner became the eponymous monster and how he ended up on the run. - The X-Files had several origin episodes, including one for the Big Bad ("Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man") and the Lone Gunmen trio ("Unusual Suspects"). - Our Miss Brooks: - The first episode, appropriately enough titled "First Day", relates Mr. Conklin's arrival as newly appointed principal. - In "Borrowing Money To Fly", it's Miss Brooks' arrival in Madison that's explained. In this version, Mr. Conklin has already long been comfortable ensconced as principal of Madison High School. - The Season 4 Bravest Warriors two-part episode "It Shouldn't Ever Have to End This Way" reveals the exact circumstances under which the Bravest Warriors' parents and predecessors the Courageous Battlers were banished to the See-Through Zone by Beth's father. - The Homestar Runner short "Hremail 7" explains the origin of Strong Bad Email. And, in the process, messes up what little continuity the HR-verse has. - The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: The third episode serves as this for Epic-Man, explaining how he got his powers and started his superhero career. - Season 14 of Red vs. Blue has three examples: - The Blood Gulch Prequel Trilogy episodes - From Stumbled Beginnings, Fifty Shades of Red, and Why Theyre Here - all show how how the members of the Red and Blue Teams met and ended up in Blood Gulch. - The Merc Trilogy episodes - "Club", "Call", and "Consequences" - show what Locus and Felix were up to prior to Chorus as well as their \|\|Protagonist Journey to Villain\|\|. - It's heavily implied that the Freelancer Prequel Duology episodes - The Triplets and The Mission - \|\|concern the origin of the Red vs. Blue simulation war\|\|. - RWBY: - The aptly named "Beginning Of The End" from Volume 3 explains the backstories of both Emerald and Mercury, and how they came to work for Cinder. Cinder herself doesn't get an Origins Episode until Volume 8, in "Midnight." - "The Lost Fable" in Volume 6 reveals the history of both \|\|Salem and Ozpin\|\|. - The Shut Up! Cartoons segment Oishi High School Battle has Oishi Orgins, or, as the title says, Oishi High School Battle Orgins. Oishi Orgins explains several things, such as \|\|how Oishi's father got fired (like the intro song says) and how Oishi got her dog Noodles. (Which was due to the creature transporter machine going haywire after a demon attack, thus resulting in this event.)\|\| - The Cocoon Academy arc of Brawl in the Family is one for Dedede and \|\|Meta Knight\|\|. - Everyday Heroes: Oddly, Mr. Mighty's wife, Jane, got to tell her origin story before Mr. Mighty did. Then again, maybe the author just enjoyed drawing all those Stripperiffic outfits. - Gunnerkrigg Court: Chapter 40, "The Stone", delves into the history of the Inexplicably Awesome Jones, showing the various identities she's had \|\|throughout human history and beyond\|\|. \|\|Also The Unreveal, since it shows that while she's as old as the planet, she's never learned what she actually is or how she came to be.\|\| - The Order of the Stick: - On the Origin of PC's explores the back stories of the members of the Order of the Stick, and how Roy originally gathered them together to delve into the Dungeon of Durokan. - Start of Darkness is one for the bad guys, showing how Redcloak and Xykon first met and how Xykon became a lich. - Sleepless Domain: The Flashback Theater following Chapter 10 tells the story of how Melty Frost and Melty Flame first met, in the form of a temporary shoujo romance. The two girls were childhood friends who had since drifted apart, but reconnected after their powers awakened, and have been Sickeningly Sweethearts ever since. - The Shaker Woods story arc in Yehuda Moon & the Kickstand Cyclery, which makes everything look Harsher in Hindsight.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginsIssue
Orichalcum - TV Tropes Just Orichalcum is a legendary precious metal that was mentioned by Plato as used in Atlantis. Orichalcum appears in many other places in classical Greek and Roman writings (for example, the Homeric Hymns assign gold and orichalcum ornaments to Aphrodite) but it's the Atlantis reference that it's remembered for. one of orichalcum's many forms. It has since been commonly used in fantasy literature and games as a type of Unobtainium. The term is Greek for "golden stone" and originally meant "mountain copper" or "mountain metal", though nobody is sure exactly what it was supposed to be. Possibilities range from an alloy of normal metals to a completely fantastic material, though the most common perception is that it is brass. note : Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc that superficially looks like gold. Supported by, among other things, the discovery of a 6th century BC Greek ship carrying ingots of brass. Due to pronunciation changes, this word sometimes gets reborrowed as "orihalcon", particularly with works of Japanese origin. If you're curious why, in Ancient Greek the word was pronounced something like "ore-eh-kal-kos", which is reasonably similar to how it's pronounced in modern English, but in modern day Greece it's pronounced more like "oriy-khal-kos", with the "kh" in the middle being a cross between a K sound and a H sound. If you speak Scottish or German, it's the "ch" sound in loch or acht. Japanese borrowed the word based on this modern Greek pronunciation, but it further became muddled into オリハルコン orihalkon, which unfortunately is different enough translators often fail to recognize it as orichalcum. (If Japanese borrowed the word based on English instead, it'd probably be spelled オリカルカム orikalkam.) Compare Mithril, Adamantium, Hihi'irokane and Thunderbolt Iron. Subtrope of Fantasy Metals and/or Green Rocks. ## Examples: - Black Cat: The Chronos Guardians use weapons made of orichalcum. - Hyper Police: Natuski has an orihalcon dagger. - The Mysterious Cities of Gold: In the second season, it's revealed that all of the Mu artifacts we've seen (including the city) aren't actually made of gold, but Orichalcum. This does solve the problem of why an advanced race would make an aircraft out of an extremely heavy and brittle metal with a low melting point. - In Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water Nadia's pendant is eventually revealed to be made of orichalcum (and associated with Atlantis). - In Orichalcum Reycal, orichalcum is a type of clay that can be used to create orichalcums - sentient dolls with supernatural powers linked to their master's will. The protagonist's orichalcum, Reycal, is initially weak due to being sculpted from a 40-60 mix of orichalcum with mundane clay. - Peter Grill and the Philosopher's Time: Weapons made of orichalcum are the only weapons powerful enough to harm monsters called semimoles. Since semimoles haven't been seen in a 100 years, everyone started relaxing and forgot how to forge orichalcum, except for the studious Mithlim. A semimole shows up and Peter is able to kill it with an orichalcum weapon provided by Mithlim. Peter then lectures everyone on relaxing and tells them to shape up and relearn how to forge orichalcum. - In Saint Seiya, Poseidon's Mariners wear orichalcum armor, while Athena's Saints wear armor made of an alloy including the metal. - Spriggan: The weapons and body armor used by Yu Ominae, the US Army's Machineer's Platoon and the Trident Corporation, are made of "orihalcon" or "omihalcon". - Transformers: Armada has the Mini-Cons from a sunken city called the Orichalcum (translated as "Olihalicons"). - The White Whale Of Mu: "Orihalcon" is sought by the Atlanteans. - Yu-Gi-Oh!: Used in association with Atlantis, as "the Orichalcos". It's a mysterious glowing, turquoise, rock-like substance that fell from the sky 10,000 years ago; the ancient Atlanteans used it to create a Magitek Utopia, but it was also The Corruption and turned nearly everyone into monsters and The Good King, Dartz, into an Immortal Brainwashed and Crazy Evil Sorcerer and Omnicidal Maniac, and pressed him into unleashing an Eldritch Abomination to destroy the world and create Paradise from the ruins. It was ultimately the reason Atlantis sunk beneath the waves. - The members of DOMA all had rings with bits of Orichalcum in them and used the Spell Card "Seal of Orichalcos", which lets you have double the maximum number of monsters on the field, grants each of them 500 ATK... and creates an unbreakable forcefield around the duelists based on the Seal, and if you lose a duel inside the Seal, your soul gets eaten by the Leviathan. Dartz himself has two more versions of the card that grant additional effects, as well as an entire deck of Monster Cards and Trap Cards themed on the Orichalcos. The only way to break the Seal is is to use a piece of Orichalcum, hence the rings they use, although it seems like they can only be broken from the outside so they are only good for ending someone else's Duel. - Well, hitting it really hard with a Millennium Item works too... for a given definition of "works". - Yu-Gi-Oh! GX has an unrelated character, Jim Crocodile Cook, with an "Eye of Orichalcum" embedded in his face. This granted him certain powers. - Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka, orichalcum is a magical metal that is used in e.g. bullets against Disas or rogue magical users. - Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai: In the "Holy Sword Arc", the main characters decide Dai needs a sword made of orichalcum to use his full power. Eventually, Dai gets one orichalcum sword. - Orichalcum is retrieved from Atlantis in the opening scene of Iron Man Noir, in which it's a MacGuffin power source. - Mickey Mouse Comic Universe: In a story where Mickey and Goofy are working with an archeologist to rediscover Atlantis, orichalcum is a nigh-indestructible conductor metal. \|\|It's only indestructible as long as it's conducting. If not, it's very brittle\|\|. - The Princess and the Dragon: Orichalcum enhances a sorcerer's control over magic and can even give magic to someone who didn't originally possess any, but it also corrupts its wielder's soul. - In Tales from the Dark Side of the Mirror, Orichalcum is mentioned and used by Mirror Twilight in her \|\|Mana Collector\|\| due to its durability and magic resistance. \|\|As a result, she has a major Oh, Crap! when it shatters due to overload, since the amount of magic required to do that is tremendous.\|\| She also also \|\|makes chains of it to hold Trixie, but Maud breaks them, pointing out that since they were just magical copies of a sample she got rather than forged, they're far weaker than it otherwise would've been.\|\| - In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic The Long Eventide, the mysterious Umbral Society passes along an artefact to one of their members that has orchicalcum in it. What exact properties the metal gives this artefact is currently unknown. - Biggles: Biggles discovers the substance and then loses it again in a landslide in a short story from "Biggles, Charter Pilot". - Ciaphas Cain: - Subtly name-dropped in Caves of Ice, where the company is deployed to an ice planet called Simia Orichalcae... yep, "Brass Monkey". - The metal itself shows up in a few of the novels. In Cain's Last Stand, the main hangar doors of Orelius' ship are described as "vast slabs of orichalcum chased with gold filigree". - Decipher: Orichalcum is used used in association with Atlantis. - Dinotopia: Orichalcum appears as a substance used in a piece of a key, first thought to be bronze. - The Golden Oecumene: In The Golden Transcedence, a projected future includes more Oecumenes about other star systems. One is the Orichalcum Oecumene. - The Heroes of Olympus: The Greek gods and demigods use a metal known as celestial bronze, a metal mined from Mt. Olympus, while their Roman counterparts use a metal known as imperial gold, made by enchanting regular gold. As noted above, Orichalcum means "mountain copper" and the Romans transliterated it as Aurichalcum meaning "gold copper", so those two metals are symbolically this trope. They're supernatural metals capable of harming monsters, gods and their descendants; however, they can't harm mortals — they're simply not metaphysically important enough for the metals to register their presence. - Pendragon Cycle: Orichalcum is is a substance used in Atlantis. - Slayers: It's spelled "orihalcon", and its schtick is magic resistance — it can block any spells. - The Story Of The Amulet: Orichalcum is used by the Atlanteans. - That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: It can be used as a valuable material to forge powerful weapons and armor, and is produced by fusing gold with Magisteel (metal forged from magic ore transformed by exposure to high concentrations of magicules), which transforms the gold into an extremely durable metal that conducts magical power very well while retaining its various unique properties. It sees its most noticeable use as the building blocks for \|\|Veldora's skeleton monster in the Labyrinth as well as being the material Rimuru uses to create the skeletons of the Artifical Human bodies he prepped for three of his Primordial Demons while the other demons get "just" magisteel skeletons.\|\| - GoGo Sentai Boukenger: One treasure from Atlantis is first thought to be made of orichalcum. This treasure turns out to be the Vril, an artifact that gathers information from nearby objects to duplicate them in order to eventually replace the human race. - In Embers in the Dusk, it was made by the Remnant Kingdom, after they studied the Eternal (a not-quite-successful Great One) in an attempt to replicate his shell, which even the Ancient One could barely scratch. It's a bronze-colored metal matching the best the C'tan have, but the humans can only produce it at great expense. A single regular Marine suit with Orichalcum costs about fifty times as much an an Advanced Terminator Suit. - Arduin: The spell "Gandolyn's Gates" traps a person in a tower of orichalcum. - Conspiracy X: Atlantis exists, as does their mythical alloy "Orichalcum". It turns out that the Atlanteans are so advanced that their orichalcum is a product of nanotechnology in the days of Classical Greece. - D 20 Sytem: In Advanced Gamemaster's Guide, orichalcum is a material used to make weapons and armor. - Dungeons & Dragons: In Points of Light, mention is made of a magical metal called "orium" that has a "red-gold" appearance and was used by ancient empires, but which has since been lost and has yet to be rediscovered — in no small part due to the fact that the byproducts of fashioning it are lethally poisonous. The metallic dragon associated with orium is a serpentine figure with an affinity for ancient ruins and lost secrets, which it defends with its toxic Breath Weapon. - Earthdawn has the five True Elements: earth, air, fire, water, and wood. You get the golden metal orichalcum by combining all five. - In Exalted, Orichalcum is a magical metal associated with the Solar Exalted. The manufacturing process involves smelting gold in the heart of a volcano while using an elaborate array of mirrors to shine distilled sunlight on the metal (why? Because it's Exalted). - GURPS: Orichalcum looks just like bronze but it much stronger and automatically makes blades forged from it extremely sharp. - It's also a room-temperature superconductor, should anyone come along who knows how to use that sort of thing, as noted in the Infinite Worlds sourcebook. - In the Atlantis sourcebook it's also an "etheric resonator" if local physics allows such a thing, enabling a Steampunk campaign to keep the "advanced power source" concept without moving too far from the paradigm. In either case, it also has "additional secondary useful properties" allowing its use as "an all-purpose technobabble keyword". - Appears in the Immortals Handbook — EPIC BESTIARY: Volume One by Eternity Publishing as a red metal found in the heart of dead stars. The metal is so insanely dense and heavy that it has to be diluted with adamantine in order for even regular deities to be able to carry weapons made from it. - Mage: The Awakening: Orichalcum is produced by magically passing gold between the material world and Twilight until most of its substance is gone. It has no overtly magical properties of its own, but can be combined into alloys that can then hold powerful enchantments. The only one given is thaumium, which absorbs magic. - Mutants & Masterminds has it as a golden metal from Atlantis, whose secret is lost. - Nephilim has "orichalka" as a material from Saturn, used in the fight against the Nephilim in Atlantis. - Pathfinder: "Horacalcum" is a fantastically expensive coppery metal obtained from meteorites and alien planets that distorts time around it, allowing wearers of horacalcum armor to perceive threats more quickly. The centerpiece of Adrati Kalm's Golden Ossuary, itself a monument to Conspicuous Consumption, is a horacalcum vault of incredible value \|\|which has the side-effect of preserving his remains in a bubble of slowed time for easy resurrection\|\|. - Shadowrun has had Orichalcum available since not long after the Awakening. It's a very rare metal material known for its potency in reacting with and conducting magic, and can only be synthesized with magic. It has set the standard for the potency of magic reagents, and while it's not necessary for it, orichalcum is used to create the most powerful magic foci. - 7th Dragon: The final game, Code VFD, reveals that special swords made to slay the True Dragons, Dragonslayers, can only be forged from this mythical metal. - Age of Mythology: "Orichalkos" is all over the Atlantean civilization of the expansion pack "The Titans". It's used to explain some of their more advanced technology (like the Fire Siphon), a common mentioned material of advanced upgrades and the strongest material the Atlanteans can make their walls. The metal is also mentioned to magically become very lightweight after being quenched in seawater. - Arcana Heart: Orichalkos is the arcana of metal (and a huge frickin' dragon). - Shows up in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey as a currency accepted by only one merchant who sells rare goods. All other merchants accept drachmae. - Blob Wars has a quest to collect 25 boxes of orichalcum beads. - Castlevania: Curse of Darkness: Available by Video Game Stealing as an ore used to forge powerful items. - City of Heroes and City of Villains have it as salvage. - Dept. Heaven: The Grim Angels use weapons made of this material. - Dragon Age II: Orichalcum appears as a crafting material. - The Elder Scrolls has a tower made of "orichalc", which was on a sunken continent named Yokuda. - As of Skyrim, orichalcum is a blackish-green metal used to make Orcish armor and weapons, which in previous installments was just high quality steel equipment. Such items are known for their green tint and being "ugly and strong, like those that forged them." - Oddly, "Dwemer Metal" better fits the traditional description of orichalcum — it's a lustrous red-gold, an ancient and advanced civilization used it to make all their wonders, and it isn't found naturally, forcing players to smelt down items from Dwemer ruins for ingots. - Endless Ocean: The orichalcum ingot is one of the legendary treasures in Blue World, and is the most expensive non-treasure chest salvageable item (and the fourth most expensive overall). - Endless Space: Orichalx is a late-game strategic material, noted in the original to be an orange metal useful for extreme conditions. The sequel brought the material back and made it the strongest ship armor in the game, but also changed it to a purple crystal. - EOE: Eve of Extinction: Used for both the main character's weapon and the bosses' weapons. It's awkwardly pronounced in-game as "OriKILLUM" and "oRICKulum." - In Fate/Grand Order Lostbelt No. 5 "Atlantis", after analyzing the nanomachines Theos Klironomia are, da Vinci decides to name the unknown metal they are made out of orichalcum since they are in Atlantis. - Fly FF calls it "Shining Oricalkum." - Golden Sun: Orichalcum appears in Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn as an Item Crafting material called Orihalcon (that also Randomly Drops), used for getting one of the game's Infinity Plus One Swords. Strangely enough, you can't find any in Lemuria, the game's Atlantis equivalent. - In Guild Wars 2 Orichalcum is red-bronze in appearance and the highest-level base metal in the game, used in the top tier of crafting recipes. While present in all level-appropriate zones, prior to the expansion packs it was most frequently encountered in Orr, the game's Atlantis analogue. - Hadean Lands: The Orichalcum rod is one of the most useful alchemical items in the game, but you only get one. If it weren't for the "Groundhog Day" Loop you'd have a real problem, and even with that it can be tricky. - Harvest Moon: "Orichalc" is used to create jewelry in some of the games. - Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: Orichalcum is a central plot device and Plot Coupon. It's used as fuel for the Atlanteans' abandoned ancient artifacts scattered around the globe, which Indy must dig up. The Nazis want it because it \|\|powers the God Machine under Atlantis\|\|. - Kid Icarus: Uprising: The \|\|Great Sacred Treasure\|\| is stated to be made of orichalcum. - Kirby Super Star: Appears as the treasure "orihalcon". This was fixed in the remake. - Lineage 2: Orichalcum is used in dwarven crafting. - Lost Odyssey: Orichalcum is used to craft either Seth or Kaim's Ultimate Weapon. - Lunarosse: Beating the Abyss-King gives you a hunk of this, which can be used to max out your party member's weapons. It overlaps with Thunderbolt Iron, as it's mentioned to have fallen out of the sky some time prior. - MapleStory: It's called "Orichalcon" in-game because Orichalcum has the syllable "cum" in it, which is censored out. - In Mega Man X5, the Orichalcum, held by Crescent Grizzly / Grizzly Slash, is one of the components required to upgrade the Enigma laser cannon so it can destroy a colony ship. When recovered, it is said to increase the weapon's "striking ability." In Western releases, it was renamed the "Crystal Ball," possibly because the translators did not recognize the reference. - Poseidon: Master of Atlantis: "Orichalc" is used as a monument decoration, as well as fuel for the deadly Atlantean fire. - Ragnarok Online uses "Oridecon" as a crafting material. - RIFT: Orichalcum appears as a crafting material. - In Runescape, orikalkum is the proper name of what is commonly called "dragon" metal in the present day. It can't be worked in a forge, only in the direct heat of a dragon's breath, which led to it being used primarily by the Dragonkin. - Shining Force III: Orichalcum is used as material the blacksmith can use; it's the best material, beating out Mithril. In Shining Soul II it's used to make Ice and Holy elemental equipment at the blacksmith. - Soulcalibur: The Orichalcum is Sophitia's legendary weapon in the second game and can be purchased in SoulCalibur III. - In Soul Sacrifice Delta, the Orichalcum are giant snails with treasure chests as shells. They have low spawn rates but high Life EXP or Magic EXP, so be on the lookout for these guys. - Square Enix loves Orichalcum. Many of their RPGs typically include either the raw material or something made from it. - Dragon Quest: The general rule of thumb is that if it's made of Orichalcum, it either kicks three different kinds of ass or is a flat-out Game-Breaker. - Dragon Quest III: The Sword of Kings/Sword of Light/Erdrick's Sword is made of the metal "Oricon". - Dragon Quest VIII has it as an Item Crafting material. - Dragon Quest Swords: The near-unbreakable shield is a SPOON made of Orichalcum, but due to its obviously small size which can't be increases and that if you can block as accurately with any other shield as you can with the spoon, they'll be just as durable, it's not nearly as useful as it'd initially seem. - Dragon Quest IX: Orichalcum makes a comeback as one of the greatest yet rarest alchemy ingredients. To give you a scope on how rare it is, every other mineral in the game can be found as Randomly Drops or by finding them on the ground in certain spots of the world map. Orichalcum is found nowhere in the world and the only monsters that drop them do so with a 1/256 chance, which is as rare as it gets in this game. Fortunately, when you do get your hands on some, you can use it for some of the best gear in the game, such as the Sage's Stone, which heals your entire party, as well as Erdrick's gear, which is the best gear in the game barring the Uber-gear. - In Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, both orichalcum and orichalslime (a hunk of metal shaped like a Slime) are used as weapons and alchemy ingredients. - Final Fantasy: Some items are made of the material, with various spellings. Notably, an orichalcum dagger known simply as "the Orichalcum" is one of the strongest recurring daggers in the series. Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles instead have it available in the form of ore to make items. - Kingdom Hearts: Orichalcum appears in some games as an Item Crafting material. Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts III have an even stronger variety called "Orichalcum+", of which only a few pieces exist, and every one of them is needed to craft the Ultima Weapon. - Legend of Mana has it under the name "Orihalcon". - Romancing SaGa 3: the dolphin statue in Vanguard is made of it; in enhances water magic which allows the city to move freely in the ocean. - Tactics Ogre has it in the form of a sword translated as "Oricon". Also as "Oracion" in Knight of Lodis. - The World Ends with You has an Orichalcum pin, which is used as a trade material for extremely rare shop goodies. - Star Ocean: Orichalcum appears as an Item Crafting material. In the first two games, Orichalcum is a strong metal which can make some very good weapons, armor and accessories. In the third game, finding the right Inventors to produce Orichalcum reliably is the gameplay equivalent of nuclear weapons. - Super Robot Wars has a number of mecha and weapons made of "Orichalconium" (most famously Cybuster) or the stronger "Zol-Orichalconium" alloy ("Z.O." for short). In the Original Generation games, it plays the same role as Alloy Z and Super-Alloy Z. - Tech Romancer has a mecha, G-Kaiser, made of the material "Orihalconium". - Terraria features Orichalcum as an alternative to Mythril. Its appearance is pink, and a full set of armor with any of the helmets causes pink petals to strike an enemy you hit. - Tibia has a magic item called the Orichalcum Pearl. - Titan Quest: Orichalcum is a more powerful substitute for bronze. - Valkyrie Profile: Orichalcum is used for Item Crafting. - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Orichalcum ingots and ore are crafting ingredients found in loot drops and at merchants, which are used to craft many high-end weapons and armor. - In the sequel of Yo-kai Watch Blasters, an avian boss Yokai named Orifalcon is said to be made out of orichalcum, hence its name. - In Adventurers!, a Rummage Fail shows that the inventory contains one piece of "Orialicurirhum". - In Demon Fist, "orihalcon" is super-strong and damps out supernatural energies (so when Rory is handcuffed with it, he can't use his demon arm or manifest Shaise, Crag or Dither). The pirates are amazed to discover that Rosenquist has entire prison cells made of the stuff. - Irregular Webcomic!: In the Cliffhangers storyline, Those Wacky Nazis are after Atlantis' orichalcum to build their war machines with. - Mindmistress: "Orichalium" is mentioned as one of the stable transuranic elements carried by a meteorite that hit the Atlantic Ocean, whose remnants became the islands that Atlantis was built on. - The Descendants: It's first seen as a rough type of armor called 'orihalcite' that even Alloy couldn't effect with his powers. Later appears in a refined form with the proper name. - Used with WILDLY variable spelling in the Whateley Universe. - The name derives from Greek ὀρείχαλκος, oreikhalkos (from ὄρος, oros, mountain and χαλκός, khalkos, copper), meaning literally "mountain copper". The name "oros" was sufficiently close to vernacular pronunciation of Latin word for gold, aurum as oro, that it was transliterated "orichalcum" as "aurichalcum," which was thought to literally mean "gold copper". It is known from the writings of Cicero that the metal which they called orichalcum resembled gold in color but had a much lower value. This description fits perfectly to brass. Brass itself is an alloy of copper and zinc, and while it was known to Ancient and Medieval world and manufactured by smelting copper and zinc-containing ores, zinc itself was isolated only by the Medieval alchemists and in 14th century India. Brass itself was first made from pure metals instead of ores in the 16th century. Today, "oreikhalkos" and "aurichalcum" means "brass" in modern Greek and Latin respectively. - In 2015, 39 ingots believed to be orichalcum were discovered in a sunken vessel on the coasts of Gela in Sicily which have tentatively been dated at 2,600 years old. They were analyzed with X-ray fluorescence by Dario Panetta of TQ - Technologies for Quality; they turned out to be an alloy consisting of 75-80 percent copper, 15-20 percent zinc, and smaller percentages of nickel, lead, and iron. This is high quality brass. - While not exactly magical, brass itself is a noble metal alloy and widely used on application which require resistance for corrosion, such as marine instruments, marine propellers, door handles, locks and coins. Brass is also irreplaceable as a metal for musical instruments. Aside from corrosion resistance, it's also soft enough to be easily worked into complicated shapes, and low-melting enough to make casting a breeze. It also won't scratch harder metals like iron, and is also non-sparking.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Orihalcon
Spare Body Parts - TV Tropes Shepard: [The Normandy was] destroyed in a Collector surprise attack. I ended up spaced. Wrex: Well, you look good. Ah, the benefits of a redundant nervous system. Shepard: Yeah, humans don't have that. Wrex: Oh, it must have been painful, then. [evil grin] A Subtrope of either Bizarre Alien Biology or Body Horror, depending on how many of which parts the creature or person is "meant" to have. Humans have two eyes, two legs, two arms, two lungs, one mouth, etc., as do most of our most familiar animals. Want to make a race seem alien? Give them extra of something. Subtropes include: <!—index—> <!—/index—> Can overlap with Little Bit Beastly, if the character has both human and animal ears. ## Examples: - Part 6 of the Marvel Fact Files says that the Kree have duplicates of several internal organs. - In Turning Red, when partially transformed, Mei keeps both her human ears alongside her panda ears. - Babylon 5: Centauri have two hearts. Unlike Klingons, Centauri can die if either heart fails. In the season five episode "The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari", in which Londo suffers a heart attack, we find out more details: the right heart is a large and simple muscle, much like a human heart, whereas the left heart is a knot of blood vessels that gives the blood pressure an extra kick and also functions much as a human kidney (mollusks on earth have a somewhat similar system). Surgery on the left heart is correspondingly difficult due to its complexity. The left heart is considered the seat of the soul in traditional Centauri culture. Males also have six prehensile penises sprouting from their backs (aligned in pairs along the spine), corresponding to six similarly-arranged slits in the female. - The lounge singers in Battlestar Galactica (1978) have two mouths each. Meanwhile, those insectoid things have four arms. Eek, in both cases. - Doctor Who: - Time Lords have two hearts. The Doctor is no exception. Some of the spinoff novels have added a great deal of lore regarding Time Lord hearts, including: - Time Lords have only one heart in their first incarnation and the second one develops, along with other physiological advantages like the respiratory bypass system, as a result of their first regeneration. note : This bit of lore was devised primarily to clear up the continuity issue of the First Doctor having only one heart, with the two-hearted Doctor not being established until the Third Doctor's debut story. (Although some other novels say otherwise.) - The hearts are categorised as a "primary" and a "secondary". Quite what this means in a physiological sense (e.g., is one heart more powerful than the other, do they have somewhat different functions) is never made quite clear. - The Eighth Doctor novel The Adventuress of Henrietta Street suggests that the second heart might be the source of some sort of psychic link between the Time Lords and Gallifrey, and the control centre for their various alien traits (regeneration, rapid healing, sensitivity to time etc). - Both the spinoff novels and the new series indicate that the Doctor is capable of living with only one functioning heart, though it's very painful and can't be kept up for long. - "The Woman Who Fell to Earth" reveals that the two hearts result in two separate pulses. - "Extremis", meanwhile, reveals Time Lords also have three brainstems. - "The Girl Who Waited": The Apalapucians are another Human Alien species with two hearts. - Iris Wildthyme and the Panda Invasion shows that Iris has two livers as a nod to The Doctor having two hearts. - In Doctor Who Meets Scratchman, Charon mentions having to take a Martian Warlord to Hell after taking a sickle to his third spleen. - Star Trek's Klingons have a number of physiological redundancies such as an extra liver, eight-chambered heart, a double set of ribs, redundant nerve systems and an extra lung. In at least one episode where that's brought up, the show also points out that this has its disadvantages; while it allows for survival if one of them fails, the fact that there are more of them increases the chance of one going wrong in the first place, causing problems in the process. It's not just internal organs; Star Trek: Discovery once shows a Klingon taking a leak, and there are two streams. - The warrior race, Luxans from Farscape have two hearts. - The Hindu deities Kali and Vishnu have two pairs of arms (and the former can upgrade to five), and Surya is sometimes depicted with four arms. - A specific Buddha exists who literally has a thousand eyes (all the better to see with) and an equal number of arms (the ultimate multi-tasker). - The biblical Book of Revelation contains many beasts with extra heads, eyes, horns, and so on, including a beast with seven heads and four heavenly creatures that are completely covered in eyes. - The Hekatonkheires of Greek myth, which werepersonifications of natural disasters, each had one hundred heads and arms. - Gamma World. The mutant race known as the orlen were humanoids with two heads and four arms. Additionally, players could create mutant characters with any number of extra parts. - In Warhammer 40,000, the Genestealer Hybrids, an Alienesque cult designed by the equally Alienesque Tyranids, have six limbs, four of which are the normal mammal-human ones, and the two (or sometimes only one) others are clawed and chitin-ed. - For that matter, the Space Marines have 19 extra organs implanted although only two of them are actually spares for existing organs (an extra heart and lung). - Gilgamesh from the Final Fantasy series had at least eight arms. - In Mass Effect, the batarians have four eyes. When humans, or other two-eyed races have conversations with them they get confused because they don't know what to focus on, leading to the batarian attitude that humans are stupid. - Then there's the memorable quote about krogan testicle transplants: "Some go for as much as 10,000 credits a piece, that's 40,000 for the full set." Humans say someone's got a pair - krogan have a quad. - The krogan take this trope to its Logical Extreme, having evolved redundant internal organs as a result of living on a Death World. At one point EDI mentions a krogan's tertiary organ systems, meaning even their spares have spares. And when one of the redundant ones kick in, it triggers an intense adrenaline surge that permits them to knock people aside like ragdolls. Never attack a krogan with anything less than what you'd use to demolish a building. You'll just make him mad. - See the page quote for how Wrex reacts to discovering that humans don't have a redundant nervous system to survive being spaced. - The Shokan (the race of Goro and Sheeva) in Mortal Kombat all have four arms. - Some Faunus in RWBY have animal ears in addition to their human ones. Sun, a monkey Faunus, has a fully prehensile tail. - Dwarves in The Order of the Stick have two livers. This is the in-story justification for their +2 fortitude save against poison, and why it is so hard for them to die from alcohol poisoning. Actually managing to die of alcohol poisoning counts as a death in battle for religious reasons, in respect for the valiant stand against the inevitable the livers made. - Serix: The specs for Rees's clone bodies list her as having four lungs, four hearts, and three stomachs. The Made of Iron Sheriff Ludo also boasts about having thirty-seven hearts after getting a hole blown through his torso. - Futurama: - In Gravity Falls, Mermando, a merman, casually mentions that he has "like, seventeen hearts. Horrifying but true!" - In the Invader Zim episode "Dark Harvest" when there's a physical coming up and Zim realises the nurse would figure out he's not human after examining him, he goes around stealing organs from the other students. Of course, with Zim being Zim he goes over the top and steals more organs than he really needs. Lucky for him the nurse is an idiot and doesn't see anything amiss. - Men in Black: The Series features the Sintillians. Not only do they have two hearts, but neither heart ever stops working; so long as they have at least one and "nobody drops a piano on them", they're effectively immortal. When Alpha steals a Sintillian's heart, K makes it clear to J that the Organ Theft is still a big deal. "You have ten toes. You wake up one morning with one missing, how would you feel?" - Teen Titans (2003): Starfire is quite happy she has nine stomachs when she is spoonfed some Mind Controlling pie and spits it back before digesting it. - The real-life equivalent of this trope is called "supernumerary body part". - Most people have two kidneys and can survive with one. Which is fortunate, as it's one of the most failure-prone organs due to its complexity, so you have a spare if one of yours fails or both of a relative's kidneys fail. That said, it's not unknown for people to be born with a single large kidney or three or four small ones too. - Pretty much everyone has individual variations and redundancies within their body's network of blood vessels, particularly in its veins and smaller arteries. That's why an angiogram or other vessel-mapping procedure is usually carried out before surgery, to ensure there won't be any mid-operation surprises (e.g. discovering the kidney being donated has more than one renal artery). - Four parathyroid glands is the norm for humans, but some people have six, eight, or even more.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrganRedundancy
Original Character - TV Tropes An Original Character is, in the simplest terms, a new character created in a Fan Fic or other work that does not come from an existing copyright work. Any and all Characterization Tropes can apply, along with employing any and all tropes in general. The only real distinction between original and regular characters is that the former are synthesized specifically to unofficially integrate with the canon for the purposes of the story. The vast majority of fanfiction makes use of these, ranging in importance from being background extras to stealing the spotlight of the canonical characters. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, all characters were new once. Series that are structured around new characters every week such as Monster of the Week, Victim of the Week, or Girl of the Week actually require that the author create original characters in order to maintain the Original Flavor of the series. Rarely, these can become a Recurring Fanon Character, one popular enough to be widely used in fanworks throughout the fandom. Attempting to list every instance (or even every "notable" instance) is rather pointless—they are almost as numerous as fan fics themselves. Indeed, TV Tropes does not permit articles for original characters unless they appear in a published work, and then only in Characters subpages of that work. In some places (such as DeviantArt) the term "Fan Character" is used instead, and the distinction "Original Character" refers to a character that exists in a canon of the author's own creation, or the canon of an "Original Character Tournament" (where artists compete by pitting their original character against other people's in fights, or pizza eating contests, or whatever the creator of the tournament has decided is the proper form of conflict); in other words, an "Original Character" is a truly original character without ties to another creative work's canon. The commercial side of this, adding new or re-imagined characters to a non-copyright work, is Serious Business thanks to international laws that consider original adaptations of long-standing public domain works to be copyrightable; but considers further derived works an infringement of intellectual property. This is why companies like Disney can freely adapt The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen into Frozen (2013), while at the same time suing those who make derivatives of the latter. Compare Original Generation. Sister Trope: O.C. Stand-in. Sub Tropes include Sailor Earth (a stock scenario for OCs created by openings in the setting) and Fan-Created Offspring (giving canon characters kids or further descendants). A Canon Foreigner or Canon Immigrant is what happens when an Original Character is created for an official adaptation of an existing work, and sometimes the term is used as a derogatory one. Not to be confused with OOC, although a certain type of OC may cause OOCness in canon characters. Also don't confuse with The O.C., though O.C. original characters might be out there.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalCharacter
Orion Drive - TV Tropes AKA "Ol' Boom-Boom". "So the ship gets flung into the atmosphere by the nuclear explosion that just happened under it. Then what? It's going to start slowing down eventually, right? Well, you drop another nuke out of the concave (and heavily armored) bottom of the ship, and detonate it when it gets about 200 feet away. Rinse and repeat until you're in orbit. What could possibly go wrong?" When you get into space, you're going to need some kind of drive to make moving around easier. If you can't get Artificial Gravity to work your Reactionless Drive, perhaps you need to look at something simpler. Preferably with lots of explosions. You might consider implementing an Orion Drive, an old project that was thought up during the Cold War. Explosive Propulsion meets nuclear weapons, you've got the potential to move much larger ships than normal. The researchers working on this project tended to include things like barber's chairs in their ship designs just to emphasize how much mass they could move. A basic Orion Drive is composed of a Cool Ship, a large armor plate, and enough high yield weapons to set it in motion. They don't necessarily have to be nuclear, but they need to have the equivalent explosive power. A common variant is to have the explosive material be smaller pellets of frozen deuterium-tritium mix, which would then be induced into nuclear fusion by a laser; this is essentially an H-bomb without having to use an A-bomb to set it off. Note that such inertial confinement fusion propulsion systems are not properly termed Orion drives. While this may all sound like madness, scale-model tests with conventional explosives have established that the design is perfectly workable. The main obstacle to actually building one of these is the logistics of lifting the components into orbit, since for reasons that probably need little elaboration, nuclear detonations inside the planet's atmosphere are deprecated these days. A common form of harder sci-fi propulsion systems. See also Explosion Propulsion. ## Examples - Gundam: Thermonuclear propulsion is commonplace in the "Universal Century" continuity, used primarily for extremely massive vessels like space colonies, most notably the asteroid base Axis which used it to move freely throughout the solar system. Officially it actually uses solid fuel pellets which are forced to undergo nuclear fusion with lasers or particle beams, but in the movie Char's Counterattack, a nuclear warhead is actually detonated in the thruster cones of Axis in order to propel it on a collision course for Earth. - Atomic Robo has an Orion Drive based ship appear in Volume 6. Developed in secret, its planned launch is the driving force of the plot \|\|to kill Robo, as its launch would cause enough radioactive fallout to wipe out all life on Earth, leaving Robo as the last survivor, who would then almost certainly chase after it.\|\| - Halo: Tales From Slipspace: When the crew of the UNSC Nereid is stranded deep in space, Commander Coffey makes the suggestion to use the ship's nukes as a means of propulsion, based on early interstellar engines. \|\|However, Major Tanris runs the math and discovers that the yield of their modern 26th century nukes far exceeds that of 22nd century Orion engines, meaning the explosion would actually destroy their entire ship. Coffey's real plan was to Mercy Kill everyone aboard rather than spend more weeks starving and fighting over dwindling resources.\|\| - The Inhumans: When the Inhumans migrate into space, at one point they use a propulsion system that's basically powered by a strapped down Black Bolt shouting through an aperture into space opposite the direction they wanna travel. The physics of it are esoteric, because Black Bolt's power is ostensibly an absurdly powerful sonic scream, so it shouldn't work in space, but it has convoluted properties that make it technically not solely sonic, so it generates propulsive force they can use. - Tintin: The rocket designed by Professor Calculus in "Destination Moon" and "Explorers on the Moon" is propelled by slow-detonating nuclear fission explosions. The engine is made of "calculon", a silicon-based material that was invented by Calculus to withstand the radiation and extreme heat created by the explosions. The rocket also has chemical-fuelled rocket engines so that it can take off and land without polluting the surroundings with deadly nuclear fallout. - Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957-1965 by George Dyson is a non-fiction book about the real research into Orion drives (see the Real Life section below). Dyson is the son of Freeman Dyson, who was involved in the project. - Starfire: - The Shiva Option: An arachnid homeworld is destroyed by converting several asteroids into Orion-drive starships and launching them at it. - Humanity's allies, the pseudo-feline Orions, take the naming of the concept as an honour, not knowing the technology was imagined before humanity ever left Earth. - Stephen Baxter: - Ark (2009): The starship Ark One is built to save a small group of people as Earth drowns under a global flood. It launches and performs the first phase of its mission using a version of Orion. This version is ground launched though owing to the situation (the entire planet is about to drown anyway) environmental concerns are set aside. - Manifold: Space has the main character piloting an Orion craft to a large blue ring situated just outside the Solar system. - Tricentennial: The Daedelus (or John F. Kennedy, or Leonid Brezhnev — apparently spaceships are also prone to renaming) is powered by nuclear bombs. - Troy Rising by John Ringo: Troy, a massive battle station ten kilometers wide made from a hollowed-out and inflated asteroid, adds an Orion Drive so that it can get to the Portal Network and go crush enemy alien fleets. Upon first seeing the Troy come through the gate, the aliens think it's been hit, only to suddenly realize it's actually the drive. - Cosmos: A Personal Voyage: This is mentioned as one possible design for a ship capable of crossing interstellar distances, along with the Daedalus. - The Expanse: The ubiquitous Epstein Drive is a laser-triggered nuclear pulse drive, though operating at a high enough pulse frequency to appear continous. - Space: 1999: In "Voyager's Return", there's a nuclear pulse-drive probe called Voyager One. The dangerous nature of its drive is a plot point. - Star Trek: The Original Series: "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" features a generation ship, constructed out of a hollowed-out iron asteroid, propelled using "Orion class nuclear pulse engines" in which fission bombs were detonated in shafts. It appeared to have been traveling for about 10,000 years, and had traveled about 30 light years on its own power. Unfortunately by the 23rd century one of the tubes is damaged (or the weapons used just plain malfunctioned during a course change) and the ship is on a collision cause with an inhabited planet. As such the Enterprise finds itself fighting to save both planets by correcting the ships course. - Virtuality: Phaeton, Earth's first starship, is propelled by an Orion drive. - Rogue Trader: Rak'gol ships use "fission-pulse" drives, powered by atomic reactors. As such, their ships have high speed, but their maneuverability leaves much to be desired. Also, these drives irradiate the ship so much that other races can't stay inside of them for too long. - GURPS Spaceships has this as far and away the most capable non-superscience propulsion system at low TL, at the cost of extremely expensive fuel and substantial rear armor requirements. At TL 9 and above nuclear pulse drives using externally triggered reactions are the highest performing non-superscience rockets not requiring antimatter. - Aurora (4X), Nuclear Pulse Drive is the second tier of researchable engines. Subverted as its no different than any other engines including Antimatter drives. - Kerbal Space Program: - Orion drives are available in a Game Mod, one of which is developed by the man behind the Atomic Rockets science fiction site, who details the struggles of coding one. On his first test fire of the drive with a 15kt warhead, the force of the explosion caused the command pod to blow off the top like an cork on a champagne bottle. When he changed the code to try to prevent this, the pod shot past the speed of light on the first test fire. - In the base game it's possible to use large amounts of decouplers as an insanely powerful propulsion system. - The sequel (KSP 2) plans to make the Orion Drive available in the stock game. - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the sleeper ship is propelled by an Orion-type drive (probably the laser-fusion variant), the shield of which fails (almost certainly due to sabotage—the ship's captain was also assassinated at the same time) when the ship is almost at its destination, causing the passengers on the colony ship to splinter into factions. - Orion Drive ships are used by all three major factions (the British Empire, the Russians and the Chinese) in the "Monarchy World" Alternate History by Tony Jones. They are launched from zones in each empire which were already radioactively contaminated by earlier nuclear disasters, so further contamination doesn't matter so much. - In the "big enough rock" story◊, humans use a massive explosion to propel \|\|both the Earth and the Moon, one towards hostile aliens, the other towards a new habitable orbit\|\|. - Atomic Rockets - The site has an article on how they work, and on the research that went into the "nuclear shaped charges" (codenamed Casaba Howitzer) that make it go. A tungsten "pancake" results in a beam of plasma (great if you want to use nukes in space, not so much if you want to use them to fly with). Conversely, a styrofoam (yes, really) "cigar" results in a wide wave of plasma, focusing 80% of the bomb's energy onto the pusher plate. - A related idea mentioned is "Nuclear salt water" engines. The propellant is just regular water with thorium salt dissolved in it. Once it's pumped out of the neutron-absorbing holding tanks, the salt goes prompt-supercritical, resulting in a nuclear explosion. The advantage is that it has the exact same power as an Orion drive, but it can keep the pumps on a lot longer. The disadvantage? If it gets shot in the gas tank, it'll explode. - In the "RocketCat's Universe" sample setting, Canada has a fleet of Orion drive warships. - Atomic Robo: This type of craft is the plan of ALAN, used to leave Earth for a voyage of discovery, which would do unfortunate things to the planet he left behind. - Freefall: Discussed when the main cast is inadvertently trapped a few light-seconds away from Planet Jean with only one reactor (long-distance space travel requires two). Sam proposes an Orion drive in lieu of a second reactor, given the availability of a bombs factory that is largely inactive. Unfortunately, the two-reactor rule is for life support purposes rather than propulsion, and besides, the Savage Chicken isn't durable enough for more than one Orion pulse. - Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. The military calls them in to investigate the theft of components to an Orion Drive. Kevin immediately deduces that it's a nuclear bomb. - Project Orion, the Trope Namer, which actually happened — although they never went full-scale for obvious reasons. The project eventually got canceled by an international treaty banning nuclear weapons in space. note : Peaceful uses of nuclear explosions, such as for deflecting asteroids, are not ruled out. and also with Kennedy being really scared by US Air Force's proposals to weaponize the drive. One of these proposals was the 4000 ton Orion Battleship, equipped with six hypersonic landing boats, a secondary armament of three 5 inch naval guns and five 20mm CIWS turrets and a primary armament of 500 twenty megaton conventional nukes and an unspecified ammount of Casaba Howitzers: weaponized version of Orion Drive bombs. The other proposal was even more terrifying: an unmanned version of the Orion Battleship with much of its crew and weapons compartment replaced with a massive 3 gigaton hydrogen bomb — the largest ever seriously proposed by any nation so far, and a veritable Doomsday Device. - Project Daedalus, which was a conceptual design thought up by the British Interplanetary Society, which wasn't worked upon since it's not yet possible. Instead of bombs, it would use a less hamfisted approach, with lasers being focused on small deuterium-tritium pellets to create small fusion detonations - a process which is indeed being studied as a means of peacefully harnessing fusion energy - but the basic idea of using pulsed explosions remains the same. - Project Longshot, which was basically Project Daedalus if it were (A) allowed to decelerate on the way in to Alpha Centauri, and (B) more realistic about the difficulties of using engine power to run its own electrical systems. - Allegedly, the unexpected firing of a 900kg steel lid from the top of a nuclear test chamber into the sky at 60km/s was inspiration for some of the Orion design. If it survived its flight it would have been the first (and only) nuclear launched man made object in space. It probably burnt up before it exited the atmosphere though. Experimental designer Dr. Robert R. Brownlee described the best estimate of the cover's speed from the photographic evidence as "going like a bat out of hell!" - The Medusa spacecraft design, brought to you by the same folk who dreamed up the Daedalus above, was a 90s update that was effectively a nuclear sail. The design would be lighter and more efficient than an Orion-based ship. - Lew Allen's Balls were the original inspiration for Project Orion. They were used to test the effects of point-blank nuclear blasts on various materials. Stainless steel balls within a few feet of the detonation point of small test nukes were found, with minimal damage, embedded in the desert floor thousands of feet away. (This began a chain of reasoning about using the shock wave from a nuke as a source of propulsion that ultimately produced the Project Orion proposal.)	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrionDrive
Orphanage of Love - TV Tropes "We never called the place an Orphanage because we never felt that it was an Orphanage. It was our home." It's tough being an orphan. No parents, no home and a large chance you'll be placed in the horrible Orphanage of Fear. But some fictional orphans get lucky, and go to the Orphanage of Love instead. At the Orphanage of Love, there's enough food for all, and it tastes good. The rooms are spacious and well lit, the beds are soft and laundry is done frequently. The staff genuinely care about their charges and competently take care of them until good foster homes can be found for their precious angels. (Because no matter how wonderful the Orphanage of Love is, actual parents are even better.) Mind you, employee screening isn't perfect, and sometimes a Child Hater will somehow get on the staff and abuse the orphans until he can be exposed. Also, money is generally in short supply, so the heroes will often have to raise a bundle of cash to keep the place running or avoid having it foreclosed on by a Dastardly Whiplash land developer. Expect the heroes of the story to try Saving the Orphanage through whatever wacky means necessary. Expect the orphans themselves to get into the same act. ## Examples: - Blue Ramun: The Lezak District Orphanage might be run by a hardass, but the children are well treated and most importantly, the Orphanage pays the medical taxes that enable their wards to be cared for by Lezak's Blue Doctor. The orphanage becomes a point of focus in Chapter 5, when a young girl from the Salaam slums goes to desperate lengths to get the orphanage to take in her terminally ill little brother, despite the fact that their good-for-nothing father is still in the picture. - Same to the one Nadja lived in at the beginning of Ashita no Nadja. \|\|When Miss Applefield dies in an accident, however, it's dismantled.\|\| - Pony Home, the orphanage that Candy of Candy Candy grew up in alongside her friend Tom and Annie, is one. Managed by Miss Pony and Sister Lane, it's a place where Candy often drops by when she's tired or dispirited. - This is how red bone marrow is depicted in Cells at Work!. A chapel-like structure where blood progenitor cells are lovingly tended by Macrophages, depicted as maids, and White corpuscles, depicted as stark-white policemen. - Rosette and Joshua Christopher from Chrono Crusade grew up in one named Seventh Bell after their parent's deaths. It's very understaffed (seeming to only have a single aging woman named Ms. Jean watching the kids) so the orphans seem to end up doing a lot of the chores, but they're well taken care of and seem to be spoiled rotten. It seemed like the ideal place for them to live, until Joshua went insane when he put a pair of demon's horns on his head, destroyed the orphanage and froze all of the orphans and Ms. Jean in stone. - In Combattler V, Hyouma Aoi was raised in one that was run by a kindly nun. It certainly explains how badly he takes seeing children in risk. - In Cowboy Bebop: \|\|Ed was raised in one of these. Her father is actually alive, but is such a flake that it really was the better living situation for her.\|\| - Death Note: Whether Wammy's House is this or an Orphanage of Fear zigzags depending on which way your Fanon leans. Whichever way, the place cranks out Tyke Bombs like it's manufacturing them... While Mello, Near, and L seem to have been content with the place, others (like A and Beyond) are not so fortunate. It seems to depend on what level of Tyke Bomb you are. - While not an actual orphanage, the majority of the wizards in the title guild of Fairy Tail are teens or young adults without family ties, who have come to look at the guild as their family. A lot of them have even been there since they were small children. - Dee from FAKE was raised in an orphanage like this, \|\|It was nearly destroyed by a developer who wished to build on it and the orphanage's owner who raised Dee, a nun, is nearly killed.\|\| - In Future Diary the orphanage that the 8th runs seems to be one of these, considering how far her kids go to protect her. And she seems willing to fight for the sake of the kids as well. - Despite how much of a Crapsack World the story holds to, Goblin Slayer consistently shows the various temples dedicated to gods that take in orphans to be happy and loving places, with the ones raised there going on to be happy and well-adjusted people, with them only having bad experiences once they leave to experience the world. Priestess maintains great relationships with her fellow Earth Mother clergy, and while Chosen Heroine's rambunctious personality meant the God of Trade's priestesses had to be a bit stern in raising her, she still has fond memories of her childhood. - Hana no Ko Lunlun has the heroine running across one in the South Italian countryside (not exactly mentioned where in Italy, but considering she had just left Sicily, it could be anywhere in Calabria), run by a nun named Sister Mariana and with kids from the age range of 5 to 15. The eldest children, lead by the Hot-Blooded Emilio, fret over cute little Lucero's condition and desperately seek for the money they need for her operation, so they're overjoyed when there are rumors about a hidden treasure coming from World War II. \|\|It wasn't a treasure... but an old bomb.\|\| - It's implied that Father Anderson is the head of one of these in Hellsing. Since for most of the series we see him being a monster-hunting Blood Knight zealot, seeing him treat the children with actual gentleness and kindness is something of a shock. The kids at the orphanage, in turn, seem to love him dearly, and some of the members of his Iscariot Organization are people who grew up in his orphanage. - Najika of Kitchen Princess had one of these in the Lavender House, \|\|which the director of her school tried to shut down, in order to blackmail Najika into losing a cooking contest. It didn't work.\|\| - Lyrical Nanoha: - Tohma from Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force was sent to one of these after his hometown was destroyed. He would have gone on to be Happily Adopted if the plot hadn't come along. - Rinne and Fuka from ViVid Strike! spent their early years in an orphanage run by the Saint Church, though both have left by the time the story starts. - The Maxwell Church from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing was very poor, but otherwise it did well and was run by the kind Father Maxwell and his assistant Sister Helen. \|\|Pity it was blown up in the war and the only survivor, Duo, was quite traumatised.\|\| - \|\|Kabuto\|\| of Naruto ended up in one after his original home was destroyed in a war and he lost his memory. While by no means perfect, the children and one of the caretakers accepted him as family. Even years since last seeing them, \|\|his fellow orphans think of him as a brother\|\|. Also offers a much grimmer example of protecting it from closure: \|\|while still a child, Kabuto became a spy for Konoha to prevent Danzo shutting off the aid\|\|. - It's also part of his Start of Darkness, \|\|when said caretaker ends up in a fight against Kabuto and doesn't recognize him due to brainwashing.\|\| - \|\|After he reconciles his identity issues, Kabuto becomes the new caretaker of said orphanage.\|\| - Subverted in One Piece: \|\|Charlotte "Big Mom" Linlin spent some time in one run by the famous Badass Preacher Mother Carmel... but in reality, Carmel was a slave trader who took in unwanted kids to then sell them to pirates and the Marines. She wanted to pawn off Linlin to the highest bidder, so she took the incredibly big and powerful little girl in and pretended to love her while enabling her worst habits... and during Linlin's sixth birthday it bit her and the other orphans in the ass. Literally.\|\| - Epsilon of Pluto runs one of these for human war orphans. - In Pokémon Adventures, Earl's Pokémon Academy doubles as this. As the place was low on funds and falling apart, Crystal decided to work for Professor Oak to pay for everything the kids needed. \|\|Her selfless attitude inspires Emerald to become a Pokedex Holder.\|\| - Subverted in The Promised Neverland: Grace Field House seems to be this, with thirty-eight happy children and a loving caretaker whom they all call "Mom." However, the First-Episode Twist reveals that the facility is actually a human farm, and all the kids who get "adopted" are actually eaten by demons. - In the Saint Seiya anime, the title character and his older sister Seika spent some time in one of these before Seiya was forcibly taken in by the Kido Fundation and Seika disappeared in search of him. It's featured once in a while since Seiya's Unlucky Childhood Friend Miho still lives and works in it, so in his (almost nonexistant) free time Seiya tends to hang out there, sometimes with Saori and the other Saints joining him. \|\|This is a plot point in one of the non-serial movies: Eri, the newest worker at said orphanage, is at the receiving end of a Grand Theft Me by Eris the Goddess of Revenge.\|\| - Yurii Orhanage, the former home of the heroine Spirits in Shy. - Tsukipro's Issei and Ichiru grew up on one of these, more or less. The people there were kind, and took the kids on picnics with octopus hot dogs, that they nicknamed "tako-tako-kun". When the twins star in a play after moving to Tokyo and becoming idols, the caretakers from the orphanage come to see their play, and are happy for them. - Trigun - Wolfwood grew up in one of these... which is ironic since it is a Tyke Bomb group, in the anime, at least. The manga plays it much straighter, as the Tyke Bomb organization is an entirely separate entity. We even get to see Wolfwood go back and see them, \|\|except the kids haven't grown up as much as he has.\|\| - In The World God Only Knows, Keima is surprised to find that his partner Elsie grew up in one. After the war, many young devils lost their parents, so she was at a government-sponsored home with five hundred other children. She's as upbeat about this as she is with everything else, and even notes that the biological daughter of the patron was like a big sister to all of them. - In the New 52 reboot of Batman, the ultimate Talon, \|\|Bruce Wayne's self-claimed brother Thomas Wayne Junior\|\| was seriously injured in his youth and sent to a prominent children's hospital by his parents to recover in secret. Thanks to the Waynes' funding, the hospital fit this trope. Sadly, when they were killed the funding dried up and the hospital became an Orphanage of Fear. Talon wants revenge on Bruce \|\|for their parents' deaths which lead directly to his life becoming a living hell.\|\| At least, that's his story, Batman points out several flaws in it, but never learns the truth either way. - Midway Orphanage in Batman/Superman: World's Finest (1990 miniseries), at least \|\|once a crook stops being a co-manager\|\|. - An example can be found in the World War I serial "Golden Eyes" and Her Hero "Bill"- after selling off the jewelry and miscellaneous Plunder she "reclaimed" from the German officer who tried to shoot her, Golden Eyes finds she has "enough and more in [her] small fist to provide for around hundred French babiesorphaned by War!" The next paragraph finds her at a "beautiful chateau," far from the front lines, surrounded by happy children who call her "petite maman." It's unclear whether or not Golden Eyes founded the orphanage or if she's just a generous benefactor, as the war orphans are never mentioned again. note : The installment functions as a sort of a Breather Episode (and a chance for Golden Eyes to Pet the Dog even more than she usually does) after her capture by the above-mentioned German officer, which resulted in a combination I Have You Now, My Pretty/ Go-Go Enslavement/ Captive Date arc, followed by a Just in Time rescue from Golden Eyes' sweetheart and their Canine Companion when she's moments away from being executed for espionage. - ORPHANIMO!! is all about an orphanage of love. The last five orphans living there love the place and its owner so much, they sabotage every attempt of the owner to find them adoptive parents. A rich and powerful industrialist however wants to buy the orphanage to use the ground for his latest building. The orphans, of course, try to prevent this in every way possible. - The Vasquez' foster home in Shazam! (2012) technically qualifies since they're considered a group home by the state. They consider themselves a Family of Choice though. - Superman: - In the Pre-Crisis era, the Smallville Orphanage (where the Kents left baby Kal-El at, before returning to formally adopt him) was usually also shown as such. - The Supergirl From Krypton (1959): Although Superman was dickish enough to put his cousin Supergirl in an orphanage after her arrival, at least he cared enough to make sure the Midvale Orphanage was really nice. Nonetheless, it was retconned in Supergirl (1982) that Kara hated the place. - When Wonder Girl Donna Troy finally learns her what her past was prior to being rescued by Wonder Woman and raised on Themyscira in Who Is Donna Troy? she finds out she was placed in an orphanage that managed to combine this with Orphanage of Fear, as the loving atmosphere and kind caretaker were taken advantage of by a lawyer who used the facility to sell children into slavery. The elderly matron who ran the place was heartbroken by the revelation, but still cares for all the orphans she cared for. - In the sixth chapter of the Miraculous Ladybug fic "The Legend of Royal Blue and La Sylphide," it is revealed that, before going to live with his grandfather, Gabriel spent three years in one of these called Schaeffer's Home for Children note : "Le Foyer de Schaeffer pour Enfants" in French. Run by the same family for generations, Nicole the Apron Matron devotedly cares for the kids and raised her own son alongside them without any signs of favoritism. The otherwise antisocial Gabriel is so fond of the place that he comes to Nicole's birthday party every year, and is furious when the Monster of the Week dares to attack it. - Soren from The Night Unfurls was raised in one of these, named Little Angel's Orphanage. Accompanied by Lily, Soren later visits the old building that was once his childhood home to reunite with the caretaker and the children. It turns out that this place was once in dire straits, which motivated Soren to obtain money via thieving to support the orphanage. - Downplayed in The Outside in that it's a group foster home instead of the usual orphanage that Ryuuko gets sent to, but, nevertheless, it's nice place and the staff genuinely cares for the kids. However, Ryuuko didn't much care for the idea. - Skyhold Academy Yearbook: Skyhold Academy, a Boarding School in Thedas, is actually something very much like this, but they keep it secret from most people. The students who board there during the school year are either orphans or come from abusive backgrounds, and the school is on a mission to rescue them and give them a safe place to grow up. - The orphanage Tanya von Degurechaff was raised in is identified as this in A Young Woman's Political Record and A Young Girl's Delinquency Record. In the former, despite starting out as a sociopath, Tanya acknowledges the nuns were always devoted to the children and makes it a point to either send gifts or drop by herself when she has the time; in the latter, an investigation is briefly launched into their finances after the immense success of the film Arene, which depicts the brutal conditions of the orphanage, until the nuns produce the financial records and show how little money they had to work with and that everyone helped in every way they could. - The Care Bears Movie has as its framing device a man named Mr. Cherrywood telling a bedtime story to kids at an orphanage. From what little we see of it, the children seem to love the staff. - The orphanage in Meet the Robinsons where Lewis and Goob grow up appears to be one of these, complete with kindly matron Mildred Duffy. Interestingly, the DVD commentary says that Mildred is careful to not coddle the children too much, since they need to be able to leave when adopted without emotional hang-ups. The biggest problem at Lewis's orphanage is, well, Lewis himself, though he gets better. - My Life as a Zucchini follows Icare/Courgette being sent to a foster home called Fontaine's after his abusive mother dies. Fortunately for Courgette and the other kids, who are all victims of traumatic experiences, Fontaine's is a safe place with friendly staff. - The orphanage where Tim lives in Nocturna doesn't really feature too much in the movie, but it appears to be more or less this trope; children are given the run of the place during the daylight hours and there are plenty of toys to keep them amused. The only hitch is that Tim tends to be given rather a rough time by the other children because of his noisy bedtime ritual. - In The Rescuers, what little we see of Morningside Orphanage where Penny lives seems to be this. The children are well clothed, have toys and other belongings, and are given cookies with their meals. Also, after Penny is kidnapped, the Message in a Bottle she sends is addressed to the orphanage (although the mice find it first), indicating that she trusts the staff to come to her rescue. - St. Gabriel's Home for Orphan Girls in the original Angels in the Outfield is definitely this. - So is the foster home in the remake, run by a kindly woman named Maggie. - The main plot of Blossoms in the Dust. Activist Edna Gladney, appalled by the thoughtless treatment of orphaned and abandoned children, founds an Orphanage of Love dedicated to taking care of such children and matching them with adoptive parents. - St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud Orphanage is, despite being run by The Penguin, a pleasant place. It must be, because The Blues Brothers wouldn't have risked everything to save it otherwise. They also found out that their mentor, Curtis, would be thrown out on the street once the sale of the orphanage was final. - Dead Again: It's implied the orphanage Grace ends up at when she loses her memory is this; Mike Church actually grew up in the orphanage, and he took the case of trying to find out what happened to Grace as a favor to Father Tim, who runs the orphanage, because he credits the priest for helping straighten him out. Of course, that's Tough Love, but Mike seems to have nothing but fond memories of the place. - Escape to Witch Mountain: The orphanage the siblings stay at has a polite and caring owner, lots of kids happily playing around the place and comfortable-looking rooms. The only person with anything bad to say about the place is The Bully. - The orphanage in Love Affair, run by a kindly headmaster who hires Terry to teach music and singing to the children. - Madame Rosa: Madame Rosa runs an unlicensed orphanage in her own apartment. But she plainly loves her little charges, as shown by how tenderly she tucks them in. - The orphanage in Mighty Joe Young seems to have been one of these, a kindly, concerned staff and a large, well kept building. \|\|Unfortunately, it catches fire. Luckily, Mighty Joe Young is there to ensure all the children are saved.\|\| - Nothing but the Night: Oddly enough, despite being an orphanage in a horror film, Iver House seems to be an extremely well run institution, and all the children there appear very happy. Of course, they do not know what is going on behind the scenes... - Relative Fear: Linda's real son is being kept in an orphanage with a decent facility that resembles a normal school, and an administrator who shows genuine concern for him despite his supposed relation to a Serial Killer. - The UN refugee camp for displaced children in The Search, run by hardworking, kindly Mrs. Murray, who is trying to find homes for children displaced by World War II. - The Three Stooges: The Movie: The orphanage Moe, Larry, and Curly are brought up in, Sisters of Mercy, is depicted as this, in spite of the Stooges' trademark antics causing the sisters, Sister Mary-Menglele in particular, plenty of injury and grief. When the orphanage is threatened with foreclosure, the Stooges head out to raise the $830,000 needed to save it, with results atypical of the trio. - Also implied in Untamed Heart, at least as far as where Adam is concerned. The nuns take care of him all the time because he's sick, and read to him the story of how he (supposedly) got his heart. - X-Men: Considering how they live in a world where they're hated or feared, many mutant kids are thrown out or run away from home once they develop their powers. As such, Professor X turned his home into a school and safe haven for mutant kids and teens (like Rogue), though he also willingly takes in and helps any adult mutants who come along (such as Logan). His first students are loyal enough to him that they remain at the school and act as teachers. - The orphanage in Adopt-A-Ghost certainly applies, to the point at which the children love the matron and other orphans so much that they try to avoid being adopted if possible. - Rani from Born Behind Bars ends up in one, run by a woman who goes by Viji Aunty. Because being indoors makes her feel trapped, she's allowed to sleep in a tent in the yard with other kids like her and have her lessons under a tree. The adults are kind, and there's enough food for everyone. - In Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey, the protagonist's backstory features such an orphanage: It was a very good orphanage; a great deal happier than many a home he had seen in passing since. The children had loved it. They had wept when they left and had come back for visits; they had sent contributions to the funds; they had invited the staff to their marriages, and brought their subsequent children for the matron's approval. There was never a day when some old girl or boy was not cluttering up the front door. - In John C. Wright's Chronicles of Chaos, the boarding school straddles the line between this and Orphanage of Fear. On the one hand, they are treated affectionately and given an excellent education. On the other hand, the teachers are under orders to kill them if they start remembering things. - The foundling hall in Michelle Sagara's Chronicles of Elantra is run by a caring and fiercely protective Leontine woman who treats the orphans as her own and does everything she can to keep them well fed, well clothed, and well educated. - The Cider House Rules had a loving, if shabby around the edges and low on funding, orphanage-and-abortion-clinic. - Jean Webster's book Dear Enemy is composed of letters written to various people about the goings-on after the heroine takes on the responsibility of an orphanage, which used to border on Orphanage of Fear until she came along. The "Enemy" of the title is the doctor with whom the heroine cannot get along (for most of the book, at least). The orphanage suffers from a lack of staff and money, but at least manages to get some community support when \|\|a fire burns the place down and the orphans get sheltered with various townsfolk for a while\|\|. - Numerous implied ones in the web-novel Domina. With the exceptions of Derek, Laura, and Akane, pretty much everyone born in the city is an orphan (and even those three are missing one parent each), so orphanages are discussed in the same way parents are discussed in normal cities. The kids complain about their patrons and matrons, but clearly feel safe enough to go back to them at the end of the day. It probably helps that the local Reasonable Authority Figure has a habit of completely annihilating anyone who harms children. - In the Dreamblood Duology, there's the Hetawa's House of Children. Everyone seems to come out of it as Happily Adopted, as it provides for and educates children who would otherwise have had to grow up in poverty and on their own. - Deconstructed a bit in Dresden Files. Harry, who lived in one, points out that no matter how kind the people in the system are to you, it is still a system with lots of people to deal with. - In the Girls Of The Good Day Orphanage series, the eponymous orphanage is one of these. They do have to deal with a stingy financial manager who tut-tuts at what he sees as "frivolities" (things like good food and toys), but the women who are actually in charge of caring for the girls are basically surrogate parents to them. In one book where the two women both have to be away for a while, the woman they bring in as a substitute caregiver is equally kind and loving, notably helping one girl who has low self-esteem realize that You Are Better Than You Think You Are by making a point of recognizing the things she does right (for example, when the girl makes some mistakes in a spelling test, the woman praises her for how many she got right rather than criticize her for the ones she got wrong). - In Hours (2012), Bethel Woods Orphanage is well run and well funded, even providing an allowance for performing extra chores. Just don't talk about "shimmerings", the mysterious program that children are randomly selected for when they reach a certain age. - In Jane Eyre, Jane gets sent off to Lowood - a boarding school that is basically for orphans and poor children - which goes from an Orphanage of Fear to Orphanage of Love over time. - In Kushiel's Legacy, Imriel grows up in a temple of Elua, and although his mother is alive he doesn't learn this until much later. - When Aunt March dies in Little Women, she bequeaths her enormous estate of Plumfield to Jo. Jo and her husband Fritz turn it into Plumfield Estate School, a boarding school for young men in need (some of them orphans), and it forms the setting of the sequel novel Little Men. - "In an old house in Paris, all covered in vines, lived twelve little girls, in two straight lines. The smallest one was Madeline". Though it's technically a boarding school, Madeline herself is an orphan (in the live-action movie, anyway note : In the original books, she at least has a father, as revealed in the very first one.) and the other kids' parents never really figure into the plot. - The Yorkburg Female Orphan Asylum in Mary Cary, Frequently Martha would qualify, especially after the arrival of Miss Katherine, who comes to live there and work as a nurse without a salary and makes a lot of changes: better food, nicer Christmases, and improvements via some donations s from her rich brother. - In The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Mma Potokwane's orphan farm is run by a caring woman who firmly believes that a child needs love. - Natalie Savage Carlson's twenty Orphelines lived happily in a small private orphanage run by Mme. Flattot and her assistant Genevieve. There were several books about these little girls, who regarded themselves as a family and didn't want to be adopted. - In Rose in Bloom, the sequel to Eight Cousins, the now-grown Rose decides to use a large portion of her inherited wealth to establish the Rose Garden, which is one of these. - Sharpe: In Sharpe's Prey, the orphanage at which Astrid works is this. Sharpe, who grew up in an Orphanage of Fear, takes a while to actually understand the concept. - Mother Karen's home in Spellbent and Shotgun Sorceress by Lucy Snyder is one of these. Mother Karen herself rivals Fred Rogers in the "Friend to all children" category and is unfailingly kind even when monumentally stressed out. What she can't do, she relies on the teenage orphans (raised under her sterling example, of course) to do. - Downplayed in Steve Berry's The Third Secret. The Romanian orphanage is... a Romanian orphanage. But the nuns and priest who run it are very kind. There just isn't enough money. Fr. Tibor's holding the place together with Scotch tape and rosary beads \|\|before he's murdered. But Fr. Colin is inspired to make the orphanage his life's mission, and he's bringing his considerable personal fortune with him.\|\| - Which Witch?, \|\|at the end when the old matron-turned spider is replaced by a sweeter woman\|\|. - You Can Be a Cyborg When You're Older by Richard Roberts: Ms. Understanding's orphanage is full of love despite the fact it is underfunded and barely keeping above water. The fact it is one by one of the few sane AI left in the world helps make it a place of love as she is literally programmed to give the children unconditional love in a Crapsack World. - The A-Team: Face was raised in an orphanage from a young age. While he was a bit upset that he never had a real family growing up, every time he reminisces about the orphanage it's a happy memory. We even get to meet a couple of the nuns who raised him in one episode and the kids under their care look fine. - Played with in Argentinian soap-opera Chiquititas. It starts as a true orphanage of love, all the girls get to eat good food, sweets, a nice place to sleep and go to school. However, as soon as the plot starts marching on and the real reason for why the orphanage was built on the first place is revealed to both the characters and the viewers, it slowly descends into an Orphanage of Fear. Then, when the Big Good finally gets full control of the orphanage by the third season, it goes back to orphanage of love again. - Jeremiah: The series finale features a school/orphanage for children who were born out of Teen Pregnancy in the aftermath of the apocalyptic Big Death and are well-educated and cared for physically and emotionally. - Million Yen Women deconstructs the idea from the orphan's point of view. \|\|Midori\|\| was abandonned by her parents at a young age. She ended up in an orphanage run by a couple who made it a rule to be called "mom" and "dad" by their wards and asked them to treat each other as siblings. Possibly due to her history, \|\|Midori\|\| never liked the setup, considers it to have been an abnormal upbringing and wanted to get out as fast as she could. The only other orphan she considered anything close to an actual relative was an older boy who was asked to show her around upon her arrival. - Sister Kate features a bunch of kids who are living quite happily in an orphanage with the titular Sister Kate, who is hired to look after them after they ran off the home's last caretaker. - When Hope Calls centers upon two sisters in their mid-twenties who start an orphanage in early 20th century Canada. As they lost their own parents when they were very small, they are determined to provide the best life possible for the children in their care. - In the Champions supplement Allies, the tokusatsu-inspired Zen Team operates out of such an orphanage as part of their cover. The children weren't fooled for long. - Jade from Beyond Good & Evil operates her Lighthouse Shelter, specifically for war orphans. They run a little low on cash sometimes, but there's warm beds, plenty of food, a Big Friendly Dog, and, you know—lighthouses are inherently cool. - In Demonbane, Sister Leica runs one in the church she's in charge of, taking care of three orphaned kids. They all adore her, and she treats them as though they were her own children. - The \|\|entire playable party (plus Seifer, minus Rinoa)\|\| in Final Fantasy VIII grew up in one. \|\|GF-induced amnesia made everyone except Irvine forget\|\|. - Fire Emblem: - In Fire Emblem: Awakening, Libra the War Monk builds and mantains one of these in all of his endings note : Save the one with a girl Avatar, since those are generic. (Though nothing says they couldn't have done so anyway.). If he's married, his wife (and presumably their child) will help him out take care of the orphans — with different results, depending on who his lady is: Miriel is a bit stand-offish, both Lissa and Nowi become One of the Kids, Tharja is Tsundere to them, Sully is the local Cool Big Sis, etc. - Before Awakening took place, there was the orphanage in Genealogy of the Holy War where Patty and Faval (or their expies Daisy and Asaello) used to live. Either Patty or Daisy will become a thief to help feeding the kids, while either Faval or Asaello will be hired by the enemy nobleman Bloome under the promise of getting enough money to sustain it. Both can be recruited into the group. - In Thracia 776, \|\|Misha works for the Silesse army to help feeding and raising the children of one of these. She can be recruited into the main group, however.\|\| - In Blazing Blade's epilogue, Lucius (who Libra above was based on) also opens an orphanage, \|\|what with him being a war orphan as well\|\|. It's implied to be the same one that Nino's children, Lugh and Raigh, grew up in between that game and Binding Blade, \|\|which unfortunately doesn't bode well for Lucius, since that orphanage was destroyed during Bern's invasion. (The closest to a subversion of this bad ending would be his shared one with his master Raymond aka Raven, in which Lucius remains as Raven's vassal as they go Walking the Earth.)\|\| - In Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, the White Magician Girl Tatiana tells Alm that she was raised in one belonging to the Church of Rigel. She became a Cleric/Saint as thanks to the church staff that was so kind to her. - Hatoful House, in the backstory of Hatoful Boyfriend, was a bit short on money. There were thirteen birds and a caretaker there, and medicine cost much more than food. Older orphans would contribute by working and bringing their salaries back. Still, the Ill Boy worried about being a burden aside, they were happy. \|\|Everyone there was a war orphan, their parents killed by humans. It's human terrorists who came and killed most of them.\|\| - In the backstory of Jade Empire, there was one in Tien's Landing. The monstrous Emperor decided to flood the town while the orphan-keeper was out buying food. He tried to save his orphans, but failed to get them all out. Ten years later, the ghosts of the orphans want peace and the old man is still beating himself up and drowning his sorrows at the tavern over his failure. Your Spirit Monk can allow him to be killed by the angry ghosts, or earn a heartwarming moment by allowing the old man to make amends by giving the tots a proper burial. - \|\|Hanako Ikezawa\|\| from Katawa Shoujo lived there until she came to Yamaku. It's more of a downplayed example, however: \|\|while the staff treated Hanako kindly, she was kind of a Parental Substitute for the youngest children in her last days there and she got to enjoy the place's small library, she still couldn't make friends, and it didn't keep her from being bullied outside of it in her middle school years.\|\| - The third world in Mystic Ark could essentially be summed up as this (\|\| Even though they never had parents to begin with and Cecille (the caretaker) created everything from the ground up with the help of the Wisdom Ark\|\|), though for a good half of the time you spend in that world, Chimera, influencing Cecile, turns it into the opposite, especially during the final part of your visit there when the orphanage is overrun by monsters. - In MS Saga: A New Dawn, the hero and his cowardly sidekick were raised in one, complete with the kind, matronly caretaker. \|\|Of course, this being Gundam-related, it gets attacked by Zakus and burned down with everyone but the two of them inside.\|\| - Persona 3 implies that Akihiko Sanada and Shinjiro Aragaki also grew up in one; in Akihiko's Social Link in the PSP release of the game, he mentions that the orphanage lacked good food and toys, but everyone was well-taken care of. - This is in \|\|Kou Ichijo's\|\| backstory in Persona 4. \|\|This causes him to be looked down by some members of the family who adopted him.\|\| - Milla Vodello in Psychonauts has a backstory where she worked in one of these. Until \|\|the orphans tragically died in a fire, an event that haunts her subconscious to this day\|\|. - Rutee Katrea of Tales of Destiny grew up in the Dunamis orphanage, and her desire to help them out financially drives her money-seeking ways. After the events of the game, she and Stahn get married and eventually take over running it— their biological son Kyle even takes "Dunamis" as a surname so that the other orphans don't feel left out. - Court Seim from Wild AR Ms 1 is a village full of orphans who are clearly loved and cared for, while doing their best to keep things running. \|\|It turns out to be the real reason Jane is so focused on getting as much money as possible. She's the orphanage's breadwinner and she sticks with the job because the orphans see her as a Cool Big Sis.\|\| - In World of Warcraft both the horde and the alliance both have an orphanage in their capital cities for children who lost their parents due to the war. Both are run by caring and loving women, and they all seem to have lots of fun there. And once a week every year they host a holiday event whee players take a kid on a world wide trip to give them a perfect day out. - Unfortunately, the Lord British Postulate extends to these kindly matrons. When they relocate to take their charges trick-or-treating, some of the less desirable elements may target the matrons. - From Yakuza 3 onwards, Kazuma runs one in Okinawa. His kids have a loving father figure who feeds them, gives them shelter, educates them and overall is one cool dad... and if someone messes with them, he'll savagely beat them til they puke their sternum out. - Kazuma himself, along with Nishiki and Yumi, among others, were raised in Sunflower Orphanage, which seems to be regarded fondly by all of them. That it was evidently a caring environment is especially surprising considering \|\|it was founded/run by a yakuza hitman to house the children he orphaned in the course of his business.\|\| - Shrapnel: Reznya works at/runs/helps out an orphanage, and is very loving and motherly towards the children there. - In Disney High School, several characters (Aladdin, Flynn, Peter Pan) live at the Good Home for Lost Boys, run by Cornelius and Franny Robinson. It hasn't been seen on-page yet, but they're dishing out money for their kids to attend a fancy private school, so it's clearly a nice place. - minus.: One is portrayed◊ after minus sends a little girl back in time (to the beginning of the 20th century). - The title character of Selkie was adopted from one, and it continues to be an important setting throughout the story. - The San Lorenzo orphanage in The Adventures of Puss in Boots: Señora Zapata might seem strict and bossy, but she genuinely wants what's best for the kids, and Dulcinea is there to soften her sharp edges. Taken to extremes in "Lost and Foundlings": the first time someone actually wants to adopt one of the orphans, Zapata and Duclinea are in tears at the thought of losing one of them, while doing a hilariously bad job of showing a brave face for the sake of the children. \|\|None of them want to leave either, and in the end the prospective parent moves into the orphanage!\|\| - The Animaniacs episode "The Big Candy Store" features an orphanage lovingly run by a sweet Irish nun. The mean candy store owner Mr. Flaxseed's refusal to donate candy to the kids for Easter sets him up for karmic retribution from the Warner siblings — and when the Irish nun and her fellow sisters see him mistreating the Warners, they unleash some serious Mama Bear payback of their own. - Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, but with imaginary friends whose owners have grown-up and left them. It has a surprisingly very very very small staff for such a one-of-a-kind place, but everyone there generally enjoys their stay. Madame Foster and her granddaughter, Frankie Foster, along with Madame Foster's own childhood imaginary friend, Mr. Herriman, are essentially administrators. Many of the orphaned friends do a lot of work to keep the place running, though Frankie has to take up the slack. - The Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium from Futurama is as close as it gets to this trope, operating in a Crapsack World on a shoestring budget. All of Leela's memories of the place are good (save for the teasing about her eye), the director genuinely cares about the kids and he generally works hard on making them happy and finding them new parents. Of course, this being Futurama, it's more of a Hilariously Abusive Childhood that Leela has fond memories of in a manner similar to Phoebe (and some other folks) in Friends, complete with much of the humor coming from her talking of it as if it were great fun. For one example of what it's really like, they didn't have any books... because they ate them to avoid starvation since they didn't have any food. Leela also remembers genuinely fondly of how the warden used to tell her "You're worthless and no-one will ever love you!" - Jem: Starlight House isn't an orphanage, it's a foster home, but the same principle applies. How amazing it is is lampshaded when three of the girls run away and get called out for leaving such a positive place to live on the streets. - In My Little Pony Tales, Patch used to live in one of those before being adopted, and she seems to have pretty fond memories of the place, as she still has friends there and loves to help other orphan ponies. - The Children's Home in Warsaw run by the Friend to All Children Janusz Korczak appears to have been this. The children had their own court, they were treated fairly, and the two heads worried themselves silly if a child refused to eat. Despite offers from virtually everyone (Jewish Council, Polish Resistance, German Police) to keep him safe, director Korczak went with the 192 survivors to Treblinka. He didn't want them to be worried, so he kept them oblivious to the facility's purpose for as long as possible, and he didn't want to live without them. - The Coram Hospital, revolutionary in its day. - The Palmer Home makes an effort to be this.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanageOfLove
Orphaned Index - TV Tropes An Index of tropes about orphans or that often involve orphans. Tropes that have been left all alone in the world include: Related: Adopt an Index Parental Issues <!—index—> Abandon the Disabled: A character is abandoned by their parents, because they are born disabled. Alone Among Families: A character with no family is surrounded by happy families. Anachronistic Orphanage: A traditional orphanage in a setting where there logically shouldn't be one. The Artful Dodger: Crafty, street-wise homeless child. Conveniently an Orphan: A character is an orphan so the plot can move along more easily. Don't Split Us Up: Siblings don't want to be adopted by separate families. Doorstop Baby: A baby is left on someone's doorstep and adopted by whoever lives in the house. Escaped from the Lab: The character is a refugee from a laboratory that experimented on them. Evil Orphan: An orphan (normally a young girl but sometimes a young boy) who turns out to be evil. Evil Orphanage Lady: An female orphanage owner who's cruel to the orphans. Fostering for Profit: Someone fosters a child purely for business. Heartwarming Orphan: An orphan child who normally ends up being adopted and is a good character who makes the audience emotional. Lost Orphaned Royalty: An orphan turns out to be descended from royalty. Nephewism: A kid is raised by his aunt/uncle rather than by his parents. Notorious Parent: The mother and/or father leaves the kid because theyre criminals on the run. Orphanage of Fear: An orphanage where the orphans are abused and tormented by the people running it. Orphanage of Love: An orphanage that treats its orphans well. Orphan's Ordeal: When being an orphan sucks. Orphan's Plot Trinket: Plot critical object of sentimental value to an orphan. Parental Abandonment: Neither of the character's parents are seen or mentioned. Disappeared Dad: A character's father is never seen while their mother is accounted for. Missing Mom: A character's mother is never seen while their father is accounted for. Parental Substitute: A character who acts as a parental figure to someone whose parents are absent or out of focus. Pauper Patches: A character living in poverty is wearing clothes that are patched up. Promotion to Parent: An older sibling takes responsibility to take care of their younger sibling or siblings. Raised by Grandparents: A character with missing parents is instead raised by their grandparents. Raised by the Community: An entire community of people not related to a child raise the child. Rules of Orphan Economics: Orphans will either be totally provided for or will have to scrape by on their own Satisfied Street Rat: An orphaned kid who has turned living on the street to their advantage. Saving the Orphanage: The hero has to stop a heartless business exec who wants to destroy a local Orphanage of Love. Self-Made Orphan: A person who has killed their own parents. Street Urchin: An orphan who spends most of their time on the streets doing what they can to get by. Teenage Wasteland: Kids now have adult power and responsibility and rule over society. Unknown Relative: The identity of a character's close relative is unknown to them, the audience or both. <!—/index—>	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanedIndex
"Seinfeld" Is Unfunny aka: Original At The Time There are certain works that you can safely assume most people have enjoyed. These shows were considered fantastic when they were released. Now, however, these have a Hype Backlash curse on them. Whenever we watch them, we'll cry, "That is so old" or "That is so overdone". The sad irony? It wasn't old or overdone when they did it, because they were the first ones to do it. But the things it created were so brilliant and popular, they became woven into the fabric of that work's niche. They ended up being taken for granted, copied, and endlessly repeated. Although they often began by saying something new, they in turn became the new status quo. It's basically the inverse of a Grandfather Clause taken to a trope level: rather than being able to get away with something that is seen as overdone or out of style simply because it was the one that started it, people will unfairly disregard it because it got lost amidst its sea of imitations even though it paved the way for all those imitators. That is, a work retroactively becomes a Cliché Storm. There may be a good reason for this. Whoever is first to do something isn't likely to be the best at it, simply because everyone that comes after is building on their predecessors' work. Named after Seinfeld, which many people won't watch anymore because everything about it has been copied. note : To be clear, we mean Seinfeld the series, not Seinfeld the person—Jerry's stand-up segments were, even at the time, generally the least funny part of the episode and appeared less and less as the show went on. Most likely will result in Fan Haters and accusations of Rule Abiding Rebels. This can also occur in countries that get the shows years after they originally come out. When someone attempts to make something back to its roots in this time and age, see Reconstruction. Compare with Appeal to Novelty, Not-So-Cheap Imitation, Newer Than They Think, Older Than They Think, Discredited Meme, Unbuilt Trope, Franchise Original Sin, Hype Backlash, Rule-Abiding Rebel, Early-Installment Weirdness, Parody Displacement, and Dead Horse Trope. Contrast Vindicated by History. This is a special case of Newer Than They Think, when the Trope Codifier is thought to repeat old clichés; and a case of Older Than They Think when the imitators are much more famous. The same principle applied to ethical or cultural issues is Fair for Its Day. The exact opposite of Values Resonance. The worst outcome is Condemned by History. Occasionally overlaps with Values Dissonance. Not to be confused with honestly thinking that Seinfeld is not funny. Works must be at least ten years old to qualify. It is difficult to properly look back at the cultural impact of something without some distance because brief trends can sometimes be mistaken for something more substantial.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalAtTheTime
Original Cast Precedent - TV Tropes Doesn't it sometimes seem like, when someone does Jesus Christ Superstar, Judas is always black? This may not technically be true—there may indeed be as many non-black actors cast in the role as black ones—the point is that the impression is there. Most people who know the show, or at least the Broadway production with Ben Vereen and film with Carl Anderson, when they think of the character, think of him as black. This phenomenon is also why most people who think of the musical RENT will imagine Mark with short blond hair and glasses. This can also refer to casting conventions, such as how certain shows are always subject to (sometimes ridiculous) Dawson Casting whereas others are less so. Whether or not this refers only to things not listed in the script or things that may be listed in the script but are irrelevant to the characters and story is up for debate. ## Notable original cast precedents include: - In Into the Woods, the actor who plays Cinderella's Prince doubles as the Wolf, the Narrator as the Mysterious Man, and Cinderella's Mother as Granny and the Giant. This is not a script-based necessity, merely a tradition established by the original Broadway production. - Nathan Lane codified the performance of Max Bialystock, so much so that in a brief Fourth Wall-breaking moment in "Betrayed," Max will pull out a Playbill and remark "He's good, but he's no Lane!". - Pippin: - Inverted in the case of the Leading Player was originally played on Broadway by Ben Vereen. However, there really is no typical image of the Leading Player, and 'he' is as often a 'she' as not, and of all different ethnicities, body types, and ages (as long as he/she is older than Pippin). The only stereotype of this role is that it's hardly ever played by a white male. - A straight example is that the original actor for Pippin had absolutely no luck with the costume department in regards to shoes. He could never find a pair of shoes that were comfortable, so one night, fed up, he decided to do the whole show barefoot. It wasn't easy. In his dressing room after the curtain call, Bob Fosse (the choreographer) came in. The actor prepared himself for a grovelling apology, but instead Fosse gushed, "I love it! Barefoot! Gives you that innocence." Since then, Pippin is always barefoot. - Godspell: Jesus always wears a Superman logo (or in the case of the film, a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo version), and everyone save Jesus and John/Judas are The Danza.invoked - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: - Mrs. Lovett is almost always cast a little on the plump side or blowsy, like Angela Lansbury as opposed to the equally (perhaps more) likely possibility of her being thin and bony. Christine Baranski is one of the few skinny Mrs. Lovetts. - There also seems to have been a shift based on the Revival's take on her. Angela Lansbury made her rather grandmotherly, but Patti LuPone's version is younger and more in the way of a Perky Goth, a presentation which also applies to the film version (although most Tim Burton characters have Looks Like Cesare going on anyway). - The title character's One-Liner when he triumphantly holds out his razor is, according to the script: "My right arm is complete again!" So why is it usually performed and remembered as, "At last my arm is complete again"? Len Cariou of the original Broadway cast was left-handed. - Utterson in Jekyll & Hyde tends to be played by a black actor, despite no particular reason for this. - Higgins' songs in My Fair Lady were meant to be sung, not spoken, but many portrayers follow the precedent of original non-singer Rex Harrison. - Has there ever been a production of Camelot with an Arthur who could sing? The original Arthur was Richard Burton, and Richard Harris played the role in the movie and later on stage. Indeed, it's a tradition for any big budget version of Camelot to have Arthur played by a respectable movie star with little or no singing experience (Burton, Harris, Laurence Harvey, Gabriel Byrne, Michael York, Andrew Burnap) or someone who made their theatre career singing that way (Jeremy Irons). A rare exception was Robert Goulet — the original Broadway cast's Lancelot — playing Arthur in a touring production ca. 1998-1999. - Peter Pan: - The title role has almost always been played by a woman, as most men post-puberty would be unable to pull off the acrobatic choreography, while still having a childlike voice and frame. - Similarly, Mr. Darling and Captain Hook are generally played by the same person. (Though Barrie originally wanted Mrs. Darling to be the actress to play Captain Hook... make of that what you will.) - The Peter Pan musical inherits the traditions associated with Peter and Hook, and adds one of its own: the role of Eliza, the maid, is typically doubled with that of Tiger Lily. - The Wiz (an adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) was originally staged with an all-black cast, and the movie version and many subsequent productions have followed suit. However, perhaps since race doesn't seem like an in-story issue to those who take it at face value, it's not uncommon to see colorblind stagings, especially on the amateur level. - Alice in Wonderland: - The original book's illustrations depicted Alice as blonde, even though the real-life Alice Liddell was dark-haired. Most adaptations follow the illustrations in making Alice blonde and blue-eyed. - And for Alice In Wonderland in general, the main time when you do see a dark-haired Alice is when the story's been Grimmified. (Though this isn't done in every dark retelling. Just a lot of them.) Perhaps this is because it makes her look more like a goth. A notable exception to this tradition is a musical film adaptation from the early '70s which featured Dudley Moore. - Revivals of The Cradle Will Rock often do without costumes, scenery or orchestra; the original production (which was directed by Orson Welles, by the way) did this out of necessity when the actors were locked out of the theatre it was supposed to open in. - Little Shop of Horrors: - The voice of the Man-Eating Plant is usually that of a black singer, though his (real) face is unseen — or rather, is seen only as that of a Skid Row bum, which he doubles as by precedent. - Audrey is nearly always blonde, or given a blonde wig, thanks to Ellen Greene's iconic portrayal. Though ironically enough, Greene herself is naturally a brunette and wore a wig when she played the role. - Zero Mostel had a huge influence on future portrayals of the characters he played. Most notably Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof—a dirt poor Russian Jew shouldn't logically be a very fat man. - Guys and Dolls: - Sky Masterson is the traditional romantic lead while Nathan Detroit is the more comic role. Though Nathan Detroit was originally played by the tone-deaf Sam Levene, thanks to Frank Sinatra's portrayal in the movie, Nathan Detroit is often played by the better singer. - Nicely-Nicely Johnson tends to be heavyset, thanks to Stubby Kaye in the film version. - Broken with the Red Bird in Cirque du Soleil's Mystère — it was always a male role until the artistic directors of the show realized a certain female member of the company was better suited to the character's personality. It required a new costume design, since the original was designed as a Walking Shirtless Scene, but worked out so well that the role can now be filled with a performer of either gender. - The Phantom of the Opera: - Christine is almost always a brunette because Sarah Brightman, who originated the role, has dark hair. It should be noted that RUG tends to keep a very close rein on character designs in their productions. (In 2014 Emmi Christensson became the first Christine to have a blonde wig in the West End. All other blonde Christines in ALW's Phantom have been in non-replica productions.) - In casting the managers, Firmin is almost invariably older and more heavyset than Andre. - Most of the characters in RENT tend to be portrayed as the same ethnicities from production to production, and their appearances are closely associated with the original performers. This was probably exacerbated by the film version casting the majority of the original cast. - Everyone remembers Joanne as black, because she was in the original Broadway cast. When the time came for the film, Fredi Walker, who felt herself too old to play a lawyer just out of law school, made one request — that Joanne remain black — and so Tracie Thoms got the role. - Collins and Benny, too, are usually black; their roles were originated by Jesse L. Martin and Taye Diggs. - Roger tends to be a blonde. - Maureen almost always appears with curly brown hair. - The before-mentioned blond, bespectacled Mark (a bit unusual given that he's Jewish). - The only notable aversion to this in Rent is Angel. The role was originated by Wilson Jermaine Heredia, who's Dominican; later Angels have included Jose Llana (Filipino) and Telly Leung (Chinese), and the original understudy, Darius De Haas, is black. - The recent 20th Anniversary UK Concert Touring production saw some backlash when Kerry Ellis, a white English actress, was cast as Mimi, a Hispanic character. - All of this aside, there's also the matter of voices (inflections, center of tone, and general voice qualities). For example, although Ko-Ko in The Mikado is generally kind (and debatedly The Woobie) due to the casting of a certain John Reed, almost every portrayal you see has the same character voice. Which wrecks havok on those preparing to audition for the part, who have to choose whether to read the part in their own voice or the precedented one. Similarly, actors have imitated Victor Moore's character voice as Throttlebottom in Of Thee I Sing and Moonface in Anything Goes. - Hairspray: - The original film had Divine playing Tracy's mom Edna, and the stage shows and later movie continue the man-as-woman tradition. - Tracy Turnblad is always played by a newcomer. - Les Misérables: - The majority of Eponines have had dark hair, despite that Hugo himself is not very consistent on Eponine's hair color, describing her first as having "chestnut/auburn" colored hair before later referring to her as having "a blonde and lymphatic pallor.". This is probably set by original Eponine, Frances Ruffelle and reinforced by notable 10th Anniversary Concert Cast Eponine, Lea Salonga, and 25th Anniversary, Samantha Barks. In fact, Megan Lawrence, a blonde Eponine on Broadway, commented once to an interviewer that she never thought she'd get to play Eponine because she was a blonde. - Cosette, a brunette in the book, is always given a brown wig, regardless of the hair colour of the actress. However, there have been a few blonde Cosettes, such as Katie Hall in the 25th Anniversary Concert (although she too wore a dark wig when she played the role at the Queen's Theatre) and Amanda Seyfried in the film adaptation. - Double subverted with Thénardier. Alun Armstrong debuted the role in London with a cockney accent, and this has been the standard ever since in British productions. However, the more famous recording is the Original Broadway Cast version, which has Leo Burmester perform the role in his American accent, while attempting an upper-class British accent in front of his guests at the inn. The film has Sacha Baron Cohen drawing from elements of both, with cockney being his default, and putting on a French accent in front of the guests. - Helene in Sweet Charity is traditionally played by a black actress, like Thelma Oliver in the original Broadway cast and Paula Kelly in the 1969 film. (Though, in an aversion, Charity herself was played by a black actress, Debbie Allen, in the 1986 Broadway revival.) - The Rocky Horror Show: - Eddie and Dr Scott are frequently played by the same actor. The film, which casts two different actors in the roles, is a rare aversion of this. - The Usherette who sings "Science Fiction Double Feature" is often played by the actress who portrays Magenta or Columbia. - In Das Rheingold, at the point where Wagner's text merely reads "as if seized by a great thought," Wotan usually holds up a sword left over from Fafner's hoard and points it towards the castle, in accordance with the "sword" Leitmotif which makes its first appearance here. This practice was approved by Wagner for the inaugural Bayreuth production of 1876 (though Das Rheingold had its premiere seven years earlier). - Bram Stoker never describes Dracula as wearing a cape. The image came from an early stage production, which included the cape to facilitate the special effects - the actor playing Dracula would close the cape around him when he was disappearing into a hidden trapdoor, making it look like he had vanished into thin air. It got carried over into the film, and since then, the cape has become associated not only with Dracula, but with vampires in general. - In productions of 1776, Abigail Adams nearly always wears blue and Martha Jefferson nearly always wears pink. - Emile de Becque from South Pacific is almost always played by an Italian operatic baritone; for instance, Ezio Pinza, Rossano Brazzi, and Paulo Szot. Brazzi, although dubbed by Georgio Tozzi (operatic tenor!), still checked off 'Italian'. Which is interesting, as de Becque is ostensibly French. - Grease: - The Teen Angel and Johnny Casino are usually played by the same actor, as Alan Paul played both in the original Broadway production. Exceptions to the rule include Johnny Casino being written out of some stagings, so that the actor for Vince Fontaine will instead double the part for the Teen Angel. - Danny is almost always a brunet, as are the rest of the Burger Palace Boys. However, sometimes a blond will be cast in one of the roles, or sometimes one character will receive a Race Lift (as with one actor for Doody in the '94 Broadway revival). - Rizzo is generally black-haired, while Frenchy is almost always a redhead, Marty is a blonde, and Jan has brown hair. The '94 production averted this at first, by having Megan Mullally play a brunette Marty and Jessica Stone play Frenchy as a blonde. - Sandy herself is nearly always played by a blonde actress, or the actress will be given a blonde wig. This in part was due to the popularity of Olivia Newton-John's portrayal in the film adaptation, although the real-life inspiration for Sandy's character was also a blonde. Although in both the '72 and 2007 Broadway productions, the initial actresses for Sandy were allowed to keep their dark hair. - Both Joel Grey and Alan Cumming made such indelible impressions as the Emcee in Cabaret that most versions of the character are likely to recall one or the other. Also, the tendency for Broadway revivals to cast a young film actress generally not known for musicals as Sally (like Natasha Richardson and Michelle Williams) is just following the casting of Jill Haworth in the original run. - Though Benjamin Britten's War Requiem is a non-theatrical choral work, performances of it tend to involve a Russian soprano, a British tenor and a German baritone, despite there being nothing in the texts implicating those specific nationalities. This tradition, of course, was started with the original 1962 performance and recording under the composer (even though Galina Vishnevskaya couldn't make the premiere and had to be replaced with Heather Harper). - This trope was parodied in a Saturday Night Live sketch in which critics lambaste the lead actor in The King and I for not being bald, like Yul Brynner, while the actor demands that critics point to the part in the script where it says that the King is bald. - Hank Azaria originated the role of Lancelot in Spamalot. Ever since then, despite the fact that Lancelot is described as "big and strong and hot" and was originally played on film by the very tall and handsome John Cleese, Lancelot's actor tends to be extremely small compared to his fellow knights. This could be attributed to the fact that Lancelot's actor also has to play three extremely hammy and heavily-accented side characters, and being able to do that is more important than matching Lancelot's physical description, but doesn't quite explain why the actor must always be so short. - In Avenue Q, more than just a few people assume that Gary Coleman is always played by a black woman. Most Youtube clips with songs from Avenue Q are from the Broadway production with Natalie Venetia Belcon playing Coleman, so it made a few people confused whenever they found clips from the London production featuring Giles Terera. - In most productions of West Side Story, the Jets tend to wear blue and yellow clothing while the Sharks wear red and purple. The most recent Broadway revival bucked this trend by having the Jets wear green and orange instead. - Though the casting calls of Hamilton simply say that every actor (with the exception of the one playing King George III) should be non-white, most productions match up exactly with the ethnicities of the original Broadway cast (predominantly black, with Latino men as Hamilton and Laurens and an Asian woman as Eliza), though this is far from universal. - Dear Evan Hansen: Alana is typically played by a black woman, as her original actress Kristolyn Lloyd was a black woman. The only major production where she isn't at least a woman of color is the first tryout in Washington D.C. - Anything Goes: Moonface Martin was originally played by the 5'7 Victor Moore, and since then, is typically portrayed by short men. Given Moonface is supposed to be a Harmless Villain, casting physically unimposing men likely helps add to that. - The Play That Goes Wrong: Robert was originally played by the tall, heavy, and bearded Henry Lewis, and most subsequent actors in the role tend to fit that description. - A costume based variant in The Spongebob Musical. Both Sandy and Pearl were originated by black actresses, as the former is given an afro to give the impression of her air bubble helmet, while the latter is given a whale head shaped hairdo for obvious reasons. The first hairdo originated from African culture while the latter is heavily inspired by it, so the roles are cast with this in mind. - You'd be hard-pressed to find a production of Shrek: The Musical that doesn't cast a black actor as Donkey, despite the character being non-human. Of course, Eddie Murphy originated the role in the film, so audiences have just come to expect Donkey to be black. ## Non-theatre examples - Elsa in Disney's Frozen and its sequel is voiced by Idina Menzel, whose most famous role had previously been Elphaba in Wicked. When the movie was dubbed internationally, the actress who played Elphaba in the new language was sought out no less than four times: Mona Mor (Hebrew), Willemijn Verkaik (German and Dutch), Maria Lucia Rosenberg (Danish), and Hye-Na Park (Korean). - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory never specifies the nationalities of the naughty kids. The 1971 film version, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, happened to cast Veruca as British, Mike and Violet as American, and Augustus as German. These nationalities have been traditionally maintained in subsequent adaptations, including the 2005 film.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalCastPrecedent
Original Video Animation - TV Tropes Animated shows produced for the Direct to Video market, almost universally abbreviated "OVA", or more rarely "OAV" (for "original(ly) animated (for) video"), and even more rarely OAD (same for DVD). The term is almost always associated with anime; however, this form of storytelling is beginning to become popular in the anglosphere with recent animation based on comic characters and TV shows. Unfortunately, these still labour under the shadow of the term "direct-to-video". While the terms "direct-to-video" and "direct-to-DVD" have negative overtones, essentially being synonyms for Shovelware in the United States, "OVA" has almost exactly the opposite connotation. This partially arises from the view that Western "direct-to-video" releases are not good enough (or too explicit) for theaters; OVAs, on the other hand, are seen as a step up from regular television production. Because the production house need not adhere to the rapid-fire schedule or constrained budget of a TV series or feature-length film, more effort and care can be applied to an OVA, resulting in a much higher level of quality. Additionally, since OVAs aren't aired to the public, censorship is a moot point, which allows shows for older audiences to avoid ducking more mature subject matter, and shows for younger audiences to faithfully adapt some of the more violent or risqué aspects of the manga they were derived from without censorship toning it down. On the flip side, the vast majority of hentai series are produced and released as OVAs, just like much live-action pornography is released directly to home media or online. Given the general lack of a clear-cut production schedule, the time duration of an OVA is rather varied— some are 26 minutes long, while others are 60-80 minutes, but the idea of an OVA being up to two hours long is uncommon, with the longest examples typically reaching around 90 - 100 minutes at the very most. In most cases, rather than produce one single, extended-length instalment, production houses typically produce a 'miniseries' when adapting longer manga, ranging from between 2 to 5 or even 10 individual episodes. There are some caveats to the increased freedom, though. OVAs are often produced "on speculation", with no guarantee that the story they tell will ever be completed— and many are not. At least one OVA series ends with a plaintive plea for more money so the creators can continue making the show. However, even this is not always a guarantee— the Hellsing OVA series managed to adapt the entire ten volume manga it was based on. One trend which has become evident recently is the continuation of broadcast television series in OVA form after they complete their initial run; the aforementioned lack of broadcast standards also allows writers to work in anything they couldn't put into the original TV show. Inversely, the exposure of a broadcast initial run may be a lure for viewer interest in the less censored, more serious story continuing on home media. Due to the heavy market decline of physical media in the west during the late 2000's and early 2010's, both the broadcast and OVA-exclusive material are typically carried over via streaming services, thus removing the physical distinction between them (said decline was also responsible for the heavy downturn in the animated hentai industry during the 2010's, which previously used the western DVD boom to accrue more money and support more technically ambitious projects). A common thread of discussion online happens whenever a manga which received an OVA as its first adaptation goes on to have a full anime series produced for television later down the line. Fans will often debate for quite some time as to which one is better, and which one is the definitive adaptation. OVAs were most common in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly during the 1986-1991 asset price bubble (which, up until its bursting the following year, resulted in studios having a lot more money to back up the prospect of huge creative freedom), during which many well-known series were released in this fashion. The idea of this era as "the Golden Age of Anime" stems in part from the OVA boom, which led to a large number of unique stories being produced unrestricted and without a specific target audience and brought a level of creative freedom comparable to New Hollywood's effects on the American film industry. With the recent rise of 12-Episode Anime series as an alternate short format, as well as streaming video over the Internet, OVAs have come to be less frequently released, though by no means extinct; the aforementioned Hellsing, Code Geass: Akito the Exiled and Ghost in the Shell: Arise are a sampling of recent OVA releases. Anime made for release on the Internet are called Original Net Animation, or ONA for short, and act as a Spiritual Successor of sorts to the OVA format (with some works, like the 2002 Azumanga Daioh anime adaptation, using the ONA format to gauge audience interest with a pilot). The model would also inform direct-to-streaming animation in the west, with those works carrying over the OVA format's association with higher-quality production values and less rigid content standards compared to cable television. Fittingly, some anime even debut on streaming services before hitting airwaves, such as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalVideoAnimation
Origins Episode - TV Tropes "What? You want to know my secret origins? Well... maybe another time..." When you are writing a work of fiction you often want the audience to know how a particular character came to be. Often this is achieved in the first episodes or issues, but almost as often, for whatever reason, this can't happen. Perhaps the character was originally meant to be mysterious, a figure robed in secrets and mystique, and now their past has emerged. Alternatively the writers might not have had an origin laid out for them, perhaps due to the fact that they were meant as a minor character and gained a fanbase or were simply a Monster of the Week that happened to come back once or twice. Or it could be that the thing without the background is more than just a character; perhaps the entire universe has a history that the author wants to get across, and there is no way of doing that at the same time that a first episode finds its audience. An origins episode is an episode, issue, chapter, or a multi-part story arc that exists primarily to examine the origin of a character or setting after the work has been going for a while. Many prequels qualify, but not all. Likewise whilst many things have had extended flashbacks it does not necessarily count. However the episode or issue need not be all set in the universe's past to qualify, so long as exploring that past is the point. Done well, these works help build the universe's mythos and continuity; done badly, they just feel like the author trying to show how clever they are. Worse still are the origins episodes where the writer does not bother to check their own continuity and creates a mess of plot holes and poor characterization. Often takes the form of a Whole Episode Flashback or Flashback B-Plot. Compare with a Pilot Episode, which usually sets up the origins of the main characters and setting in the first episode. Television characters can have an Origin Episode of sorts if they receive A Day in the Limelight or a Lower-Deck Episode. See also Start of Darkness, for when a segment of the story shows the decisive point where a character becomes evil. See also No Origin Stories Allowed, which is when the creator(s) ban this from happening. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - Lamput: - The third season episode "Origins" is a Whole Episode Flashback of how Fat Doc and Slim Doc came to meet and become friends. The flashback, which begins when the docs find a picture of them from when they were kids while being carried away in a police car, also provides the origins of a couple other characters. - When Fat Doc and Slim Doc arrived at the same school, the latter was quite a bully to the former, only making friends with him after an incident involving the two accidentally messing up a science experiment their teacher was performing. - A science incident is also \|\|the catalyst for the birth of Lamput himself, who is seen at the end of the episode having formed from within a beaker\|\|. - Once the docs befriend each other, they decide to bully a specific round-looking kid in their school. \|\|That kid grows up to be the policeman who makes recurring appearances throughout the series and often arrests and beats up the docs - including in this episode where he thinks they robbed a jewelry store and brings them to the police station for it. Guy's held quite a grudge on the docs for all the bullying they subjected him to.\|\| - Before the Batman serves as one for The Batman (2022), covering the journeys of Bruce Wayne and Edward Nashton before they became The Batman and The Riddler respectively. - The Cat in the Stacks Mysteries: When Charlie Met Diesel, a short story included as a bonus feature in book 6. It's exactly what it sounds like, showing how Charlie found Diesel, wet and shivering in the parking lot of the library where he volunteers, and promptly took him to the vet to get checked out before adopting him. - The Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventures novel Business Unusual by Gary Russell told the story of Mel's first meeting with the Doctor, which her introductory TV season had neglected to depict due to Timey-Wimey Ball shenanigans in-universe and Troubled Production chaos behind the scenes. - The Q Continuum shows where a few of the enemies the crew of the original starship Enterprise faced came from. They were summoned through the Guardian of Forever by 0. - RWBY: Roman Holiday reveals how a young girl became Neopolitan, how Roman Torchwick became the greatest criminal in Vale, and how the two formed a lasting partnership. - Star Wars Expanded Universe: Thrawn gives the new-canon backstory of the titular Grand Admiral, including how he attained the rank. It ends shortly before his formal introduction into new canon in the third season of Rebels. - Star Wars Legends: Outbound Flight deals with the origin of Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn, and ties The Thrawn Trilogy with the prequel film trilogy and the New Jedi Order. - Tortall Universe: The Numair Chronicles is an interquel telling the backstory of The Archmage Numair Salmalín, who first appeared in The Immortals. - Warrior Cats: - Narnia has its origins told in the sixth book in the series, The Magician's Nephew. Just in time too; the series ends with book seven. - The Alchymist's Cat, a prequel to the Deptford Mice trilogy, reveals the origins of Big Bad Jupiter. He started out as an ordinary kitten called Leech in 17th century London, the runt of the litter who was mistreated by the evil alchemist who took them in. His brother Jupiter, on the other hand, was adored and became the alchemist's familiar. Leech grew envious of his brother's growing powers, and wished he could learn magic too, only to find out that just one in every family is allowed to use it. In the end, Leech kills Jupiter and assumes his identity, rising to power as a living God of Evil in the sewers. - The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes details how President Snow became the Big Bad of The Hunger Games trilogy. - Hannibal Rising is a poorly-executed Start of darkness for Hannibal Lecter, giving him a Freudian Excuse for many of the things he's famous for, even though he explicitly stated in the first movie that there wasn't any past trauma behind his deviant behavior—making him yet another intellectual in blatant denial. Rather sadly, this was an enforced case—Hannibal's creator, Thomas Harris, wanted to leave him an enigma with no real reason behind his crimes, but he was flat-out told by his publishers that if he didn't write it, they'd find someone else to do so. - VC Andrews wrote a prequel to Flowers in the Attic called Garden of Shadows that helps explain the motivations and backstory of the Evil Matriarch Olivia Foxworth. - The House of Night: The plot of Neferet's Curse, which details how an innocent girl named Emily Wheiler grew up in 1893 and ended up broken and vengeful as a result of being abused and eventually raped by her own father. She ultimately changes her name to Neferet, upon becoming a vampire, and vows to never again be used by anyone. - The Jane Eyre prequel, The Wide Sargasso Sea, shows the early life of a character thought of as villainous, but ultimately revealing them as well-intentioned and victimized by others. - The Magic: The Gathering novel The Thran is this for Yawgmoth, showing him rise from an exiled doctor into becoming first dictator of Halcyon, and then the Big Bad God of Evil he's mostly known as. It is important to mention that Yawgmoth was originally exiled for a reason: he performed many unethical experiments on different species to see the results and was in exile for doing so. - The Crippled God in Malazan Book of the Fallen was just a foreign god who fell to earth as the result of a trap meant for Kallor. And went stark raving mad as a result of his torture and imprisonment in this foreign world. He is currently trying to destroy the world just so he can be free again. - Old Kingdom: Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen, prequel to the main trilogy, depicts how its title character was set on the path to becoming \|\|Chlorr of the Mask, an evil necromancer who served as one of the main villains of the second and third books\|\|. - The Origin of Laughing Jack: As the title suggests, this is an origin story for Laughing Jack, taking place in the 1800s, likely 2 centuries before the events of his first story. It provides the details of how Laughing Jack became a murderous Monster Clown. - The Princess Bride devotes self-titled sections to the two mercenary henchmen of Vizzini, "the Sicilian"; how the giant Fezzik was beaten by other children and pushed to fight professionally by his misguided parents into rings where audiences booed him when he won until he found someone who understood him... slightly better; how the swordsman Inigo Montoya saw his father killed in front of him, spent years training and searching and becoming gradually more lost in his cups until he was found in obscurity. How Vizzini himself became the man he is now is left to the imagination, given only a few lines with a broad picture that he knew he would have to rely on his mind rather than his physical power; though the reader may expect it, there is no "VIZZINI". - A Song of Ice and Fire: Catelyn Stark's memories of her old friend Petyr Baelish are that of a sweet, romantic kid. Despite the fact that she was never interested in him that way, his romantic idealism spurred him on to duel her betrothed Brandon Stark for her hand, which resulted in Petyr nearly dying and getting sent packing back to his own poor home \|\|although that quite probably had more to do with the outcome of him being rejected and raped (whilst drunk and believing himself in bed with Cat, by her sister, Lysa, resulting in her pregnancy, which their father forces her to abort.\|\| In the present, Petyr is a full-on Magnificent Bastard and chessmaster, \|\|in control of both the Vale and Riverlands after having manipulated, married, and murdered Lysa, sparked the massive and destructive War of the Five Kings, and has taken on Cat's lookalike daughter Sansa, herself a Broken Bird, as both protegé and potential love interest.\|\| - The Star Trek: Destiny trilogy reveals the origins of the Borg Collective. - A minor example in the Star Trek: The Lost Era novel The Art of the Impossible. Corbin Entek, a Cardassian Obsidian Order villain from a highly popular episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is a lowly junior probationist in this book, albeit a promising one. The novel features a sub-plot in which he settles into the Order and earns the admiration of Enabran Tain. - Star Wars Legends: - Outbound Flight serves as a Start of Darkness of sorts for Grand Admiral Thrawn. Although he isn't exactly evil, it does explain why he took Palpatine's side. Eventually. Well, it introduces him to Darth Sidious and shows how perilously close he is to being exiled for his tactics. We know from the short story "Mist Encounter" that after he was exiled some Imperials found him and brought him back. - ''Outbound Flight" shows the start of darkness for Jorus C'baoth, who fell to the dark side near the end of the novel and went insane. This would then lead to his clone, Joruus C'baoth, also being an insane dark-sided Force wielder. - The novel Dark Rendezvous has several flashback scenes that explore Count Dooku's past and gives him a very convincing backstory. - The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin features a character who appeared first in Dark Empire, the comic book series set years after the novels but released years earlier. In Dark Empire, readers learned that he was an old friend of Han's, and also that he was willing to throw away that friendship by leading Han into a trap just for the reward. Crispin shows us in her prequels what a good and heroic guy he used to be, and eventually what happened to change him: he was captured, tortured, and crippled for life. - Darth Plagueis is an origin story for Palpatine, Dooku, and Nute Gunray. Though unlike the other two, Palpatine was evil from the beginning, and the book merely shows how he became a Sith. - Tortall Universe: The Numair Chronicles, while mainly being an interquel about Numair Salmalín, also shows how Ozorne Muhassin Tasikhe went from a "leftover prince" who was a personable, average student who only wanted to do mage-work with his best friends to the Evil Overlord Emperor Mage of Carthak seen in The Immortals. - Warriors: - The Rise of Scourge. It turns out that Scourge was, at first, just a cute little kitten with a crappy childhood. Desperate to impress the world around him, he is driven to first scare a dog away, then eventually actually kill a cat to maintain his peers' respect, which he claims to be his Moral Event Horizon. - Brokenstar was bullied by his foster siblings and resented by his foster mother as a kit in Yellowfang's Secret. It's subverted, however, at his birth, when he is born with a look of rage and hatred on his tiny face. - Whateley Universe: - "Mimeographic" covers Mimeo's origin story. Interestingly (and possibly self-servingly), it mostly portrays him as a sort of higher-order Punch-Clock Villain, who just does it to finance his lavish lifestyle - he plans out heists in detail to minimize collateral damage, and tries to avoid fights with heroes until he's ready to get whatever Power Copying buffs he needs for the specific caper. We also get to see why he adopted his Thou Shalt Not Kill policy (beyond the obvious wanting to get rematches for more power-ups, that is). - In "Intervention", we get a "This Is Your Life" style look at the events that soured Tansy Walcutt into the Alpha Bitch Solange, as part of her Redemption Quest. - In "The Road to Whateley", part 3, we get some flashbacks which set up the conflict between the Witch Queen and her longtime rival Sycorax. It isn't really a full Start of Darkness for either of them, but it does give us the background of their feud. - Wisdom's Daughter: The Life and Love Story of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed by H. Rider Haggard details the origins of Ayesha, the Big Bad of She. - Through excerpts from the novel Descarta is reading and \|\|Virgil\|\|'s own flashbacks we see how Kalthused of Within Ruin went from hero to utterly corrupt. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Angel's origin was first showed in both parts of "Becoming" but Angel elaborated on it in "The Prodigal" and "Five by Five". - "Becoming" also gave some more of Buffy's origin story (at least, within the TV show, given the movie is largely considered discontinuity by the TV series) showing her first meeting with her Watcher, Merrick, and her first patrol and slaying. - "Fool For Love" was Spike's official origin episode. "Lies My Parents Told Me" gave more details about that origin. And the cross-over episode with Angel that "Fool For Love" was a part of, called "Darla", was the origin episode for, well, Darla. - Related - Drusilla's origin and siring are described on Buffy in "Lie To Me", and shown in flashbacks in the Angel episode "Dear Boy". - While Anya talked about past exploits often, it wasn't until the Season 7 episode "Selfless" that we saw her full origin story. - Notably averted in Burn Notice: the made-for-TV-movie "The Fall of Sam Axe" pointedly showed how Sam managed to get his honorable discharge from the Navy SEALs despite his womanizing attitude, but in the timeline of the movie, he already knows Super Spy Michael Westen, seeking advice with his personal problems. Throughout the entire series, it's never been revealed exactly how a CIA spy and a Navy SEAL met and became best friends. - "Behind the Squeak," a promotional video for The Chica Show, is mainly about Chica's birth and rise to stardom on The Sunny Side Up Show. Kelly also explains that she and Chica first became animated due to one of Mr. C's magic tricks. - Chuck eventually showed us the backstory as to how Sara became a CIA operative, starting as a young teen when she was a grifter with her father. - "Chuck Versus the Tic Tac" reveals Casey's origins: \|\|A Marine Corps sniper in Honduras named Alexander Coburn who faked his death to join a special forces unit\|\|. Unfortunately, it left quite a Continuity Snarl that was never really addressed. - Community had the aptly titled "Heroic Origins", in which Abed charts the group's connection through random interactions before they all started at Greendale, eventually leading to reveal how they all came to choose the school. - Criminal Minds has several flashback episodes—a particular one being "Tabula Rasa", when Reid, JJ, and Garcia were still new to the BAU—but the one that fits the trope best is "Nelson's Sparrow", which shows the very earliest days of the BAU (or the BSU, as it was known then) in The '70s when there were still just three people (Jason Gideon, David Rossi, and Max Ryan) on the team, and follows one of Gideon's and Rossi's earliest unsolved cases. In particular, we see Gideon and Rossi coin a few terms that are commonly used by the present-day team (most notably "signature" by Rossi and "profiler" by Gideon), discover that this case is what inspired Gideon's previously-seen interest in ornithology, and is also the first time that the two characters appear onscreen together (since, in the present-day story, their actors are on the show at different times). - On Doctor Who: - The Second Doctor story "The War Games" finally revealed Gallifrey and the Time Lords, after six years of the Doctor's species being unknown. - It only took 11 years and four Doctors battling the Daleks before we finally got to see how they were created by Davros, after which point he became a recurring villain in Dalek stories. - Between the Doctor Who TV series and Big Finish Doctor Who audio adventures, we've had the Ice Warriors' origin story with the Second Doctor, the Daleks' origin story with the Fourth Doctor, the Cybermen's origin story with the Fifth Doctor, the Sontarans' origin story with the Sixth Doctor. - Nearly everyone who worked on the series prefers to avert this with the Doctor. Even after 50+ years and 38 seasons (as of 2021), the number of formal revelations of who they were before running away from Gallifrey and became the Doctor and why they fled the planet can be counted on one hand, and their real name remains a mystery. Their granddaughter Susan remains the only relative of theirs depicted onscreen or even named, even though they had to have had a wife and children. Occasionally hints are dropped about their past — the Twelfth Doctor confessed in "Heaven Sent" he fled Gallifrey out of fear of something rather than the boredom he usually claims — but nothing more, leaving the title of the show a never-to-be-answered question. The two attempts at this trope for the Doctor, the novel Lungbarrow in The '90s' Doctor Who Expanded Universe and the episode "The Timeless Children" at the beginning of The New '20s, both provoked very mixed fan reactions, and both retcon the depiction of Gallifrey in preceding televised canon. - The Firefly episode "Out of Gas" features flashbacks showing how each of the main characters ended up on Serenity (except for Book, Simon and River, who came aboard in the pilot episode). Zoe was Mal's old Army buddy from the Unification Wars, Wash signed on as pilot right after Mal and Zoe found Serenity, Jayne was a bandit who tried to kill Mal (until Mal convinced him to turn against his two partners by offering to pay him better), and Kaylee replaced the ship's original engineer after Mal found her having sex with him, and discovered that she knew more about engines than he did. - Forever Knight: Nick's vampire origin was shown in the pilot, "Dark Knight". - Frasier had this in the episode "You Can Go Home Again" which is also the season 3 finale. In this episode, Frasier celebrates his show's three-year anniversary and Roz offers him a videotape which contains his first broadcast. As he goes home, Frasier listens the tape and we see what happened when he arrived to Seattle, met Roz for the first time and reconciled with Niles and later Martin. - The Greek episode "Freshman Daze" gave the background stories for Casey, Cappie and Evan (with more information on Ashleigh and Frannie) through flashbacks to their freshman year, including the origins of the love triangle that drove most of their storylines. - Highlander had "Family Tree" and later "Homeland" for Duncan. For recurring characters, there was "Legacy" for Amanda, "Comes A Horseman" showed Cassandra's origin and there was one for Fitz ("Star Crossed"?). - "Three Stories", a Season One episode of House, reveals how House's leg turned out in such a bad state: he suffered an aneurysm while playing golf. His drug-seeking behavior caused the other doctors to brush off his pain as a withdrawal symptom. Soon, however, the aneurysm caused an infarction and muscle tissue to die. House refused to have the leg amputated, even though the bypass he demands and ultimately undergoes causes such severe pain that it gives him a heart attack. While in a medically-induced coma, his girlfriend and proxy authorized him to undergo a partial amputation that would only remove the necrotic tissue while leaving the rest of his leg intact, but it leaves his leg's mobility compromised on top of leaving him in chronic pain. - How I Met Your Mother has the episode "How I Met Everyone Else", which showcases how the core group (except Robin, who joined the group in the pilot) met and became friends note : Marshall and Ted met as roommates in college, Lily and Marshall met when she was "inexplicably drawn" to his dorm room one morning, Ted met Lily the night before at a party and that's why she showed up at their dorm (or so he thinks), Barney and Ted met in the bathroom at a bar, and Barney and Marshall met at the same bar some time later. They all met Robin at the same bar as well.. - Kamen Rider Double has nearly half their riders be given Origins Episodes, mostly as part of a movie (or in the case of Kamen Rider Eternal, a whole movie). - Kamen Rider Ex-Aid has Snipe Episode Zero. It depicts events leading to the Zero Day and Start of Darkness of Taiga Hanaya. - One of the main gimmicks of Lost, was that each episode had a flashback plot delivering information about a specific character's past. Many of the major characters ended up having several. - S1 E4 of Misfits has a bit of this, in that it expands on how some of the characters ended up with community service. - The Season 8 NCIS episode "Baltimore" depicts how DiNozzo and Gibbs met while the former was a detective with the Baltimore police department. - Odd Squad: The Season 1 episode "Totally Odd Squad" is an origins episode for Oprah, as she explains to Olive, Otto and Oscar about her time as an Investigation agent back in 1983 and how she became the Director of Precinct 13579. - Another Season 1 episode, "Training Day", reveals who Olive's previous partner was before Otto, and how she grew from being a Shrinking Violet as an agent-in-training to an eventual Shell-Shocked Veteran as an Investigation agent. It also has a brief scene that shows how Otto became her partner. - "Oscar of All Trades" shows how Oscar came to be the Lab Director of Precinct 13579. - The first part of the Season 2 finale, "Who is Agent Otis?", reveals how Otis became an Odd Squad agent and explains how life was for him before joining the organization. - The Season 3 episode "The Weight of the World Depends on Orla" shows how the eponymous agent became the guardian of the 44-leaf clover. - Once Upon a Time: - "The Stable Boy" does this for Regina. Her ambitious and cold-blooded mother wanted her to marry up, but she was in love with a stable boy. When Snow White, then an innocent child, tried to help Regina by letting the ambitious mama know her stepmother-to-be was with the stable boy... Well, let's just say someone's True Love ended up dead, and Snow White ended up on the wrong end of a vendetta. - "The Miller's Daughter" showed how Cora became who she was. When she was a young woman, \|\|she was tripped by an immature Eva (Snow White's mother before she married Snow's father) who claimed Cora hurt her.\|\| The King of the land forced Cora to apologize on her knees or he wouldn't pay her for the flour. She would later use the emotions she felt here to channel her magic to spin gold. - "It's Not Easy Being Green" shows how Zelena discovered in the course of one day that she was adopted, her stepfather never loved her, her mother abandoned her at birth and she had a sister who got everything she never had. \|\|When she's passed over as Rumpelstiltskin's student\|\|, her envy corrupts her and turns her into the Wicked Witch of the West. - "The Snow Queen" shows how the eponymous girl became evil. Born as Princess Ingrid, she discovered her ice powers one day while protecting her two sisters. The powers grew as she got older and she opted to hide herself away to protect the kingdom. \|\|When she accidentally killed her sister Helga, her other sister Gerda trapped her in an urn and had all memories of her erased from the kingdom\|\|. - "Poor Unfortunate Soul" reveals that Ursula used to be a mermaid, forced to use her singing voice to sink ships by her father. She rejected him and transformed herself in the sea witch after \|\|Hook stole her singing voice, her only memory of her dead mother\|\|. Ironically this same episode combines this with \|\|a HeelFace Turn, as Hook returns Ursula's voice and she reunites with her father\|\|. - In episodes "Best Laid Plans" and "Unforgiven" which act as the opposite for \|\|Maleficent\|\|. Originally established as an evil sorceress, discovering she was about to become a mother and \|\|eventually getting separated from her child\|\| prompts a sort of HeelFace Turn, showing her as a sympathetic character. - "Broken Kingdom" shows how \|\|King Arthur\|\| became a Knight Templar, due to his obsession with \|\|reforging Excalibur\|\|, which he sees as the only way he can truly rule his kingdom. This drove him utterly mad, as he was even willing to brainwash the woman he loved (and his whole kingdom, for that matter) and betray his best friend, in order to ensure his rule. - Power Rangers: - Power Rangers Samurai even went so far as to have its Origins episodes titled "Origins". It probably has something to do with the fact that said episodes were delayed until midseason, instead of being shown at the beginning as usual. - Power Rangers RPM had origin episodes for the Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green Rangers as well as for Dr. K. All ended with them going to or arriving at Corinth (except Green, who had to leave) and don't include how they were selected as Rangers (again, except Green who we already saw acquire his powers. - Suits episode "Rewind" shows Mike starting using his Photographic Memory to earn money cheating at tests, his friend Trevor start dealing marijuana and Harvey blackmailing Hardman into resignation. Also doubles as a Start of Darkness episode. - The Tales from the Crypt episode "Lower Berth'' provides the odd origin of \|\|The Crypt Keeper.\|\| An unholy product of the love between a (literal) two-faced freakshow attraction, and a 4000-year-old mummy. - In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, "Today Is the Day"/"The Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter" is a two-part origin episode for \|\|Jesse Flores, and possibly also Weaver note : There's a character in the past sections of the episodes who is almost universally believed by fans to be Weaver, but it's not explicitly stated.\|\|. - Torchwood has the episode "Fragments", giving the back-story of how the main team members note : other than Gwen, whose origin was revealed in "Everything Changes" were recruited to Torchwood Three. - The Tribe had two of these in the second season; one focused on Zoot and Ebony; the other focused on Lex and Ryan (though the latter example was submerged as a very long flashback). - Uchuu Sentai Kyuranger has the origins of Stinger/Sasori Orange and Champ/Oushi Black in Episode of Stinger. - WandaVision's next-to-last episode, "Previously On...," uses flashbacks to tell the origin story of Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch. - The West Wing had several of these: - "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen" is a series of flashbacks to the 1998 Presidential Election [sic], showing how the main characters met and got involved with Bartlet's campaign. When the story begins, Leo is a former cabinet secretary serving as Bartlet's campaign manager, Josh is campaign manager for Bartlet's biggest rival (and future VP) Senator John Hoynes, Sam is a frustrated lawyer for an unscrupulous oil company, CJ is a PR specialist for a movie studio, Toby is a talented (but unsuccessful) political operative looking for a chance to prove his skills, and Donna is a campaign volunteer. - "Two Cathedrals" features an extended flashback to Bartlet's childhood, showing how he met Mrs. Landingham and first got interested in politics. As we learn, Mrs. Landingham started out as a secretary at the New Hampshire prep school where Bartlet's father was Headmaster, and she convinced him to confront his father about the wage gap between male and female employees at the school. \|\|He tried, but lost his nerve after his father slapped him for protesting his decision to ban several classic novels from the school library.\|\| - "Bartlet for America" goes into more detail about Bartlet's election, mostly from Leo's perspective. We see how Bartlet convinced Hoynes to become his running mate by telling him the truth about \|\|his multiple sclerosis\|\| as a gesture of good faith, and we learn about Leo's last alcoholic relapse. It turns out that a campaign donor pressured him into drinking again, and he fell off the wagon so hard that \|\|he wasn't able to come to Bartlet's aid when his MS flared up again\|\|—an incident that has clearly haunted him ever since. - White Collar episode "Forging Bonds" dedicated to how Neal started his Con Man career with Mozzie, how he met Kate, how Peter started pursuing Neal and how Peter and Neal first met. - Xena: Warrior Princess had several over the course of the show, showing how she developed from a village girl into an evil Warrior Princess. (She had a HeelFace Turn during her guest appearances on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys before she got her own show.) - The Incredible Hulk (1977): The original pilot episode detailed how David Banner became the eponymous monster and how he ended up on the run. - The X-Files had several origin episodes, including one for the Big Bad ("Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man") and the Lone Gunmen trio ("Unusual Suspects"). - Our Miss Brooks: - The first episode, appropriately enough titled "First Day", relates Mr. Conklin's arrival as newly appointed principal. - In "Borrowing Money To Fly", it's Miss Brooks' arrival in Madison that's explained. In this version, Mr. Conklin has already long been comfortable ensconced as principal of Madison High School. - The Season 4 Bravest Warriors two-part episode "It Shouldn't Ever Have to End This Way" reveals the exact circumstances under which the Bravest Warriors' parents and predecessors the Courageous Battlers were banished to the See-Through Zone by Beth's father. - The Homestar Runner short "Hremail 7" explains the origin of Strong Bad Email. And, in the process, messes up what little continuity the HR-verse has. - The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: The third episode serves as this for Epic-Man, explaining how he got his powers and started his superhero career. - Season 14 of Red vs. Blue has three examples: - The Blood Gulch Prequel Trilogy episodes - From Stumbled Beginnings, Fifty Shades of Red, and Why Theyre Here - all show how how the members of the Red and Blue Teams met and ended up in Blood Gulch. - The Merc Trilogy episodes - "Club", "Call", and "Consequences" - show what Locus and Felix were up to prior to Chorus as well as their \|\|Protagonist Journey to Villain\|\|. - It's heavily implied that the Freelancer Prequel Duology episodes - The Triplets and The Mission - \|\|concern the origin of the Red vs. Blue simulation war\|\|. - RWBY: - The aptly named "Beginning Of The End" from Volume 3 explains the backstories of both Emerald and Mercury, and how they came to work for Cinder. Cinder herself doesn't get an Origins Episode until Volume 8, in "Midnight." - "The Lost Fable" in Volume 6 reveals the history of both \|\|Salem and Ozpin\|\|. - The Shut Up! Cartoons segment Oishi High School Battle has Oishi Orgins, or, as the title says, Oishi High School Battle Orgins. Oishi Orgins explains several things, such as \|\|how Oishi's father got fired (like the intro song says) and how Oishi got her dog Noodles. (Which was due to the creature transporter machine going haywire after a demon attack, thus resulting in this event.)\|\| - The Cocoon Academy arc of Brawl in the Family is one for Dedede and \|\|Meta Knight\|\|. - Everyday Heroes: Oddly, Mr. Mighty's wife, Jane, got to tell her origin story before Mr. Mighty did. Then again, maybe the author just enjoyed drawing all those Stripperiffic outfits. - Gunnerkrigg Court: Chapter 40, "The Stone", delves into the history of the Inexplicably Awesome Jones, showing the various identities she's had \|\|throughout human history and beyond\|\|. \|\|Also The Unreveal, since it shows that while she's as old as the planet, she's never learned what she actually is or how she came to be.\|\| - The Order of the Stick: - On the Origin of PC's explores the back stories of the members of the Order of the Stick, and how Roy originally gathered them together to delve into the Dungeon of Durokan. - Start of Darkness is one for the bad guys, showing how Redcloak and Xykon first met and how Xykon became a lich. - Sleepless Domain: The Flashback Theater following Chapter 10 tells the story of how Melty Frost and Melty Flame first met, in the form of a temporary shoujo romance. The two girls were childhood friends who had since drifted apart, but reconnected after their powers awakened, and have been Sickeningly Sweethearts ever since. - The Shaker Woods story arc in Yehuda Moon & the Kickstand Cyclery, which makes everything look Harsher in Hindsight.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginsEpisode
Orphaned Series - TV Tropes Yet another proud member of the Candle Jack Appreciation Cl 6. They stick the first half of a two-part story in their first issue, little realising that 95% of 'zines that follow this course are destined never to produce issue 2. — "Ten Silly Things That Fanzine Editors Do", Doctor Who: The Completely Useless Encyclopedia When the author of a series abandons the storyline entirely — either from lack of interest, time, money, inspiration, or pulse — the series is said to be orphaned. This isn't much of a problem among professionally produced works, as their large team of creators, profitability, and susceptibility to Executive Meddling make it unlikely for them to be dropped for any reason other than cancellation, though it isn't unheard of. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Fan Fiction, Web Comics, role-playing fora, and other amateur works, on and offline. In fact, this is a particularly common problem with them, as many are created part-time by enthusiasts who've never written, drawn, or scripted anything before. They start on the first chapter, strip, or post, only to promptly forget about it. And if not that, they suffer from longer and more frequent Schedule Slips until either they take an "extended" hiatus that becomes permanent or they simply drop the work altogether. Sometimes, though not always, enough time passes that the abandoned work disappears from the site(s) hosting it. Usually this happens because the account or website hosting it dies off. On rare occasions, such a series resurfaces if the original artist returns to it. Or a fan may even "adopt" the series and pick up where the original artist left off. This is rare, and one reason is that fanfiction writers often find after some years that what they made is now regretful and they would rather forget about it. Orphaned series are liable to have a bad effect on free hosting services. Lists of works get clogged with abandoned entries, and sites become littered with hundreds of introductory strips. They can also engender a mistrust of the authors who abandon their work, as readers become wary of investing in anything they write in the future. See also Dead Fic, where a work gets this status without any reason given for the abandonment. Compare Vaporware, which is something the creator claims not to have given up on — but almost all the fans have; Stillborn Franchise, which is when a work could have gotten a series of Spinoffs, Sequels, and Prequels, but didn't; and Cliffhanger Wall, where a work ends on a cliffhanger, but the creator then pivots to making prequels, interquels, remakes, and spinoffs instead of resolving the cliffhanger. For when the work is orphaned in a more literal sense, see also Died During Production. If a creator has multiple examples of this on their record, see Attention Deficit Creator Disorder. It should not be confused with "orphaned works", where a copyright holder of the work is known, but the whereabouts are unknown or cannot be contacted, thus the work cannot be used without the unknown holder's permission unless under Fair Use. ## Example Subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other Examples: - The manga Chicago abruptly ended after two volumes, with an apology from the writer stating that she couldn't handle the schedule at the end of the second volume. - Akane Chan Overdrive lasted two volumes, the last of which had two chapters that were side-stories, without any resolution of the plot. - Manga artist Miwa Ueda orphaned the series Peach Girl: Sae's Story after two and a half volumes, because the birth of her child left her with little time to work on it. - Aqua Knight was abandoned by the author Yukito Kishiro in order to work on Battle Angel Alita: Last Order. He promised to be back later in the future, but even after finishing Last Order in 2014, there have been no signs of Aqua Knight continuing. With Kishiro focusing his efforts on Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle, the chances of Aqua Knight ever continuing look slim. - For that matter, only two OAV episodes of the Battle Angel anime were ever produced. Even if anybody was interested in reviving an anime version, it wouldn't legally be possible without the involvement of James Cameron, who purchased the adaptation rights to the series to produce a live-action film adaptation. While the film adaptation was released in 2019 after years of development hell, there has been no word on any further anime adaptations of Battle Angel Alita. - The prequel manga of Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening prematurely ended due to the artist quitting before Volume 3. - The manga Hellsing: The Dawn. 6 chapters since 2007 and then dropped. Not enough to even release a single collected volume. - Sailor Moon artist Naoko Takeuchi had several orphaned series in the wake of the end of her hit franchise. The first was PQ Angels, which was discontinued abruptly after only 4 chapters, and Kodansha lost the proofs of the portion that had been written. The manga was never published outside of its original serial run. Her second series, Love Witch, ran for three chapters, at which point Takeuchi had written that she was taking a vacation from which the series never returned outside of a one-shot side story. It was not until the 2005-2006 run of Toki Meca, expanded from the one-shot Toki-Meka, that Takeuchi saw a series through to its completion again. - Shaman King* formerly ended with No Ending since Hiroyuki Takei dropped it. However, the re-release of the manga eventually led to two new volumes to end the series. - CLAMP has several of these. - Clover had a story that concluded after two volumes. The third and fourth volumes are made of flashbacks, and according to CLAMP, two more volumes are needed to complete the story, but they haven't made anything yet, - Gate7 managed to have 4 volumes until it went into a hiatus in 2014. - Legend of Chun Hyang was dropped after a single volume, but CLAMP did mention that they would like to continue it in the future. - Legal Drug was halted for a few years, but it continued in 2011 under a new title, Drug and Drop. Then, they dropped it again in 2013. - X/1999, perhaps their most infamous example, has been on hold since 2003, with 18 out of a planned 21 volumes released. It ended on a cliffhanger, and the story was building towards a resolution. The magazine that had been publishing it ( Monthly Asuka) has since folded, and CLAMP has, supposedly, been searching to put it in a proper magazine - though at this point there are doubts that the group is still making serious efforts to pursue this or continue the work. - Fire Candy's mangaka left off her work after two volumes to begin another, although she did state in her last note that she'd like to return to the series after gaining more experience. - One of the more notable OEL titles to go out like this was No Man's Land, which the publisher heavily promoted and commenced work on a Flash adaptation of. Problems with the creator's schedules sadly led to the series dying after only two volumes. - Millennium Snow was orphaned by Bisco Hatori in 2002 after her breakout hit Ouran High School Host Club got popular. After finishing Ouran, she would eventually return to and finish Millennium Snow in 2013, just over 10 years later. - The short-lived series Shanghai Youma Kikai was put on hold so Hiromu Arakawa could work on Fullmetal Alchemist. - Beet the Vandel Buster was 12 volumes into its publication when production suddenly stopped in September 2006, due to artist Koji Inada's sudden illness. The manga started up again ten years later in 2016, though at a slower schedule than before since it moved to a monthly publication as opposed to a weekly one. - Happens constantly with fan translations of manga and fansubs of anime. One example that left readers disappointed is that of Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl. When AnimEigo licensed the series, the circle that had been fansubbing it stopped out of respect. Then AnimEigo dropped it just a third of the way through its 122-episode run, leaving the series doubly-orphaned for a while. Finally the fansubs were started again and completed the run. - This happened to a number of manga series both Japanese and OEL due to the closure of Tokyopop, one of the largest English-language manga and light novel publishers around. Pray another company picked it up, though chances are no one did. - Tokyopop was also hit with this a few years earlier due to a contract dispute with Kodansha that resulted in TP losing a large chunk of their catalog. Among the biggest losses were Beck (stopped a third of the way through the story) and Get Backers (stopped just before beginning the final story arc). - The hardest losses to take were titles like Peacemaker Kurogane and ARIA. Both manga were originally published in English by ADV before they went belly-up. Then Tokyopop rescued the series, only to close not long after. - The English translation of Life (2002) was cut short by Tokyopop, meaning over half of the series has never been released internationally. - Image Comics collaborated with Tokyopop in order to get the final half of King City out. - Like the Tokyopop example above, when Random House's (Del Rey's) manga division was taken over by Kodansha, only top-tier titles like Negima! Magister Negi Magi and Genshiken were continued or reprinted; everything else was dropped. - The decade of the 2000s is littered with the corpses of failed English-language manga publishers, most of whom only had a few series before dying. Casualties include Studio Ironcat, ComicsOne, and DC Comics-backed CMX (who at least got out all of Emma: A Victorian Romance before Dan Didio killed it). - Due to the continuing collapse of the English-language manga market (closely tied to the collapse of traditional bookstores), most of the remaining publishers have at least a few cancelled series under their belt. - Net Sphere Engineer was announced to be the sequel to BLAME! The first chapter excited many. A second chapter never came. While nobody actually knows what happened to the rest of the story, many opt for the answer that it was abandoned. - The story of Final Fantasy: Unlimited was plotted to last two seasons, but only the first season was animated. The story of the second season can be found in various supplemental media (available in Japanese only). - Stellvia of the Universe was originally meant to be (at least) three half-seasons, but due to personality conflicts the team broke up at the end of the second. At least it was a natural break-point. - Zombie Powder lasted only four volumes before it was canceled, due to various issues and complications in the author's life at the time. - Descendants of Darkness has been on hiatus since December 20th, 2002, due to Yoko Matsushita suffering a hand injury. Her art style has changed somewhat since because of this and she did work a little more on the manga afterwards. However beyond brief periods of "SHE'S GOING TO FINISH IT!" now and then, there's been nothing else beyond a few chapters after volume 11, all of which are finally being put in a 12th volume. Fans are just pretty much begging to hear how she planned to end the series now. - The English translation of the Kingdom Hearts manga ended on Kingdom Hearts II Vol. 2 after TokyoPop decided to discontinue the series due to financial problems. Good that there are fans who translate where TokyoPop can't, right? The series has since been picked up by Yen Press, and as of October 2013, the manga adaptations for the first three games has been re-released, with another one upcoming. - Gun Blaze West only got up to its third volume when it was canceled due to a combination of low readership and Nobuhiro Watsuki feeling he couldn't go any further with it. The series ends before the heroes even reach the fabled destination. - More of Orphaned Spin-Off, one of the manga-only arcs of Higurashi: When They Cry, Utsutsukowashi-hen (Reality Breaking Chapter) abruptly ended after three chapters in 2007. - Dub only example: For unknown reasons, Bandai Entertainment had stopped releasing the dub of Di Gi Charat Nyo! They stopped at episode 72, leaving the remaining 32 episodes with no dub. The company's closure pretty much killed any remaining hope of the dub being completed. - In Mexico, the most important publisher of comics was Grupo Editorial Vid, who published a large variety of titles for a bit more than 50 years. By the end of the 90s, they started to publish manga with Spanish translation. Plenty of titles were published for the Mexican market, but then, by the end of the 2000s, due to bad management choices (and mostly, due to the new Chief Editor decided to focus in other business, along with helping his children's artistic careers), they stopped publishing manga, leaving plenty of manga series without continuation, some of them just a few volumes before reaching their final volume. Even many series that were promised by them were completely canceled. Thankfully, around 2013, then-new comic and manga companies such as Panini and Kamite began to publish manga, the latter formed from what could be rescued from Vid's remains and the former rereleased Naruto and Bleach, both series previously launched by Vid (but stopped at vol. 24, so it will take 2 years to reach where Vid left them). - Happened with some manga in Brazil, especially by publishers Conrad and Panini (the former due to low sales and the latter due to financial difficulties). The most infamous examples are Fullmetal Panic Sigma and Otomen published by Panini which were put on hiatus for 4 years before being canceled. Other notable examples are Guin Saga (manga version), Crayon Shin-chan, Doctor Slump, Peach Girl and the deluxe edition of Dragon Ball. Subverted with Eden: It's an Endless World! which was canceled by Panini but was republished by JBC years after. The same happened with Monster and even One Piece, which were canceled by Conrad and republished by Panini (in the latter case, the publisher folded right as the CP9 arc was reaching its climax; Panini retranslated everything from the beginning while continuing the series from where it originally stopped). - The 90s hentai manga series Dragon Pink by ITOYOKO had nothing after its fourth volume; it stopped on a cliffhanger of Pink, its main female protagonist, being impaled by a sword, the sort of cliffhanger you'd expect a series to follow up on. ITOYOKO himself is still active in the H manga drawing scene, making it strange how he hasn't yet finished the story. - While the remake manga did get an ending, the original Birdy the Mighty manga just petered out after a while. Similarly, despite wrapping up the main plot and the arc of the second season respectively, the OVA series and Decode both still had subplots left unresolved. - Prism ended up being put on "hiatus" then eventually cancelled due to a plagiarism scandal. The mangaka has done other series since. - While Chonchu had its first part driven to completion, its second part is still pending 10 years after the end of the first part and there's no prospective date for a release. - Many manga/manhua/manhwa continued until the end but their non-official fans-translations didn't. Manhwa Metal Heart is such an example. - Yoo Ah Dok Jon only ran 15 chapters then was abandoned without any news. - PHD: Phantasy Degree aka Master School Olympus only ran to 10 volumes, while the author seemingly moved on to do other projects. - Cavalier of the Abyss was abandoned just after a big twist was revealed and nearly reaching a climax. - The Devil May Cry spin-off comic by Dreamwave was abandoned due to the company folding. - Jax Epoch and the Quicken Forbidden has only two volumes, Borrowed Magic and Separation Anxiety, with the third volume, Flannel Sorceress, still in progress since 1996. - It took David Lapham several years to find the time to complete the final issue of Stray Bullets. He claimed that after the birth of his child he was no longer able to rely on the inconsistent revenue and heavy time investment of a self-published series and that he had chosen to primarily seek work-for-hire and creator-owned work at the major publishers. He often stated a desire to finish the series, or at least the current arc, but a lack of time to do so. He was finally able to finish and release the final issue in 2014. - During the '90s, Joe Madureira started a comic called Battle Chasers, an epic fantasy story of which the first few issues hinted at a huge backstory. But it quickly started slipping from its schedule (because Joe Mad was spending all his time playing Final Fantasy VII, or so the legend goes) to the point where issue 7 was released 16 months after issue 6. The editorial in issue 9 promised that 10 would be out soon, but then Joe Mad left the comic industry altogether, basically leaving the story hanging (although a video game based on the comic has since come out). - Artist George Perez's creator-owned series Crimson Plague was ended after its first issue. Perez revived the series a few years later with Image Comics, only to end a second time after one new issue and a reprint of the original comic. - Martin Wagner signed a deal with Antarctic Press in 1996 to reprint the 12 issues of his self-published comic, Hepcats, and then start publishing new material. The only new material to emerge was a #0 issue; Wagner abandoned Hepcats before issue #13 made it to print, right in the middle of a multi-issue story arc called "Snowblind." 10 years later, Wagner announced that he would finish "Snowblind" as a webcomic, but after 4 years of virtually no progress, he threw in the towel and left the comics industry for good. - Marvel series NYX was slated to be an ongoing series but after numerous delays by both the writer (Joe Quesada) and the artist was declared a limited series simply to finish out the first story arc. - Marvel later released a follow-up mini-series, with a different writer and artist this time around. - NYX did, however, win a place in history as the first appearance in comics continuity of the successful Canon Immigrant Laura Kinney, aka X-23. - GoldenEye had a Comic-Book Adaptation that only got the first issue out of the planned three released, with rumours that the cancellation happened due to the suggestive cover for issue 2. - The comic M. Rex ended after two issues. About ten years later it received a cartoon that started to delve into the abandoned plots and more. - Sokora Refugees, a manga-inspired (in both art and story) comic, was super-popular before its abrupt end after two volumes. The comic's site, after two years in operation, stopped updating in November of 2006 and died completely a few months after. The artist mentioned the author had some personal issues after a few weeks of no new strips. What seems to have actually happened is that the creator landed her own syndicated daily comic strip, My Cage. The demands of doing four panels a day pretty much ensures that Sokora Refugees will remain an orphan unless something happens to My Cage. And now, we've jinxed it. - Alan Moore's miniseries Big Numbers stopped after two issues. This was particularly frustrating as due to the more literary, kitchen-sink-drama nature of the series, the audience didn't learn what direction the series was going in, how the groups of unrelated characters were going to interact, or what all the untranslated dialogue in some Indian language was about. The main cause was that illustrator Bill Sienkiewicz left the series and he was replaced by a nineteen-year-old assistant of his named Al Columbia. Columbia had to replicate the gritty, photo-realistic technique Sienkiewicz utilized for illustrating the previous Big Numbers issues, and he had to do so by specified deadlines. Columbia cracked under the pressure of such a herculean task and as a result, he not only left his Big Numbers work unfinished, but he destroyed much of his work, including two unpublished issues. Columbia, despite having a cult following generated by grotesque works such as The Biologic Show, remains somewhat a pariah in the comic industry. - Moore never finished Supreme or 1963 for various reasons that aren't really his fault, either. Moore's last script for Supreme (which did not resolve ongoing storylines) was finally illustrated and published twelve years later, preceding Erik Larsen's revival of the series. - The Ballad of Halo Jones reached a fairly satisfying conclusion, but only got a third of the way through Moore's original plan for the saga. - In the early '00s there was a quirky British comic titled Bazooka Jules, by Neil Googe, about a 16-year-old schoolgirl named Julie Glocke who gets mixed up in a plot involving aliens and super-science and gains the ability to turn into a ridiculously well-endowed Action Girl who can spontaneously pull gigantic pieces of armament out of thin air. It was criticized for the underage Fanservice, but fans and critics enjoyed the humor and Googe's expressive art style. Anyway, around issue #3 (it was planned to run for six), Googe took seriously ill and someone broke into the publisher's building, stealing the material for the planned future issues, which were never recovered. Googe got better and planned a relaunch of the series with artist LeShawn Thomas, but before it got off the ground they hit some copyright issues, Thomas left to do animation work on The Boondocks, and Googe himself eventually signed an exclusive deal with DC Comics. Neil Googe has retained Julie as a sort of signature character, but as a comic, Bazooka Jules seems to be as dead as it gets at this point. - Classic fantasy comic Wormy (sort of Dungeons & Dragons meets Pogo) stopped in mid-arc when David A. Trampier dropped off the face of the earth. \|\|He became a taxi driver\|\| - The Tick comic series ended abruptly (right before a big fight with the bad guys) when author Ben Edlund decided to spend time working on the cartoon. He never made it back, and given the current success of Supernatural, it's unlikely he'll be making it back anytime soon. - And especially given that the series has been relaunched under writer Benito Cereno. - Warren Ellis has a number of these to his name, many of them due to a hard drive crash in 2008 (as explained here). It didn't help things at all that he already had a reputation for Schedule Slippage prior to this. Projects affected by this include Fell, Desolation Jones, New Universal and Doktor Sleepless. Planetary and Ministry of Space both experienced lengthy schedule slips, but were, eventually, completed. - Pretty much everything by Rob Liefeld after he and the other Image founders left Marvel. He's become notorious for starting new comic titles (or revamping the existing ones) only to abandon his plans partway through. The list of mishandled crossovers alone can make a significant portion of this list. Most notoriously, he's gone SIXTY-TWO MONTHS between issues of a Youngblood limited series. - Mike Baron's Sonic Disruptors (a DC limited series from the late 80s) ended on a cliffhanger after seven of an originally-announced twelve issues, with no explanation given at the time. Eventually, Baron admitted he had been making it up as he went along and simply realized he had no idea where the story was going. It may be just as well; after an excellent first issue, it got So Okay, It's Average fast. - Xenozoic Tales started in 1987 as a bimonthly, but the artist's increasingly detailed drawings necessitated a gap before issue 4 and a reschedule to come out once every three months. This reschedule lasted only three issues before hitting another gap and ceasing to have a regular schedule beyond "when we get it ready." Space between issues got increasingly long, with only two issues released in 1989. The series had one issue a year each April for the next three years, then skipped 1993 entirely. Issue 13 came out in 1994 and issue 14 came out in 1996. There have been no issues since, though the author/artist has been known to claim in interviews that he will get back to it. Should we hold our collective breath? - Scud the Disposable Assassin was this for ten years, due to Creator Breakdown. It was finished up, working this into the plot as a Time Skip. - Unicorn Isle was a fantasy comic by Lee Marrs, c.1987, originally slated to run for 12 issues but cancelled after only 5 for unknown reasons. - Archie Comics once made a comic based on NiGHTS into Dreams and had made the initial three issue mini-series into a ongoing series in the same vein that the Knuckles The Echidna ongoing spun out of its second mini-series. However, after its second three issues, they put the series on indefinite hiatus and classified issues 4-6 as a second mini-series. - When Seven Seas Entertainment was first starting out and before they began to publish licensed manga, they released several original titles in the manga style. Having vastly misread the market for such titles (as well as the rapid decline of the publishing market since the company's founding), several of these series were cancelled due to low sales, while some others were stopped short due to other issues. Seven Seas has since largely switched to either one-volume releases (with sequels as sales demand), printed versions of original web series that have a high enough readership (such as Aoi House), or licensed series. Some of the casualties: - Seven Seas debuted with four OEL series, Amazing Agent Luna, No Man's Land, Last Hope, and Blade for Barter. Blade for Barter was cancelled after a single volume (with the conclusion to the cliffhanger published online to make it up to people who actually bought the first volume). Last Hope ran for two volumes with a third teased but then hit a wall when a contractual dispute arose between the publisher and the author that eventually led to the series being cancelled due to market concerns. No Man's Land was originally heavily publicized and also had a flash series started, but both the books and flash series were scrapped originally due to the artist and author having too many other commitments, and have been essentially cancelled due the company's concerns over the declining publishing market. - The Outcast sold well and the publisher intended to continue with it, but the author abruptly left it midway through the second volume for other commitments. - Both Unearthly and Captain Nemo never moved past their first volumes due to the author, who also runs the company, being forced to stop writing in order to run the company instead. - Ravenskull had a teaser for a second volume, but never moved past one. The artist was juggling multiple projects at the time, which led to delays before the second volume was quietly cancelled. No reason was ever given, though looking at Seven Seas response to other properties that have languished in development hell, its probably a safe bet this one won't be returning either. - Seven Seas have several manga and light novels they've licensed, and then never released, such as Ryohgo Narita's Vamp. The kicker is that a few of them are fully translated and ready to be printed, but SSE are reluctant to release them due to market concerns (in the case of Vamp!, they're worried that the series won't appeal to the Twilight crowd... which it wouldn't, but they're looking in the wrong place. It's doubtful those fans would be interested in a novel series featuring a vampire T-rex). - Bill Willingham's Coventry lasted two issues before it was discontinued. Willingham later wrote two short novels in the same universe. Arguably, his later series Fables may be a continuation of the Coventry universe, so perhaps it was not entirely orphaned. - In the mid-90s, three different companies produced comics based on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. The first company, Gladestone, published two mini-series set in Season Two before passing it to Marvel. Marvel did an adaptation of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie and started two series set in Season Three (one with the Rangers in morphed state and a flip book with the team in Ninja form coupled with stories based on VR Troopers). Only six issues of those were made before it was passed over to Awesome Comics where only one issue of a Power Rangers Zeo comic and an ad talking about a crossover between the Zeo team and Youngblood was made. Moral of the story - don't make comics set in an ever-changing continuity. - Wildsiderz was abandoned by writer/artist J. Scott Campbell after the second issue. In fact, he stopped doing Sequential Art altogether around then — now he does pin-ups and covers. Basically, this is a case of "100% uninterested in finishing it." - Randy Green's Dollz was, like M. Rex and Wildsiderz, a two-issue series that was never finished. As far as anyone can tell, Green got too caught up with other projects to bother with it. He still, however, produces art of the characters now and then, sort of like Neil Googe does with Julie Glocke. - Kevin Smith's second Batman miniseries, The Widening Gyre, follows the events of Cacophony and has been on hiatus after 6 issues since early 2010. Smith's reasoning for the delay boils down to "Being stoned all the time". - Before that, there was the infamous Daredevil/Bullseye: The Target mini-series. Long story short, Kevin Smith did a highly acclaimed Daredevil run in the 90s, and one of the most memorable issues had Bullseye killing Karen Page, Matt's girlfriend. Once Smith finished his run, Joe Quesada asked him to enter into a gentlemen's agreement that Smith would get the first shot at writing any future confrontation between Daredevil and Bullseye, as he'd set the stage for their inevitable showdown quite nicely. A few years later, Brian Michael Bendis had made it known that he wanted to have Bullseye return to the franchise, and Smith reminded Quesada of the deal they'd made. Quesada agreed to let Smith write Bullseye's return instead of Bendis, but on the condition that he do it immediately as part of a limited series. The ensuing limited series ( The Target) only ever saw one issue released before Smith lost interest and scrapped the whole thing. He's since said that he regrets agreeing to do the mini-series, as he did it more to hold Quesada to his word than any genuine desire to do another Bullseye story. - After an already erratic release schedule, Frank Miller's All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder abruptly ceased publication in 2008. A continuation called Dark Knight: Boy Wonder was announced in 2010, but as of 2020, it's yet to actually appear. - As stated above in Manga/Anime, Grupo Editorial Vid. It was the most important publisher of comics for the Mexican market, but then since the first half of the 2000s, they started to have problems, like losing the rights to publish Marvel Comics in Spanish, then losing the rights to publish DC Comics, Image, Dark Horse, etc. Thankfully, other publishers decided to work on these titles. - Director Jon Favreau partnered with superstar artist Adi Granov for a four issue mini-series called Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas. The series was meant to be released alongside the first Iron Man movie as a gateway book to get new fans interested in the comics, but only two issues were published before it fell victim to Schedule Slip and was then cancelled altogether. Also not helping matters was the fact that Favreau had a massive falling out with Marvel over the Executive Meddling he put up with while making Iron Man 2, meaning that even if he ever had any interest in finishing the mini-series, it's certainly not going to happen now. - Bad Planet by Thomas Jane was planned to be a 12-issue long series, but it was plagued by Schedule Slip during its development cycle. Volume 1 containing the first six issues was concluded, but the second volume hasn't been updated since 2013. Due to lack of funding, it's unknown if the series will ever see its conclusion. - French comic artist Olivier Ledroit wrote and drew a comic, The Scarlett Door, about a group of cyborg Transhumans who wake up from hibernation in a post-apocalyptic North America, which was discontinued after a single issue and ended on a cliffhanger. - After 23 years of running non-stop, Archie Comics' restructuring and financial troubles led to the cancellation of their Sonic the Hedgehog series. The last few issues were meant to head into a new arc but the axe came down at that point and nixed any future plans. The comics at the least were able to finish up the "Shattered World" arc (aka the Sonic Unleashed adaptation) and was as far as a proper closure the comic was going to get despite a ton of lingering plot lines. Sega since then gave the comic license to IDW. While the comic has the same writers, they opted to reboot the comic world rather than continue the previous universe. - On 2018, Cosmo The Merry Martian was rebooted as as the action-oriented Cosmo the Mighty Martian with the former writers of Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog series, most likely in an attempt to retain the latter's reader base after its cancellation. After five issues, the miniseries suddenly came to a stop in 2020 for no apparent reason, although since the writers were also working on IDW's own Sonic series at the time, it's a moot point. - Archive of Our Own allows an author to literally orphan a fic (original or otherwise), disowning a work that they no longer want to be attached to, with the "new" author being orphan_account. This can be done with both unfinished and completed works, and naturally, a vast majority of the fics "written" by orphan_account are of the former. - Harry Potter and the Breeding Darkness might have run solely on Plot Bunny fuel, but it is very well-written. Unfortunately, the fic seems to have been discontinued due to lack of interest and time to continue writing for it, and has now been put up for adoption. - With Strings Attached was this for a long time. The author, who started it in 1980 and began posting it online in 1997, gave it up in 2002 after her personal life imploded (mother had Alzheimer's, laid off from her job, etc.). The two-thirds of the book she'd finished remained on her website to drive readers nuts. She never thought she would finish it, but in early 2009 she was hit by literary lightning, wrote 300 pages in 3 weeks, and finished the thing. (The final product in book form is over 650 pages long.) She has now released the first half of the long-promised sequel, The Keys Stand Alone. - Colonization: First Contact is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic with the typical "human in Equestria" premise, except with a twist: instead of the typical self-insert, it features a space expedition of scientists and soldiers who stumble upon the planet Equestria. Unfortunately, it petered out just as things had started getting interesting; all we got are five chapters, and a piece of the sixth on the author's profile. The author later announced he will not be finishing the fic (and offers it to any enterprising author who would like to finish it.) - Fimfiction.net allows authors to label their stories as being "On Hiatus" or "Cancelled", though whether or not an orphaned fic will actually make use of either label is a toss-up. - Invoked by the Harry Potter fanfic "Our Obligations", where the writer specifically wrote the last chapter as a No Ending just to give people this impression. - Yellow Submarine, a Harry Potter fic, was almost finished when its author decided to wrap up an earlier loose end. The related subplot was reintroduced, then abandoned. - The Avatar: The Last Airbender series Consequences of Our Pasts was meant to be an exploration of the Avatar cycle starting with Aang and show the results of having no Airbenders left for the cycle to use, as well as explore how events in the distant past made the canon War inevitable. Midway through the second of five projected stories, the author put it on hold for over two years due to Real Life concerns, then expressed dissatisfaction and burnout (as well as belief that Embers (Vathara) expressed his intended themes more effectively) before finally removing it all from Fanfiction Dot Net. Only the first part of the first story, The Aftermath: Aang's Book, is now archived here, and that is mostly setup. - The "Partners" series by Nate Grey will never be finished due to the author losing interest in Pilot Candidate over the years. - Obscure Splatoon fanfiction Orange and Blue by Inkling Studios. It was first cancelled as a fanfic in late 2016, then being revived in early 2017 as a webcomic... only for THAT to be cancelled as well due to the creator losing interest in the game and having poor experiences with the fandom. - Twilight Pretty Cure was abandoned after the author was accused of mishandling sensitive subjects such as rape. Though she tried to address this problem by rewriting the story to make it less offensive, the backlash against it eventually caused her to give up on it completely with several of the revised chapters still not reposted. - When the Monster Musume anime first aired back in 2015, several artists and anons met on imageboards to discuss the series, and decided to create a parallel story starring the Bicycle Cop and girls from the most dangerous liminal subspecies available, as a sort of "evil" counterpart of Kimihito's harem. So Everyday Life with Bicycle Cop was born. High-quality art of the girls was made, along with backstories and info pages that perfectly replicated Okayado's writing and drawing style. Several strips were made to show the interactions between the girls and the cop, like a very funny and occasionally sweet sitcom. Unfortunately the artists either got bored, had other commitments or jumped to other fanbases, so the project slowed down and eventually came to a halt. The anons sent the whole work to Okayado as a sign of gratitude, in any case. - Grej created a Jreg fan series called Realicide. Officially, three episodes have been released with shorts in-between. It was given the Approval of God and is a piece of Ascended Fanon, with the events of Realicide being acknowledged in Centricide to be simultaeneously occuring. Jreg even expressed desire to collaborate with the Grej team one day. However, the series was officially canceled in mid-2021 as the creators were burnt out and wanted to move on to other projects. - The fic Hell and High Water was cancelled in 2022, though at that point the last chapter was written two years prior, which itself was written a year after the previous one. The author cited these long update gaps as one of the reason for dropping the fic. The other was the bloated nature of the plot, as he felt there were too many needlessly complicated details, characters, and plot beats. He did suggest that he may revisit the story in the future, albeit completely rewriting it to be more condensed and focused. - The Danganronpa fic series Legacy Of Hope, a reboot of A New Hope (Danganronpa), was ultimately shelved due to story fatigue and loss of communication with the original author (the reboot is ghostwritten). As such, A New Luck abruptly ends on the third story arc, but the author gave out the list of killers, victims, and survivors. - Universe Falls, a Steven Universe and Gravity Falls crossover retelling was 102 chapters in, and halfway through what they called "Arc 9" of a planned 11 arc story. There were even preliminary plans to do a sequel series once they finished. They even had the titles for the remaining episodes posted online for what the general flow/themes of the remaining parts of the story would be. But then, in mid 2022, the author announced that he was putting the fic on "indefinite hiatus". In part because of sheer exhaustion for having worked on it for 7 years and no longer considering it fun. In part because they had other stories they were now more invested in. And in part because of a psychosomatic association it now has with the death of their father. While apologetic, they just don't have the flow anymore to finish it out. - The first two installments of Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series, 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two have film adaptations, but not 2061: Odyssey Three or 3001: The Final Odyssey. Tom Hanks expressed interest in doing film adaptations of the last two, but this was ages ago, Douglas Rain has died, and Keir Dullea is probably too old to do the rest of the series. - The Chronicles of Narnia survived a Channel Hop of distributors (from Disney to Fox), but then Walden Media's contract with the C. S. Lewis estate ended, and the series is on hold again. The third film's poor reviews and Adaptation Decay certainly didn't help. While a planned adaptation of The Silver Chair was announced back around 2013 which would've be a reboot directed by none other than Joe Johnston, it has since been canceled as of 2019 in favor of a new reboot of some sort for Netflix. - Zack Snyder planned an arc of five films in the DC Extended Universe that would see the birth, fall and rise of the Justice League and apocalyptic fights against the New Gods in a Bad Future. Ultimately, only three films were made — Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Zack Snyder's Justice League due to the studio (now called DC Studios) and Warner Bros. having been disoriented by the ferocious backlash upon the release of Batman v Superman (which cause the Justice League film to suffer from it, and the version of Snyder could only be saved thanks to a fan campaign) and having distanced themselves from Snyder as a result. - The Divergent Series had this fate given that the final book Allegiant was split into two movies ( Allegiant and Ascendant)...that were not shot concurrently. note : This was unlike Lionsgate's previous YA franchise The Hunger Games, whose two-part finale was filmed back-to-back, so it was able to release the second even if the first underperformed (which it didn't). Divergent obviously wanted to follow its lead, but the series never generated as much interest as The Hunger Games and the second film underperformed, which should be enough writing on the wall for Lionsgate to cut the films' funding. Part one ended up being a Box Office Bomb, so the next one never materialized. - Eragon never had any sequels despite 3 later books to adapt. The film underperformed - not financially, but regarding its critical and audience reception - and there wasn't enough interest in continuing it. - The Last Airbender only adapted the first season of the three season animated series it was based on, but due to a poor critical and audience reception the planned sequels were never made. - Older Than Print: At the beginning of The Canterbury Tales, the characters are all heading to Canterbury for various reasons, and it's stated that each one will (for a story contest) tell two stories on the way there, and two on the way back. However, it breaks off before they make it to Canterbury or even have one character tell more than one story (in some cases, such as the Cook's Tale, the story is incomplete). Whether or not Geoffrey Chaucer simply abandoned it or meant to finish it but died first is unknown. (An alternative explanation is that the work was completed, but no complete version of the manuscript has been retained or recorded.) - Some scholars consider The Tale of Genji an example. It cuts off abruptly with the potential for plenty more story. - Robin Jarvis seemingly abandoned his Hagwood trilogy after the first book. Indeed, for over a decade there was only one book, but the final volumes were released in 2013 and 2016, respectively. However, his Intrigues of the Reflected Realm series still only has one book, Deathscent. Hagwood and Intrigues of the Reflected Realm debuted at about the same time, and now the latter has remained unfinished for longer than the former. - Quest Of the Gypsy by Ron Goulart was supposed to be six books long, but stopped after the second book in 1977. - Stieg Larsson's The Millennium Trilogy was planned to be a decalogy, but was cut short in 2007 after only three books by his sudden death. The series' publisher would later hire David Lagercrantz to continue the series in Larsson's stead, releasing the fourth installment in 2015. - Kim Newman writing as Jack Yeovil's Demon Download series for Games Workshop's Dark Future universe has been awaiting the fourth and final installment since 1991. Despite GW republishing the earlier works, there's no sign of the final volume ever appearing in print. - Tales of the Nine Charms by Erica Farber and J.R. Sansevere had two books published in 2000 and 2001 respectively and claims to be a trilogy. As of 2014, the third book has yet to materialize. - The Architect of Sleep by Steven R. Boyett ends on a cliffhanger that may never be resolved. After wrangling with his publisher over the sequel, Boyett took the unusual step of buying the rights back and has stated repeatedly that he no longer has any interest in finishing the series. - Charles Stross has explained that he will not be continuing The Eschaton Series beyond its existing two installments because he feels he made some worldbuilding mistakes so serious at the end of Iron Sunrise as to make that universe unviable. - George R. R. Martin attempted to start a number of short story series (he says in Dreamsongs, "My career is littered with the corpses of dead series") before settling on Haviland Tuf, chronicled in the Tuf Voyaging fixup novel. - Changeling and Madwand by Roger Zelazny set a stage for multidimensional conflict of technology vs. magic vs. Eldritch Abominations and just stop there. In over a decade the author never came back to the setting. - Roald Dahl's third book about Charlie Bucket and Willy Wonka, Charlie in the White House — which would have picked up from the Sequel Hook at the end of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator — never got further than Chapter One. - The War Against the Chtorr is at risk of becoming this, as David Gerrold is pushing 70 years of age and has yet to finish Book 5 (of a planned 7), after Book 4 ended on a cliffhanger. - Lilith Saintcrow's Steelflower trilogy wound up subverting this. At one point, the author stated on her website that she would not be continuing the series due to heavy piracy of the ebook edition of the first installment, but wound up releasing the second and third installments of the trilogy nearly ten years later, completing it. - Empire from the Ashes ( Dahak) sets the stage for an interstellar war of epic proportions, where human ancestors have been fighting genocidal aliens, whose invasions kept nearly (but not quite) exterminating them for millions of years. The first book, Mutineer's Moon, is about a stranded picket planetoid waking from 50 000 years of sleep to enlist the help of the Lost Colony Earth. Armageddon Inheritance is about figuring what killed the rest of the interstellar Imperium/Empire and fighting the invasion, this time with a fleet of planetoids and using exploding stars as death traps. Heirs of Empire is about slowly preparing a counterstrike while surviving a coup and establishing order on another Lost Colony, this time stuck in the flintlock era. And then nothing since 1996. Presumably, David Weber is busy writing about Honor Harrington and Bahzel. Meanwhile the animated adaptation has been in pre-production limbo since the early 2000s. - Terry Jones's The Lady and the Squire, the sequel to the children's novel The Knight And The Squire, ends on a downer with two major characters missing-presumed-dead and the three main characters splitting up. It was published in 2000 and never continued. - Dragon Queen, a Web Serial Novel, stopped updating in March of 2015, with eight chapters up. - Diane Carey had initially planned at least one or two more books revolving around Piper, the character she introduced in what would eventually be called the Fortunes of War story, but those novels never came about. - Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories: The introduction of Volume 1 makes it clear that Dr Asimov was intending to work with Doubleday to republish all of his fiction in a format that would make finding stories easy, but having only 88 stories/poems when his short Science Fiction is more than two hundred shows that at least two more volumes would be needed. Once you add in the Mystery Fiction and Poetry counts, the two lonely volumes look very incomplete. - The Maradonia Saga. The last new book to be released was Maradonia and the Law of Blood, all the way back in 2010. The series presumably stalled due to its author Gloria Tesch preferring to focus on The Movie. It seems like the creators ran out of money and gave up on the series after the film's premiere, making the story end on an unresolved cliffhanger. Several other factors point towards the series being cancelled: as of January 2020, the Maradonia websites are down, none of the e-books are available for purchase, the only physical copies for sale are used, and Gloria Tesch's website focuses on her modelling. To make matters worse, Gerry Tesch, Gloria's father and the one person who helped promoting and publishing the series, died in 2018. In December 2019, Gloria Tesch released The Secret of Moon Lake (under the new name/pseudonym Sofia Nova) and called it her debut novel, effectively disowning Maradonia. - Erec Rex was supposed to be an eight-book series. The fifth entry was published in 2012. The official site currently has a headline "Book Six is underway!"...from 2014. - Tales of Elethiya, a planned ten book length web serial novel seems to have stalled out at three instalments and the website where they were available is offline leaving the series in limbo. - The Starkillers Cycle, a serialized online Space Opera novel available on Tumblr that was co-authored by Sarah J. Maas and Susan Dennard. It was first uploaded in 2014 but then stopped being updated and has since been taken down. It's been speculated this is because of Dennard and Maas breaking off their friendship (the details aren't public but it's been noted they no longer interact during interviews/panels or post about their friendship, and they've stopped following each other on social media). - The Familiar, an ambitious book series written by Mark Z. Danielewski that was planned to span 27 volumes, with each volume being a whopping 800+ pages filled with interlocking stories and characters, was prematurely halted at less than 25 percent complete after the fifth volume was released, as the publisher lost faith in it with sales being poor. - Chappelle's Show when Dave couldn't handle the fame and pressure after the success of the first two seasons. He literally walked out on the production of the third season, even after Comedy Central offered a bigger paycheck. He is currently focusing on performing stand-up. - The Sarah Jane Adventures, the kid-friendly spin-off of the modern Doctor Who series, ended halfway through Series Five following the death of star Elisabeth Sladen (the production team weren't willing to replace her or carry on without her). Fortunately, although one story arc — related to Sarah Jane adopting an alien girl — was left incomplete, the series' storylines were standalone enough to avoid any loose ends. - Twin Peaks was this for over 25 years. The movie, Fire Walk With Me, rather than concluding the story, was supposed to mark the transition from TV to films, but after its failure at the box office, the follow-up was never made. A revival series eventually aired in 2017, concluding the story at last (or not). - Technically, you might say this of Sonny with a Chance. Season 3 ended with Sonny Munroe (sort of) reconciling with Chad Dylan Cooper and landing a job singing songs in an outdoor café. Before the fourth season was to continue the plot line, Demi Lovato went to rehab to treat self-harm, bulimia and drug and alcohol abuse, as well as her bipolarity, and she decided at the end that returning to Sonny wouldn't be a good thing for her recovery. So Random!, which only loosely brought back the SWAC characters and cast (with a few additions) as part of their "Show Within a Show Becom(ing) A Show", did not mention Sonny or "Channy" at all, used Chad Dylan Cooper as a Random, and was canceled after one season. Demi never even got to guest on an episode as herself or Sonny. - Though the stories of its characters would be continued in film, Star Trek: The Original Series doesn't cover all of the five-year mission of the Enterprise, ending unceremoniously. - Bryan Fuller is the victim of this trope way too frequently: - Wonderfalls had completed a full season of episodes but only four aired before FOX pulled the plug. The story behind the Muses remains unresolved and several planned stories, including a lesbian's mystery pregnancy and a stint by Jaye in a locked ward never played out. - Pushing Daisies ended after two shortened seasons with many unanswered questions and dangling plot threads, not least of which is the source of Ned's ability. - Although Hannibal made it through three seasons and seemed to come to a conclusion, Word of God confirms that \|\|Will and Hannibal both survived the Fall\|\|. Fuller had planned on five seasons and has expressed repeated interest in adapting Silence of the Lambs. - Fuller also has two failed pilots to his credit, Mockingbird Lane and High Moon. - Even his Carrie (2002) counts. It's an adaptation of the Stephen King novel that was talked about expanding into a TV series, so it ends openly in the hopes that the story could continue. Despite strong ratings justifying a series, he soon realised the network weren't interested. - The BBC adaptation of John Christopher's trilogy The Tripods was cancelled after the first two series (covering books one and two) leaving it in limbo. - New Amsterdam (2008): Fox halted production of the show after only filming eight episodes out of a planned 13. The only reason the show even aired was because the network was starving for material during the 07-08 writer's strike. After airing all of the completed episodes, Fox officially canceled it. - The Vocaloid series "Synchronicity" was thought by fans to have been abandoned, since the third and final video in the trilogy has yet to be released. This notion was perpetuated when an incomplete version of the final video was allegedly posted on Japanese video sharing site Nico Nico Douga before quickly being removed. However, the creator of the series, Hitoshizuku, claimed that no such video was ever uploaded, and she has confirmed on her blog that the conclusion to the series is in progress, though she stated that fans might have to wait awhile for it to be released. - The 1995 David Bowie album 1. Outside was intended to be the first part of a trilogy of concept albums. Bowie apparently lost interest in the project. - Similarly, George Michael's 1990 album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 was intended to be part one of a Distinct Double Album, 'Volume 1' containing pop-rock and soul influenced tracks. 'Volume 2', which was intended to be a dance album, was never finished because of disputes with the record company. Michael had recorded 4 tracks for it. He contributed three of them — "Too Funky", "Do You Really Want To Know", and "Happy" — to the Red Hot + Dance AIDS charity album. "Too Funky" was released as a single with the b-side "Crazyman Dance", also recorded for the cancelled album. The Vol. 1 single "Waiting For That Day"'s b-side "Fantasy" may also have been intended for the album as it fits in stylistically. It isn't known if Michael recorded any more songs for the cancelled Vol. 2 or carried them over to his later albums Older or Patience. It is unlikely the record company wanted him talking about unreleased material so it may not be known for a while. - Shirley Manson recorded a solo album. The studio refused to release it considering it non-commercial, and she also gave up putting the songs out on her own. - Simple Minds recorded a promo video for This Is It, and clips were shown in a promo video for the album Graffiti Soul. The song was ultimately not released as a single, and the full video has not been released. - The Beach Boys had planned for a Stars & Stripes series featuring various other artists (primarily in Country Music) doing remakes of their most famous hits. After Stars & Stripes, Vol. 1 bombed, they abandoned any plans for a Vol. 2, although one track for what would have become Vol. 2 (a cover of "In My Room" with Tammy Wynette) later appeared on one of Wynette's compilation albums. - The Residents intended on releasing a six-part "mole trilogy" set in the same universe as the Mark Of The Mole Concept Album: They cut things short after a disastrous tour supporting Mark Of The Mole itself, and only put out three albums and an EP revolving around the concept. One of those releases is a Live Album presentation of Mark Of The Mole itself ( Mole Show), and all the others ( Tunes Of Two Cities, Intermission, The Big Bubble) are supposed to be music made In-Universe by the feuding societies depicted in Mark Of The Mole, so the whole story-line ultimately has No Ending. - Limp Bizkit EP The Unquestionable Truth, Part 1, bore a more serious tone than usual LB fare, and served as a comeback record for guitarist Wes Borland. Naturally the title implied there would be another part, but EP sold badly and Borland walked away again after its release (he rejoined the group later, but little was heard about the second part since then, especially with their main album stuck in Development Hell). - Miley Cyrus was originally planning in 2019 to release a 3-part album project called She Is Miley Cyrus, releasing it in the form of 3 EPs throughout the year. Only the first EP, She Is Coming, saw a release, with the later two, She Is Here and She is Everything, being indefinitely postponed after her tumultuous breakup with Liam Hemsworth. In the following year, she announced that the project was scrapped and rebooted from scratch (she claimed that it didn't make sense to continue on with the pre-breakup material), culminating in the release of an entirely new album, Plastic Hearts, near the end of 2020. - Kanye West's first three albums between 2004 to 2007 ( The College Dropout, Late Registration, and Graduation) heavily revolved around college and themes of growing up into adulthood, with Kanye planning immediately after Graduation to complete the series with an album titled Good Ass Job. Then Kanye was hit with multiple of personal tragedies all at once, including the sudden death of his mother and breakup with his fiancé, which prompted an almost complete overhaul in musical direction with 808s and Heartbreak. The last news that anyone has ever heard of Good Ass Job was Kanye announcing in 2018 that it would be salvaged as a collaboration with Chance the Rapper, but word of that too has since stagnated, with Kanye focused on other projects since. - The Pinball 2000 line from Williams Electronics, heralded as the future of pinball, debuted with Revenge from Mars and Star Wars Episode I. Although both machines were well-acclaimed and decent sellers, Williams' shareholders decided to pull out of the arcade gaming business all together to focus solely on slot machines. - In a sort of Show Within a Show style example, this phenomenon got a reference in the RPG sourcebook GURPS Fantasy II, where the greatest poet of a certain ancient civilization has been suffering a writer's block for thousands of years, his magnum opus left one volume short of completion. Rather than an isolated case, this is another symptom of said civilization's stagnated nature. - While the game itself has continued without a hitch, Konami is notorious for creating and then dropping various deck archetypes for the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game. While the anime-based ones are forgivable, the original ones are not, especially when some of those archetypes are left orphaned with only an opening hand's worth of cards to their name. Fortunately, Konami seems to be realizing that they have those archetypes orphaned, and are starting to readopt them with new support in the game's more recent sets. - Mage: The Ascension's revised Convention books, covering the groups of the game's primary antagonist group, the Technocracy. The first book in the series, Iteration X, was released in 2002, proving to be a considerable improvement over the original... then White Wolf went and ended the Old World of Darkness. Fans thought that was it for the Convention books. However, at Gencon 2011, WW announced they'd be doing the remaining four Convention books, and finally completed the set in October 2013. - On the subject of the oWoD, both Wraith: The Oblivion and Changeling: The Dreaming were ended before the other lines, and both were left incomplete. Wraith's Guildbook series was left unfinished, with five of the thirteen Great Guilds not covered. In Changeling's case, meanwhile, Book of Glamour was announced, but never saw light of day (and is unlikely to, its intended content being superseded by Changeling's 20th Anniversary edition), and the Kithbook series was cut short, with the Boggans and Sidhe not done (though Nobles: the Shining Host is considered an unofficial Sidhe Kithbook). Fortunately, a Boggan kithbook was funded as a stretch goal for the Kickstarter to fund a deluxe version of the Changeling 20th Anniversary corebook. - In a particularly early example, the Horace series of video games on the ZX Spectrum became orphaned following the departure of its creator from the video game industry in the mid-80's after suffering a collapsed lung. The series came to a close in 1985, with a standalone game appearing ten years later, and then nothing since. - Any game released on an episodic schedule can be prone to this if the first episodes don't stir up enough interest and the developers are fired (as is the case with SiN Episodes: Emergence, whose development studio was disintegrated after the release of the first episode Emergence) or lose interest and move on to other, better things (Telltale Games, for example, released only the first two episodes to their Bone series, which were met with lukewarm reviews, before moving on to the much more successful Sam & Max: Freelance Police series). - After Half-Life 2 Episode 2 ended on a cliffhanger, gamers eagerly awaited a resolution in Episode 3 which was supposed to come in by the end of 2007. However, after Valve missed this deadline the project was never seen or heard from again, with Half-Life 2 Episode 3, or eventually, Half-Life 3 becoming one of the most infamous pieces of Vaporware in video game history. During 2016 and 2017, most of the key creative story staff from the Half-Life series left Valve, which many saw as the final nail in the coffin for Half-Life 3's chances of ever getting made. - 2020 saw the release of a VR interquel named Half-Life: Alyx, the first Valve-produced entry in the Half-Life series for over a decade, which follows the exploits of Alyx Vance 5 years before the events of Half-Life 2, with the ending suggesting that the timeline was rebooted. This, along with announcements from Valve stating their plans to continue the series, may mean the long-awaited subversion of this trope. - Team Fortress 2 was another victim to "Valve Time", in this case most regarding its comic series. Initially announced in 2013 for a bi-monthly 7-issue story arc, only 6 issues were completed between 2013 and 2017, and the final issue nowhere to be seen. Following issue 6's release, the development team of TF2 had massively downsized, and in 2019, series artist Heather Campbell confirmed that issue 7 was not in active development as everyone moved onto different projects, and barring the possibilities of "waiting to see if/when the stars align", it seems it'll stay that way. - Left 4 Dead was yet another series that was left abandoned by Valve (Starting to see a pattern here?). The last game was Left 4 Dead 2 which was released all the way back in 2009. This is despite the fact that both the first and second game being released merely a year apart. Although there have been hints on Valve attempting to make a sequel, they were merely rumours and nothing substantial has been released, despite fans begging Valve to make a sequel due to the game's aging engine. - The LucasArts adventure game Loom was conceived as the first game in an epic fantasy trilogy, with an extremely confusing cliffhanger ending to get players interested in a potential sequel. For years, many fans speculated that the sequels were dropped because Loom wasn't as critically acclaimed as LucasArts had hoped (it was) or because it didn't sell very many copies (it did), but LucasArts would later confirm that the sequels were dropped because no-one at the company wanted to work on them. - Full Throttle sold well enough that the company intended to create sequels. However, two different attempts to put one together fell apart in the process. As the creator Tim Schafer left LucasArts not long after the first sequel attempt to form Double Fine, and LucasArts went under in 2013, it's safe to call this one dead (outside of a remake). - Tim Schafer is cursed with these. - Brütal Legend was intended to be the first title in a series and the ending has a Sequel Hook. The second game had even started pre-production at Double Fine when Electronic Arts swiftly cancelled it in response to low sales of the first title. Years later, when EA dropped support for the title, DF gained full rights to the game, allowing them to finally release a PC port, and the fate of the sequel or new content all depends on whether the PC port sells well or not (which, so far, it seems to be doing much better on PC than on consoles). - Tim stated in 2017 that a sequel can and will happen eventually, he just needs to work on Psychonauts 2 first. The Psychonauts crowdfunding campaign did say that it passing would make the sequel much more likely. Eventually it was successfully funded and the sequel was released in 2021 to much applause from the fans. Awesome. - Betrayal at Krondor enjoyed immense success and is now a cult classic. The team that put it together was just starting to work on a sequel when the studio broke up the RPG department and crashed the whole project. A Spiritual Successor, Betrayal in Antara, and a thematic successor, Return to Krondor, eventually appeared, but the first had nothing in common with its predecessor except for the general game engine, and the latter was a sequel in name only. (And Betrayal in Antara would get abandoned itself, though fewer people cared about that.) The actual project intended by the creators of Betrayal to expand on that storyline and tie off all the loose ends, called Thief of Dreams, never saw the light of day. - This trope seems to have hit Sega particularly hard: - Before being released, six episodes for Shenmue were planned. The first episode was critically acclaimed, but flopped financially, so they decided to make the series shorter, by merging episodes 2, 3, 4 and 5 into a single episode, leaving the series with only 3 episodes. But Shenmue II (still universally acclaimed as an awesome game) flopped even harder than the first one (all thanks to the game being released as an Xbox exclusive in America, and the Dreamcast dying out in Europe and Japan), so plans for future games in the series were abandoned by Sega. Creator Yu Suzuki managed decades later to get a Shenmue III done with the help of crowdfunding. But the story still ends on a Sequel Hook and the game has a letter hoping for a Shenmue IV. - El Dorado Gate was intended to be released in 24 bimonthly installments. Due to the death of the Dreamcast, the last 14 volumes were canned. Slightly averted in that Capcom planned for this ahead of time, and gave the game a proper ending in Volume 7. - SEGA also had the honor of publishing High Voltage Software's The Conduit and its sequel, both designed to fully capitalize on the Wii's processing power. Unfortunately, even though they both end with a Cliffhanger, poor sales of the latter discouraged High Voltage Software from continuing the series. - Commander Keen ends rather suddenly with an impending battle between Commander Keen and his arch nemesis who intends to destroy the universe. Both Commander Keen 5 and 6 make reference to this impending conflict, but the story was never finished. Unless you count the Game Boy Color version, which doesn't exist. - Viewtiful Joe claimed that there'd be two more times the world needed to be saved at the end of the first game and the sequel ends on a cliffhanger. Odds of the 3rd game ever coming out are pretty damn low now that Clover Studios doesn't even exist anymore, and most of the employees are working at PlatinumGames now, which isn't associated with Capcom. - Legacy of Kain was last seen with the Big Bad still at large and many plot lines still hanging. Due to the death of a major voice actor and the departure of the main writers (and the death of another), the story will never be completed. - Anachronox ended on a cliffhanger. The game was a critical hit with a cult following, but didn't sell too well. Then there's the fact that that the development team was fired the day before the game was released. So no sequel for you. - No One Lives Forever was abandoned by Monolith in favor of First Encounter Assault Recon and Condemned: Criminal Origins. The odds of a modern reboot, sequal, or remaster are unlikely now since now no one's sure who even owns the IP. - The four-part Swordquest series from Atari was cut short with the release of Waterworld, the third game in the series, thanks to The Great Video Game Crash of 1983. - Freedom Force is a pair of light-hearted yet brilliant superhero pastiches that blended pastiche with actual overarching plots and solid gameplay. Unfortunately, they didn't sell that well so development on the third entry died. Since then the studio has become so focused on (and rich by) making the Bioshock series that the cliffhanger ending of the second game will likely never be cleared up. - The Croc series ended after two normal games and two mobile games, due to Argonaut Software folding. The mobile games have long been unavailable for download, so the only games most people will play are Croc 1 and 2. A 3rd game in the series was announced but never released. The games were serious contenders to Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon at the time, and could have gone on to better things. - Sadly, Klonoa had fallen victim to this for years, the series' last console game released in 2001, and last handheld game released in 2005 (outside Japan). There was a brief revival, when the first game was remade for Wii, but sales were very low, so the series was stuck in limbo again. Fortunately, there was an announcement for a Compilation Rerelease of both the first and second console games called The KLONOA Phantasy Reverie Series, meaning that the series is starting to get some activity once again. - Breath of Fire fell victim to this after the release of Dragon Quarter. Though Camelot Software Planning offered to revive the franchise, nothing ever came of it. - Mega Man Legends has unfortunately become this with 3 being cancelled. - Continuing with Mega Man, Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X was intended to kickstart a series of Mega Man X remakes whose story was more in line with Keiji Inafune's original vision. Unfortunately, poor sales killed that idea after the first installment. - Final Fantasy XV had a second season of DLC campaigns planned with episodes dedicated to Ardyn, Noctis, Lunafreya, and Aranea that would fill in the gaps in the story, similar to the episodes for Gladiolus, Prompto, and Ignis. Unfortunately, due in part to the departure of head developer Hajime Tabata, the second season of DLC was cancelled, making Episode Ardyn the last DLC campaign released for the game. - Bonk also appears to sadly be another victim of this, with Bonk 3DS and Brink of Extinction being cancelled due to the dissolution of Hudson Soft. - Shadow Hearts, due to the dissolution of Nautilus. - Monster Rancher, aside from a bare-bones freemium mobile app, was last seen as a handheld game in 2010, and hasn't had a proper numbered console installment in over a decade. The only speckle of hope is an homage to the series in Deception IV in the form of a Suezo trap. This ended in 2020, where a remaster of the first game was announced. - While the remakes of Lunar: The Silver Star may very well never end, it's safe to say there will probably never be a brand new installment in the Lunar series, due to Studio Alex no longer existing and the absolute trainwreck that was Lunar: Dragon Song. Sad, because a "Lunar 3" was apparently in development at one point. - Wild ARMs appears to be orphaned, given Media Vision has moved on to other projects, such as Shining Ark, Shining Resonance, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, and some of the later games in the Valkyria Chronicles series ( 3, 4, and Valkyria Revolution). - Suikoden hasn't gotten a proper sequel since the fifth, with Konami ultimately announcing on their Facebook page that they had no new announcements on the series, and that the development team behind the franchise had been disbanded. - Not quite dead, given the announcement of Genso Suikoden: Centennial Tapestry (official English title, if the game is localized, may differ), although the series that takes place in the same universe has been orphaned for years. - Sony left Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow hanging on a cliffhanger, then abandoned the franchise. - Blinx, due to the dissolution of Artoon, poor reception from critics and gamers alike, the failure of the Xbox line in Japan (where Blinx was supposed to help the Xbox catch on), and because Microsoft elected Master Chief as the Xbox mascot instead. - The Space Quest series, after ending with a teaser for Space Quest 7, has been abandoned as Sierra, like LucasArts, had moved away from adventure games, and later went under. Some fan made sequels do exist, but nothing official is ever likely to appear. - The Dark Cloud series appears to have ended with Dark Chronicle, now that Level-5 has moved on to other projects. - The Oddworld pentalogy. It was planned to be at least 10 games. To very few people's surprise, this turned out to be not an easy task. So far, there have been 4. Every year or so there's been news about the company making a new game (At least 3 different sequel ideas have been completely scrapped,) or making sequels in the form of films, but nothing ever comes of it. It seems like they may have finally given up on completing the series. They're working on remakes of their old games instead. - Activision fired the makers of the Crash Bandicoot series in the late 2000s, which is why Crash: Mind Over Mutant, released way back in 2009, is the latest canonical game in the series. Activision has since released remakes of the first three games and a racing spin-off, and the success of those remakes has led to the announcement of Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, breaking the streak. At least until Activision downsized Toys for Bob and made them a support studio for Call of Duty, causing the studio's leadership to leave and seemingly orphaning the series once again. - The World of Mana series, with Kingdom Hearts having replaced it as Square Enix's flagship action RPG franchise. - Also on Square, attempts to follow on Chrono Cross have been Vapor Ware for quite a while. And yet many attempts of fans to remake or create sequels to predecessor Chrono Trigger are met with cease-and-desist letters. Yasunori Mitsuda and Masato Kato are interested in another installment but want to have the Dream Team together again. - Baten Kaitos has had new installments planned, but scrapped for unknown reasons. - Lennus ( Paladin's Quest to North American gamers) got one sequel that remained in Japan, and that was it. - Xenogears and Xenosaga due to a really bad case of executive meddling in the former, and perceived lack of interest in the latter. Notably, while the person behind Xenosaga would love for it to at least be remastered, even he doesn't think there's enough fan interest for it to be profitable. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 continues on the series, but the only thing it has to do with the previous games is Gnosticism. And that one got multiple sequels of its own. - The Marathon game mod Return To Marathon was planned to be an episodic scenario, but only the first chapter was completed before it was scrapped. - This is what happened to de Blob, with THQ's bankruptcy in 2013 and the closure of developer BlueTongue. - Silicon Knights. Making M-rated games that were published by Nintendo? Check. Being bought out by Microsoft? Check. Making lackluster games at Microsoft, and then dying because (in a rare case where it'd be positive) they refused to do any Executive Meddling to keep Denis Dyack in check like Nintendo did? Check. Silicon Knights were planning on making an Eternal Darkness 2, but it never happened because after the release of Too Human and X-Men: Destiny, the company folded due to a lawsuit with Epic Games and plaigarism of the Unreal Engine. - Virus Invasion 7 was announced in 2008, then fell into extreme Schedule Slip; the final nail in the coffin was October 2011, when its creator, Blublub, first announced that it would be done within a week, then dropped off the face of the Earth. There were attempts to salvage the series, first by Pteriforever with a fansequel, Virus Invasion Spectrum, and then by SpeedyVelcro with a generally-inferior Spiritual Successor, Advanced Invasion. Advanced Invasion 4 seems to have been orphaned in its own right. - This seems to have been the fate of Jak and Daxter. A highly-successful franchise on the PS2, but when Naughty Dog went on to working on other projects such as Uncharted and The Last of Us, the Jak series was left in limbo. There was a new game released for the PSP in 2009, but it was poorly received, and Naughty Dog has said that they tried to make a Jak 4 or a reboot, but couldn't get it to feel like Jak, so—aside from an HD compilation—it looks like we might not see another Jak game for the time being. - Though the Sonic The Hedgehog series is itself going strong, this has happened to many of its spinoffs. The "Sonic Storybook Series" is the best example, as Sega decided to abandon it after Black Knight met with poor sales and even poorer reviews. - Zap Dramatic's Ambition ended on a cliffhanger and was supposed to be continued in a sequel series. It hasn't happened yet. - Darkstalkers hasn't seen a new installment since 1997. Capcom re-released Vampire Hunter and Vampire Savior in 2013 as Darkstalkers Resurrection, but Capcom later stated that they had no plans for a new Darkstalkers game, citing poor sales of the re-release. - Power Stone similarly stopped after Power Stone 2 in 2000. Capcom re-released both games as part of a collection for the Playstation portable in 2006, with no signs of life from the series since. - Big Huge Games' Rise of Nations was found to have had developed plans for future installments. Unfortunately, with the studio's closure, the fate of the RTS series is up in the air. - The unfortunately titled Insecticide: Part 1 released in 2008 and has yet to see a part 2. - The Remake of the Phantasy Star series, Phantasy Star Generation was abandoned after two games in favor of porting the originals. Further more, the remakes were announced for a US and EU release but never released. - The F-Zero franchise has been on a standstill since 2004 (the last game being released on the Game Boy Advance) due to Shigeru Miyamoto simply having no idea how to progress with the franchise without resorting to just throwing in only new characters and tracks. - Tactics Ogre started with "Episode VI" in the same fashion as Star Wars. Only four games were ever released. - LEGO The Hobbit was released containing An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug; The Battle of the Five Armies was promised as a future DLC but it was ultimately canceled, leaving it unfinished. - The Forgotten: It Begins, published in 1999, was developed as the first installment of a seven part series, and most reviewers agreed that it seemed like more of an introduction to a story than a complete game. Unfortunately the series was never continued, and because of disputed ownership rights between the developers almost certainly never will be, leaving the game as an orphaned first chapter. - ObsCure II ends on a cliffhanger revealing the existence of a Greater-Scope Villain, but the third game fell into Development Hell for several years. By the time it was finally released, it had evolved into a non-canon spinoff called Final Exam that only loosely references the events of the first two games. - An in-universe example is found in Dragon Age: Inquisition. As part of Cassandra's romance/friendship arc, the Inquisitor can persuade Varric to un-orphan a story series he had given up writing - just because she loves it and wants to know how it ends. Despite stating that he didn't like the series and it sold poorly, he agrees, then after he sees her reaction he says that it was Worth It. - Cursery was a series of PC point-and-click games from Blue Tea Games, sort of a sister series to their Dark Parables, which took classic nursery rhymes and twisted them into dark mysteries. Only one installment, The Crooked Man and the Crooked Cat, was ever produced before this trope went into effect; Blue Tea Games made the decision to shift focus to their mobile titles, and all of their PC game series were either sold to other developers or orphaned. - Nexus War was called off in a Grand Finale when the creator was unable to continue his work for financial and contractual reasons. One of the supporting developers revived the series not long after with Nexus Clash, but the sequel isn't as well-known and took several years of development to get itself back to the level of quality that players had come to expect from the original. - Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness was supposed to be the first of a new trilogy, however, due to Eidos' constant meddling, it failed spectacularly and Core were stripped of the very series they created. Eidos handed the series to Crystal Dynamics and the original series was suddenly ended in favor of a reboot, starting with Legend. Core made a last ditch effort to release a 10-year anniversary Tomb Raider game, but Eidos simply nabbed all of their concept art and scripts and gave them to Crystal Dynamics for them to make the game — Tomb Raider: Anniversary — instead, leading to poor Core Design ceasing to exist. - Mass Effect: Andromeda was set up with Sequel Hooks for DLC content at the end but BioWare, citing poor sales, canceled it and placed the series on a hiatus in favor of Anthem (2019) and a future Dragon Age installment, and a new Mass Effect announcement in 2020 teasing the return of Shepard's crew may be the final nail on the coffin for Andromeda. However, Bioware has hinted that this new Mass Effect game may explore some threads left open by Andromeda. - The Sly Cooper series was infamously abandoned by Sanzaru Games in November 2014, even when the latest game ended with a major cliffhanger. This led to fans rejecting the game as canon to restore the happy ending of Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. Sanzaru was later purchased by Oculus Studios, eliminating all chances of a sequel from them. Time will tell if Sucker Punch or another developer will rescue the franchise and either provide a sequel or a different fourth game. - For a long time, Stinkoman 20X6 was missing its last level, Level 10, and since 2005 never received an update. While there was an announcement for the level in 2018, it would not see completion until 2020, coming with an all-new opening, new levels, and an Anti-Frustration Features mode. - Golden Sun: Dark Dawn ended on a cliffhanger where \|\|Alex, the Big Bad from the previous game, is still alive, Isaac is missing, and there's a massive psynergy vortex hanging over the lookout point from the beginning of the game\|\|. Due to poor sales and mixed reception, Camelot effectively shelved the series and all dangling plot threads were left unresolved. - Dino Crisis had moderate success with the first two games, but the third game was critically panned by critics and fans. Between the poor sales of the third game and Capcom wanting to focus on other projects, Dino Crisis fell off the radar since 2003 and there hasn't been a word of when or if the series would ever return. - MySims ended on a rather abrupt note after SkyHeroes came out in 2010, and aside from a few references in The Sims 4, was never really heard from again. It doesn't help that Electronic Arts shut down Visceral Games, the franchise's primary developer, a few years after MySims went dormant, meaning it isn't likely to come back. - Gardens Inc has four games, with a "To Be Continued" sequel hook at the end of the fourth one. Said fourth game was released in 2016, and the devs have indicated that they will not be moving forward with any more games. - The Dark Tales released its 18th installment in August 2020. Despite being one of the best-loved developers of the hidden object game genre, AMAX Interactive seems to have closed its doors since then, being either rebranded or bought out by another company, and as far as anyone can tell has orphaned all of its game franchises. - Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was quite transparently the middle third of a story intended to finish with a third game. Publishers Square Enix meddled with the game by forcing a pay to win microtransaction cash shop, reportedly two weeks before Eidos were going to send the game off for certification, siphoned off a team to create "Breach" mode which was a horrendous game within a game with extreme freemium paywalls, wasted $50,000 on one part of the marketing campaign that gained no traction, royally pissed off the player base with a egregious pre-order bonus stunt and set a release date that competed with Madden, No Man's Sky, Resident Evil 4 and a World of Warcraft expansion, among other things. The massive 5 year dev cycle and wasteful spending required a 3 million sales figure to break even but it came up a million short, Square's executives labelled it a failure, cancelled the 3rd game and put the franchise on ice while redeploying Eidos to work on Marvel-licensed games. In 2022, the Deus Ex IP was acquired by Embracer Group along with several other IPs that Square Enix was sitting on, which could see a return of the series in the future. - Emily Short's When in Rome series was planned to run for five episodes, but only the first two were released (both in 2006), leaving the story unfinished. In 2022, she said it was canceled due to a lack of player interest and she doesn't remember what the rest of the plot was intended to be. ## Object Shows According to rough statistics, nearly a third of Object Shows get cancelled/abandoned very early on without any resolution or reboot (Hence the astonishing number of Short-Runners in the Object Show Community). The reasons may vary in one way or another: - Disinterest/Demotivation is a popular reason for object shows to drop off the face of the earth with little fanfare. These types of shows rarely past five episodes: - The creator getting accused of one or more vile behaviors is a surefire way. - Battle for Object Destination and its Spin-Off Earthquake were abandoned with major cliffhangers, one on the first half of a two-parter and the other on its very first episode, after evidence of Maxwell Hall (The creator of both shows) acting shadily towards a minor online came into light and he had to leave the internet entirely. - Object Cringe (Alongside Object Cringe Again) flip-flopped from being cancelled and Un-Cancelled because of Clankybot777's indecision to continue the series. It was re-cancelled seemingly for good after Clanky was accused of alledgedly grooming a minor online and the following disaster of her confusing apology note. - After Schooligans was cancelled after 2 episodes. More were planned for the series but they were eventually scrapped after allegations LorenTzel (The creator of the show) regarding racism at the 2022 BFDI + II Meetup came into light and he had to leave the internet entirely. - Awesome Futuristic Objects lasted six episodes (With its last episode only being half-completed) due to SizzleFlicks's lack of motivation and school. He then restarted the series with Awesome Futuristic Objects: The Double Season...only to scrap it for the same reason after three episodes (Also with a half-completed last episode). - Object Asylum is particularly noteworthy since SnowyPackel didn't want go through with the stress of making a full series and left it on half an episode as in all the voice-acting was completed but the animations and background weren't. - Object Filler discontinued production as stated in the description of the fifth episode because of Diamondcup67's personal issues and losing the drive to keep the show going. - Object Overload had this happen twice. The first time was due to Niall Burns not liking how the show was turning out as the series went on. When the Continuity Reboot came around, only one episode was made when Niall became demotivated. - The Object Show had seven episodes until the creator stop continuing the series out of Creator Backlash. - Sinful got ditched by Conner Dean before production could even begin due to some controversy on Twitter. Now deemed unreleaseable, Connor had removed all promotional material, images, and a good amount of lore for the show with its TV Tropes page being the only living relic left due to The Fic May Be Yours, but the Trope Page Is Ours. He has since replaced Sinful with a fictional nature documentary called Gikumo. - Super Dumb Joke Show deliberately ran on April Fools' Day before EpicBattler3 deleted it from her YouTube channel and never talk about it again. Its only episode ended with a viewer vote on who to eliminate that remains undisclosed to this day. - Town Attack was discontinued after four episodes because OpalStatus wanted to focus on her other show, Gerenal Mayhem in spite of the former being more popular with the viewers than the latter. - Wishful Thinking went dead silent just a month (two chapters and a interlude) into its runtime, right before the competition could officially start. The creator was never heard from again with their last webcomic update dating back four years ago. - TVTome Adventures was seemingly orphaned for a while because it wasn't getting its creator any money or attention. However, a full-fledged continuity reboot called TOME was released, so this trope was subverted. Double Subverted because the Reboot doesn't exactly follow the continuity of the original, so the plot of Tv Tome Adventures still ended up being unresolved and likely never will be except through supplementary material on the creator's DeviantArt. - A fanmade animation by NipahDUBS based on the horror RPG Mad Father ran on YouTube with the goal to have six episodes, according to the description of the first episode. However, only two episodes were made (that tells a little about the beginning of the story) and the project was dropped, according to the second episode's description. It has only "PART THREE IS CANCELLED." written on it, with no reason explained. Both episodes on YouTube had the comments section disabled. - A well written and hilariously machinima of RuneScape known simply as "The Quest" was started in 2006 only to be left to rot at the end of part two due to the creator apparently contracting AIDS. Needless to say that should the creator wish to continue the work, they couldn't. Runescape has since had a massive graphics update, making this machinima completely dead. Its fandom isn't taking it well. - The Newgrounds series Joe Zombie by Robert DenBleyker was supposedly meant to be concluded with Episode 7 as said in Episode 6 (from 2006). More than half a decade later however and a final episode has still not been produced. - Evil Rebellion trilogy by Konejo, the first two parts came up and the third was announced for 2007 but never came to be. First two parts can be seen in Newgrounds. - The first incarnation and reboot Darwin's Soldiers on Furtopia were never finished and will probably remain that way. - Trinton Chronicles never had a proper finish and was cut short before its final story. - Xiao Xiao ended with a demo of a beat-em-up game back in 2002. In particular, the Mutilator story, which featured a Professional Killer out to take out an evil boss, ended in an up-in-the-air ending, with the bad guy getting away after a motorcycle chase and the protagonist being reduced to hitchhiking with no success; there was supposed to be a third installment of that storyline that would wrap things up, but it never got made. There have been no signs of the beat-em-up demo or the series ever continuing since then. In fact, the author's whereabouts are unknown as well. - Sapphire Spindle Paw: Mystic(TheSpiritWolf) created a prologue video and then a first episode, then posted about his/her intentions to make a third video, and then left the site. Searching "Sapphire Spindle Paw", with quotes, gives around four or five results. There is no sign of an episode 2. - Rock Tumbler's Let's Play of Grand Theft Auto IV was discontinued due to his drug use. His former partners have started it up again and finished it. - Spoony's Let's Play of Deadly Premonition is looking like it won't ever be continued (at least not any time soon), having only Part 1 up on the site. This doesn't stop fans on the forums starting a new thread every few weeks or so asking when he's going to finish it... - Atlas of Medieval America was a very intriguing concept that never got more than a couple months of updates. Alternate History buffs have tried to carry on. - Super Mario Bros. Z due to how time consuming it took to the animate the fights, as well as Artist Disillusionment. What was meant to be twenty six episodes ended at eight after the creator called it quits. The series has since been revived, however, with just the first episode so far, so there may yet be hope. - Then fans' hopes were severely dashed when the reboot was stopped after one episode because of Alvin Earthworm's worsening mental health struggles. Then on February 2, 2020, he posted a sample footage from his 2nd episode, giving viewers of the series another big sigh of relief. - The Game Grumps are notorious for the amount of playthroughs they've left unfinished, the most infamous ones being Sonic '06 and Pokémon FireRed. While some (such as the ones just mentioned) have legitimate reasons for their abandonment (Dan doesn't want to butt in on an adventure he was never a part of, and Arin wants to grind up so that he can face the Elite Four in a fair fight, respectively), most of them are just dropped for no apparent reason. - The FireRed playthrough was eventually finished, over two years after it began. - The SCP Foundation story "Metafiction" (one of the most popular tales on the site) ends with a to be continued on a very interesting cliffhanger since 2010. The discussion page is filled with requests, pleads and threats to the author to just finish the damn thing already. The author himself made several promises over the years that he will most definitely finish it, any minute now, honest. - The Yogscast Minecraft Series Tekkit playthrough with Lewis Brindley, Duncan Jones, Simon Lane, Sjin and Sips was cut short after the crew got fed up with what they were doing; they had reached their initial goal of building a factory, but after attempting to revive the series by focusing on bees they decided to call it quits. - The Area 11 Minecraft machinima, titled GIGACRAFT, was eventually cut short after four episodes. This was in part due to the difficulties in getting Beckii Cruel to record Minecraft videos with them, as well as a general lack of time. - CaptainSparklez did a playthrough of the Pokémon Gold and Silver remakes, which ended after only four episodes. The reasons for this are unknown, though given the iffish content policy of Nintendo some fans believe that to be the reason. - Platypus Comix has two orphaned subsections: The Warner Bros. Club, a Warner Bros. animation fansite not updated since 2008, and For Portlanders Only, a collection of Portland, Oregon-related ephemera that has sat untouched since 2010. - The Website Is Down released 5 videos in 2009 and 1 more in 2011. The last one was titled Episode 4.5: Chipadmin part 1. More were promised to come soon, but haven't appeared yet (as of June 2016). The website spent years slowly deteriorating (for example, the blog domain expired around 2011). In 2014 Joshua Weinberg announced that the series will continue as an Adventure Game. As of summer 2016 he was still busy playing and analyzing the classic adventure games in his blog and started actual work on the game only in January 2016. - This happened to a number of Sips' playthroughs, according to this comment. - Comic Book YouTube Channel B3Comics. The channel was running smoothly but after a update video (Which was upload after a month long hiatus) they completely disappeared. Not even updating their Facebook or Twitter either. - The Dead Fantasy series has been orphaned with the sudden and tragic passing of the wonderfully talented animator Monty Oum in February 2015. On the upside, his other major work, RWBY, continued on without him. - Movie Rehab's Trailer Jailor was discontinued after the 13th episode since Jack Skyblue himself has stated that he has lost his passion for reviewing movie trailers. - Following the cancellation of BIONICLE's product line, writer Greg Farshtey volunteered to continue its plot in his series of online stories. Since this he could only do in his free time and had other occupations and family matters to deal with, the serials ended after only a few chapters, and were officially scrapped once their website got deleted. Greg has since cleared some of the cliffhangers up in his discussions with fans. - Labelscar was a popular blog dedicated to shopping mall history, with stories and photos of various shopping malls across the United States. The site abruptly stopped updating in 2013, due in part to one of its two writers and most of its fanbase shifting to Facebook. - Many YouTube reaction videos where someone watches a certain series end up unfinished. Although sometimes it's not because the "reactor" became unable or uninterested, but because the ones holding the copyright make the video be pulled (and three strikes terminates the channel). - High and Tight was going to have more episodes exploring the war and how the characters' lives have been affected - alternating between the soldiers who went off to the front lines at the end, and the friends and family left back home. However James Healy moved to Canada, Thomas Fitzgerald became too busy with college work, and Bobby Calloway lost interest - developing The Gumdrops instead. The film however was initially written to be standalone and has an open ending. - Lindsay Ellis: - She stopped doing 'Loose Canon' - where she analyzed different incarnations of a famous character (eg. Hades, Starscream etc) - after people kept complaining about which adaptations she left out - and has focused on specific video essays ever since. She said she still has plans for it, but hasn't uploaded one since 2017. - She's also discontinued The Whole Plate - a series examining various film theories in relation to the Michael Bay Transformers films. Her final word on the series' state came in August 2018, where she said it was on hold due to entering more controversial territory (of the particular film theories she began introducing the series with, critical race theory had yet to be tackled), but it never came to be. - Diva Dirt introduced a new feature called 'Fanline', where David would do a podcast with a wrestling fan talking about their interests re: the Divas, Knockouts etc. Three episodes were released and then it was abruptly stopped. - Wizards of the Coast has a notorious anti-drama policy, so when it came to light that Dice, Camera, Action! cast member Jared Knabenbauer ran seven sex blogs and was accused of cheating on his wife with co-star Holly Conrad, that was the anticlimactic end to the Waffle Crew. - The Wyoming Incident is an infamous Alternate Reality Game whose fate is hard to decipher, but it's likely this. Started in 2006 by a mysterious video of an alleged video hijacking, the game lead to an anonymous forum known as the Happy Cube, unraveling a story of people tied by the act of "cubing"... and then about a billion other directions with threads about worshipping malicious gods, moderator civil wars, the Wyoming Incident itself turning into an in-universe ARG, with its supposed creators being characters, and more. If there was ever meant to be an answer to the mystery behind the video, nothing has turned up conclusive — it's widely believed that at some point, the ARG was hijacked by anonymous users who quickly derailed the whole setup, leaving it an inscrutable mess. - SHiFT's web documentary covering the Any% Speedrun history of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom was originally planned to be in four parts. However, due to the Rehydrated remake's unexpected release at the time of production followed by SHiFT's declining motivation to continue with the project since he wanted to focus more on improving his records, the documentary series was put on indefinite hiatus after just two parts, with the second part ending on a cliffhanger teasing the rest of BFBB's history from 2017 onward which still remained a mystery. - Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings only covered the first two-thirds of Tolkien's three books. It was then concluded by the Rankin-Bass The Return Of The King, but with a very different style and tone, and much cheaper animation. A big cause of this was that the costs were massively underestimated, and the final result had to be pieced together from unfinished footage (for instance, every live-action character was supposed to be animated over). It would take twenty years for a live-action version to be made covering the entire story. - Perfect Hair Forever was scheduled to have 17 episodes made for the internet but the creators only made 1 due to lack of interest. - On April Fools' Day 2014, an eighth episode was aired as a stealth premiere after a long period of being orphaned with seven episodes. - The Pirates of Dark Water eventually simply stopped, after about eight of the thirteen treasures of rule were collected. A lack of budget and Channel Hops were the responsible issues, here. - Generation 3.5 of My Little Pony, which amounted to a style revamp of the G3 designs, lasted only a single year, having just one special and a few toys to its name. But then it was meant as a stopgap while Generation 4 was in development, with executives hoping that it would revive the franchise. It did. - Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles ended abruptly before finishing the final story arc. - Disney's adaptation of Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain series is incomplete, with The Black Cauldron only covering the first two books. However, as of March 2016, the company has bought up the film rights to the series once again, and has announced that they are now re-adapting it altogether in live-action instead. - Joe Murray spent less and less time working on Rocko's Modern Life after his first wife committed suicide. He needed some time to get stuff in order, and to process what happened, and that not only took a lot of time, but made him less interested in working on the series, until he finally gave up on it altogether. For a while, he occasionally blamed the series for his wife's suicide. - A similar turn of events happened with Camp Lazlo, this time the result of a messy divorce. - Storm Hawks had a ridiculously high-toned Cliffhanger as the season finale, which seemed to be building up a huge journey through the Eldritch Location of the series... only to abruptly end. To make matters worse, even the main character drops a MASSIVE Sequel Hook just before the ending. - TRON: Uprising. The show went for one major arc, then production stopped in 2013 with many threads still unresolved. The reasons for this are largely speculation at this point. - ThunderCats (2011) got hit hard with this, ending the first season with a massive cliffhanger \|\|revealing that Pumira was Evil All Along and Dead All Along, among other things\|\|. Then Cartoon Network announced that the show was cancelled. - Despite being renewed for a second season a week ahead of its finale, Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart's first season would ultimately end up being its last due to being part of a massive tax write-off following the Warner Bros. Discovery merger.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanedSeries
Original Character Tournament - TV Tropes An Original Character Tournament, often abbreviated OCT, is a type of competition that is popular on art websites like DeviantArt. Basically, it's just what it sounds like: A tournament between artists where they battle their completely original characters through artistic expression. Usually, this is through comics, but occasionally has included animation and literature. The usual progression of events goes something like this... Somebody figures they have a great idea for a tournament, and they decide they're going to host one. They find other people willing to judge, create prizes (it helps to either have artistic talent or to have good friends who do), and hammer out the setting, the Story Arc, maybe an NPC or two. Either during and/or after this stage, they hold auditions. Auditioners are usually expected to create a character, a reference sheet for said character, and an audition to introduce the character and explain why they've become involved in the tournament. Once the judges have filled all slots in the tournament, auditions are closed, and the actual tournament begins. Characters are matched up against each other randomly, and the artists have until the first round deadline to create an entry for the first round. At the end of the round, the judges decide which artist continue to the next round. This process continues until only one artist is left. That last artist's plotline then become canon, and he or she is named the winner. Entries are usually in comic style; there have been exceptions, but it's difficult to progress far using other mediums. There are several variations on the basic round that have been used to spice things up: themes for individual rounds, boss rounds, etc. These tournaments, like everything else on the internet, may vary in quality, but some of the more notable ones have yielded stories one could indeed label awesome. An attempt to collect all of the DeviantArt tournaments in one place can be found here. ## Common tropes include: - Aborted Arc: Likely to happen since OCTs can take place over several months and artists either lose interest or become too busy to continue further in their entries. You'll rarely find an OCT where all the participants stay on through the entirety of the tournament's length without someone forfeiting because they couldn't get their entry done on time. - Alternate Continuity: Essentially entries in OCT are how the artist's interpretation of events will go down. Sometimes they may continue on from another entries previous story or bout. But more likely then not, they'll skew away into something different then likely intended. - Art Shift: Between different artists' interpretations of the characters. - Bonus Material: Usually in the form of Spectator or Special Entries that occur outside of the rounds. - Breakout Character: Most tournaments have at least one or two, and some have a fandom that even extend outside the OCT community. - Canon Discontinuity: Although some eliminated artists try to finish their story or work their character into the overall tournament plot, many just let the story drop as soon as they lose. - Climactic Battle Resurrection: Very likely, since some finalists tend to gather a group of defeated contestants (known as tagalongs) during the course of the tournament. - Cooking Duel: Strictly speaking, an OCT needs not necessarily be a fighting tournament. Also seen tourneys that allow more creativity, where fighting is not necessarily the only way to win. When done badly pretty much anything (up to and including "I sprayed mud on him while driving by" and similar nonsensical victories) can become a win. There are usually limitations in the rules to avoid this, eg. stating that the opponent must be incapacitated or otherwise unable to continue the battle. - Deleted Scene: Non-canonical entries might be treated like this. - Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Happens at the end of most Tournaments with very powerful Big Bads. - Excuse Plot: Most OCT's do not have any real story at all. They are usually multi-verse wide battles that have very little internal logic, but that does not make them always terrible. - Elseworld: Competitors often use characters that first appeared in their other works, so characters are adjusted to better fit the setting without compromising the main story. That's how you can have a street urchin from Victorian London fighting a futuristic bipolar cyborg in a crazy steampunk city. - Follow the Leader: There are exceptions, but about half the tournaments use this tried-and-true premise: you have your character transported to a strange and possibly supernatural realm where you fight each other to win some sort of wish. (Most often used for practical reasons: this can fit pretty much any type of character: even those who aren't natural fighters can not leave until the tournament is finished.) - Missing Episode: Sadly very common due to artists deleting their work or profiles leaving the story incomplete. - New Media - Not Just a Tournament: VERY prevalent in many of those. Most of them turn out to be ruses for the Big Bads (usually the judge characters) to obtain power, and the competitors (including the defeated ones) will usually have to work together to stop The Plan. - Schedule Slip: Though rounds have a set deadline, most tournament managers don't mind giving a little extra time when competitors run behind. - Sequel Hook: Some of the better tournaments find a way to start a second tournament, and may even let previous competitors return for that contest. - Sturgeon's Law: OCTs that do not filter their auditioners usually end up with lots of subpar auditions full of generally weaker art. - Story Arc: Each OCT either has one to start out or develops one during its run with rare exceptions. - Tournament Arc: Many of them are actual tournament settings. - The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Many OCTs fall into this, especially if its more of an Intercontinuity Crossover rather than a Elseworld. - Unnecessary Roughness: It's not uncommon for a friendly round of competition to end with a horrific death. ## Examples: <!—index—> <!—/index—>	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalCharacterBattleTournament
Or My Name Isn't... - TV Tropes "There's something wrong here... or my name is Jose Santos de Guatemala! And it's not!" A stock phrase used as a "guarantee" that something is or will be true. The idea is the person is so sure of it, he will bet his name on it, which may have grown out of the belief that names have power. Occasionally played for irony if the speaker is using a false name. Also used in variations of "If this isn't true (or won't happen), my name will be [specific other name]", often involving an uncool or unfortunate name. May be used as a handy way of having a new character provide his name if he otherwise would have no reason to do so. ## Examples: - Orville Redenbacher popcorn commercials: "You'll taste the difference, or my name isn't Orville Redenbacher." - At least two 1979 Smokey Bear radio public service announcements had the titular bear at the end saying "And that's the truth, or my name isn't Smokey Bear." - Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: In Great War in the Bizarre World episode 27, Wolffy phrases it slightly differently when he's run out of matches to light the fire below the cauldron he intends to cook Paddi in. Paddi laughs at his misfortune and Wolffy tells him that "If I don't think of something, my name's not Wolffy!" - Tintin - Tintin in America has this line used twice by hostile people, as depicted in the page image is the gangster Pietro. The French version was "As true as my name is X, I'll [get him]!" - From issue #5 of Simpsons Comics: Radioactive Man: I'll restore order to Springfield, or my name isn't Claude Kane III! ...Er, which it isn't, of course! [thinking] Whew! Almost revealed my secret identity! Bartman: Hmmm... I wonder if I should tell RM that, thanks to reading his comics, I know all his secrets! - Eugene Photomas from Paperinik New Adventures couldn't finish this sentence because he forgot his name. - The Batman Adventures: A visiting Doctor from Dusseldorf brags that the newly-arrived patient "vill be completely cured in one week" or his name isn't Heinrick Heimlich. \|\|It isn't. "Dr. Heimlich" is Harley in disguise.\|\| - Scooby-Doo! Team-Up: In "Just Plane Scared" Dick says Operation: Read All About It will succeed or his name isn't Dick Dastardly. Zilly asks what they should call him. - In Deranged and Wrong Bellatrix Lestrange turns out to be alive. Mrs. Weasley: If I don't kill her this time my name isn't Molly Weasley! - When Life Gets Hard: Remus: You'll be fine Harry or my name is not Remus J Lupin. - Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami: Characters repeatedly say this, which gets L into trouble because he accidentally reaveals his real name this way. - Lord Black's resurgence, redemption and revenge: Sirius: I may be late to the party, Harry; but I swear to you I'll make everything right for you. Or my name isn't Sirius Orion Black the biggest S.O.B. these rat bastards have no idea who they're messing with. - Return to Prince Manor: Nesmay: I'm sorry. It's because of me we're in this mess. Draco: Now don't try and take all the credit, Nessie. Harry and I were getting into trouble like this long before we met you. Ask anyone. It's really Jarillion's fault, for not taking no for an answer and being a prick. Which is something he's going to regret, or my name's not Draco. - The Cloak and Dagger: Tom: You'll return? Harry: Of course I will. Or my name isn't Harry Potter. - In Harry Potter and the Scĭenra Cwĕna Harry asks for help with summoning charms in preparation for the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament. Hermione: He'll summon the Firebolt or my name's not Hermione Granger. - Three Black Birds: Harry: You don't know Tom like I do. You know Dad gave him the Invisibility Cloak? Daphne: But I thought the oldest— Harry: The oldest is meant to get it, you're right. But that's not the point. The point is that Tom has the Cloak and not much respect for anyone besides himself. He's going to get in trouble as sure as — as — I don't know, as sure as my name is Harry. - Granny Morgaine: Sir Brian: I will make sure you all learn how to not make a fool of you and Camelot, as sure as I am Sir Brian. - Letters Between Us: Hermione: I was a bit in denial, at first. What if... what if you only thought you loved me? We're only sixteenwell, fifteen for mehow do you know it's not just some passing fancy? Harry: It's not! I know I love youit's as sure and real as the fact that my name's Harry Potter! - A New Take on Harry Potter: Alyssa: Minerva warned [Dumbledore], but he didn't even listen to his Deputy. Well, there is no way I am leaving this little boy to be abused by the animals that live in that house, or my name isn't Alyssa Snape. - Quiet: Harry: You just wait, Snape. You'll be out of [Azkaban] by New Years or my name isn't Harry James Potter. - Lost and Found: Harry: I want to go home! Please? McGonagall: Nonsense, Harry. You won't be going back to those Muggles or my name isn't Minerva McGonagall. - In Revelations Tracey starts venting about Harry's situation without realizing he's the one she's talking to. Harry: If he was here what would you say? Tracey: I would tell him to beware of the youngest Weasleys, Granger and Dumbledore. That, and I wish I could be with him and help him to become the warrior he should have been, but Slytherins are not thought of in a good light thanks to many people. As sure as my name is Tracey Davis, I'd try to help his as soon as possible. - The Betting Men: Hermione: AS FOR YOU, SEAMUS FINNIGAN! I WILL HAVE WORDS WITH HANNAH, I PROMISE YOU! IF I DON'T GET YOU BANNED FROM THE LEAKY CAULDRON FOR LIFE, MY NAME IS NOT HERMIONE JEAN GRANGER-WEASLEY! - Jinxing the Unforgivables: Dumbledore: Come in Harry, my boy. Harry: Now I know the next words I am going to jinx. He'll stop calling me 'my boy' or my name isn't Harry Potter. - A Witch With A Righteous Anger: Ragnok: Do you mean Heir Potter that you know nothing about your birth right? Harry: No sir. Until I received my Hogwarts letter, I never knew my father's name and I never saw a picture of my father or mother until Christmas that year when Hagrid gave me a photo album with their picture. Andromeda: I'll burn his whiskers from his head, or my birth name wasn't Andromeda Black! - My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Spring Breakdown: Rainbow Dash apparently says this a lot offscreen, as revealed by a loudmouthed parrot that first blurts out that Rainbow went into a dark jungle, then exposes an embarrassing comment she made, both times rebutting the already-implausible possibility that someone else said those things by adding "or my name isn't Rainbow Dash!" Rainbow Dash: Ugh... gotta stop saying my name all the time. - Honest John from Disney's Pinocchio: Honest John: If we play our cards right, we'll be on Easy Street, or my name isn't Honest John. - Played for laughs in Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf: Brunchy: We'll get your werewolf tomorrow night or our name isn't the Hunch Bunch. Dracula: You had better or your name will be mud, or maybe even blood. - The Disney version of Winnie the Pooh renders this as "Or my name isn't Winnie the Pooh! ... Which it is." - Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins: [watching Bert, Albert, Jane and Michael laugh together on the ceiling] Why, it's the most disgraceful sight I've ever seen, or my name isn't Mary Poppins. - The Front Page (1974) Walter Burns: [after unsuccessfully posing as probation officer Otto Fishbein] Tell Hildy I wish him all the luck in the world, and I mean it, or my name isn't Otto Fishbein. - Macao (1952) Lawrence C. Trumble: I'll go back one of these days, or my name isn't Lawrence C. Trumble. - In the TV movie Den Brother: Dina Reams: And one last thing, Mrs. Zamboni—watch Alex Pearson closely. I don't trust him. Alex Pearson: [as Mrs. Zamboni] D-don't trust Alex? Why, that's absurd. The sweet lad is as honest as the day is long, or my name isn't Edna Mae Zamboni. - Raising Arizona: Nathan Arizona note : Born Nathan Huffheins is a furniture chain store proprietor whose slogan is "If you can find a better deal, my name ain't Nathan Arizona!" - Dirty Rotten Scoundrels combines this with Punctuated Pounding: "Or my name isn't Doctor! Emil! Shaffhausen! The Third!" - From Life, the Universe and Everything: "If it was a coincidence," roared the voice, "then my name is not Agrajag!" "And presumably," said Arthur, "you would claim that was your name." "Yes!" hissed Agrajag, as if completing a rather deft syllogism. "Well, I'm afraid it was still a coincidence," said Arthur. - In The Science of Discworld, Ridcully, studying the problem of giving the Roundworld a sun, says, "We'll soon have his little world all warm, or my name's not Mustrum Ridcully." The Dean spends the first few paragraphs of the next chapter calling him things like "Mappin Winterly" or "Charlie Grinder". - The Gun Seller: In Chapter 1, the first-person narrator introduces himself to a woman as James Fincham. Later in the narration, he uses the phrase "...then my name isn't James Fincham. Which, of course, it isn't", which is the first indication the reader has that he lied. - In one of the Mary Russell books, Russell insists she'll do something "as sure as my mother's name is Mary McCarthy." Subverted when Holmes makes her point out that her mother's name was actually Judith Klein. - Played with in Lawrence Block's Tanner's Tiger. The helicopter pilot Evan convinced to help him chase some Cuban kidnappers starts to say this, but is interrupted before mentioning his name. He eventually sheepishly admits to being called James Francis Xavier Corrigan. - In the Remington Steele episode "Steele Belted": Remington Steele: I guarantee your exoneration on all charges, Buddy, or my name isn't Remington Steele. Laura Holt: Your name isn't Remington Steele. Remington: A mere technicality. - Acropolis Now episode "Jobs for the Girls" Effie Stephanidis: All right, we'll do it. Sophie and me will get a job or my name isn't... Sophie: Effie Stephanidis. Effie: Ezactly! - The Jim Henson TV special The Tale of the Bunny Picnic, has the titular bunnies being stalked by a dog owned by a cruel farmer. The dog is nameless, and hopes to earn a name by catching the bunnies. A Running Gag has him saying things like "I'll get that bunny or my name's not... my name's not... whatever it is." - In the I Love Lucy episode "The Ballet," Lucy says, "I'm gonna get into that show or my name isn't Lucy Ricardo." - An episode of The Golden Girls has the women crashing a class reunion and picking up random nametags of no-shows to wear. While Dorothy is skeptical about it working, Rose says as she picks up and examines her own tag "This plan will work, or my name isn't Kim Fung Toi!" - During his time as a BBC Radio 1 DJ, Kenny Everett once did a promo that ended "...or my name isn't Maurice Cole". The hidden joke being that his real name actually was Maurice Cole, but most of the listeners wouldn't have known that. - Inverted in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado: the song "Tit-Willow" features the line, "Now I feel just as sure as I'm sure that my name isn't Willow Tit-Willow Tit-Willow..." - In the Back to the Future point-and-click series, Marty sets up this line and Emmett finishes it for him. Good thing he did, too—Marty was using an alias and was presumably about to accidentally call himself by his real name. - In Elite Beat Agents, newscaster Sofie Hudson, faced with either having to disappoint her son with the news that it'll rain on her off day or lie to everyone by saying that it'll be sunny instead, decides to go with the latter and then use this trope to claim that she'll do anything to make it happen, which is the basis for the "September" mission. - Played for laughs in Abe's Exoddus, where the character using the phrase, Dripik, has a Running Gag of not being able to remember his own name: Dripik: We'll have that traitor Abe in no time! Or my name ain't... uh... Mudoken: Dripik, sir. Dripik: ...Dripik! I knew that... - Used in Professor Layton's London Life, the sprite RPG packaged with some versions of Professor Layton and the Last Specter. When Luke discovers that \|\|Flora has been kidnapped\|\|, he furiously declares that he will make the person responsible "pay dearly, or my name isn't Luke Triton!" - Parodied in Tin Star at some point on Thursday: Mo : [about Black Bart's mooks] They got away, Tin Star! Tin Star : Not for long. We'll have those varmints in the hoosegow afore sun up or my name isn't Gary Cooper. Mo : Er.... It isn't. - Heroes of Hellas 3: Athens: Athena: [Ares]'s going to get what's coming to him, or my name isn't Athena. - In case 2 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Dual Destinies, Detective Bobby Fulbright says, "My investigations are as thorough as they are foolproof, or my name isn't Fulbright!" His investigations aren't thorough or foolproof. \|\|Also, his name isn't Fulbright. He's an international spy who Killed and Replaced the real Fulbright years ago, and the Big Bad of the game\|\|. - Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles episode "Silver Linings": Capt. Butch Flowers: Now, I know you're worried about our mission, but I can tell you this—there's nothing more important to me than the safety and well-being of my men. Or my name isn't Captain... Butch... Flowers. - And at the end of Season 12... Lt. Smith: Thank you, captain! I'll remember this 'till the day I die. Or my name isn't John Elizabeth Andersmith! Tucker: Oh, God, is it? - Ultra Fast Pony: The episode "Derp and Destruction" references the fact that, in the original series, the character in question had her name retconned out of existence: Derpy: Or my name isn't—and maybe it isn't—Derpy Hooves! - In "Stranger than Fan Fiction", Rarity, being the terrible actress that she is, keeps reading Fluttershy's lines by mistake. She's oblivious to the fact that they're obviously not her lines (and that she's interrupting Fluttershy's reading of the same lines), and she reads off " or my name isn't Fluttershy!" without missing a beat. - In the Homestar Runner short "Senorial Day", Bubs' commercial for "Bubsotathon" boasts "You'll save like a demon, or my name ain't Bubs Concession Stand!" He even pulls out a (suspended) ID card to demonstrate that his name apparently is "Bubs C. Stand". - One episode of TaleSpin featured a character named Ace London who often used this phrase, but he'd get cut off. Ace London: ...or my name's not Crowd: Ace London! Ace: You got that right. - The Simpsons episode "Simpsons Christmas Stories": Grampa: We'll get you up and running again or my name isn't Young Grampa Simpson. - The New Scooby-Doo Movies episode "The Secret of Shark Island". Sonny Bono: But this is our delayed honeymoon. You should be enjoying it. Sonny: Your name isn't Barbra Streisand. Cher: You catch on fast, big boy. - The season one finale to Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated has Scooby delivering a badass one of these to Professor Pericles. Scooby: I'll get the gang back together, Pericles! We'll be coming for you, or my name isn't... SCOOBY-DOOBY-DOO! - Played with in the Garfield and Friends episode "Mistakes Will Happen" (in which mistakes of all kinds are made): Jon Arbuckle: [referring to Garfield and Odie] This will scare the pants off those three, or my name isn't June Arburkle! - CatDog: Cliff vows on one episode to get the title characters, or his name isn't Cliff. His friend Lube replies, "Then what should we call ya?" - Quick Draw McGraw is fond of this trope. - Subverted in the Looney Tunes short "To Duck or Not to Duck". You know, there's something awfully screwy about this fight, or my name isn't Laddimore... and it isn't. - A Running Gag in the earlier episodes of Courage the Cowardly Dog. Example: Courage: There's something wrong here, or my name's Archibald... And it's not! - Quack Pack: Daisy uses "Or my name isn't Daisy Duck"... while pretending to be someone else. Whoops. - Danger Mouse had this in an early episode: D.M.: [talking to Colonel K] Don't worry, sir. We'll get to the bottom of this or my name isn't Danger Mouse. Penfold: Um... isn't it? D.M. [whispering testily] Of course it is! - Dick Dastardly invokes this in "Ceiling Zero Zero" after the narrator starts a "umpteenth time" running gag: Dastardly: This is the umpteenth and one time, but we'll catch that pigeon or my name isn't Dick Dastardly! - On Total Drama Action, Harold does this to reveal that his full name is Harold Norbert Cheever Doris McGrady V. - In the Darkwing Duck episode "Darkly Dawns the Duck", Launchpad beats up Darkwing (who he thinks is an intruder), yelling, "Nobody messes with the airplanes in my hangar, or my name isn't Launchpad McQuack!" - Two instances on The Dick Tracy Show: - From the debut episode "Red Hot Riding Hoods": We're being tailed or my name isn't B.B. Eyes! - From "Two Heels on Wheels": That looks like a copper chopper or my name isn't Stooge Viller! - Played for laughs and fourth-wall breaking in a Dudley Do-Right short: Snidely Whiplash (previously introduced in a title card as "Played by Larry Sabu") So they're short on mounties, eh? Well I'll fill their ranks or my name isn't Larry Sabu! Narrator: I beg your pardon, Mr. Sabu, but in this picture you're playing Snidely Whiplash. Snidley (emerging from behind a tree wearing tennis togs): You play Snidely Whiplash. I played him yesterday and he beat me, six love! - The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: At least two episodes had Pooh say, "...or my name isn't Winnie the Pooh! Which it is..." - The Banana Splits in Hocus Pocus Park. Drooper responds who Fleagle would be. - From the Bozo: The World's Most Famous Clown episode "Horse Thief Grief": I'll corral that horse or my name isn't Big Shorty! - At age 62, Wyatt Earp once solved a confrontation by walking out of his tent, firing a rifle into the ground, and saying, "Back off or I'll blow you apart, or my name is not Wyatt Earp." - During World War II, Hermann Göring once boasted "No enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Goering. You may call me Meyer". Needless to say, German people started mockingly calling this afterwards when the Air War began over Germany.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrMyNameIsnt
Origin Story - TV Tropes The term "origin story" can refer to following tropes: See also Backstory Index. If an internal link led you here, please change it to point to the specific article. Thanks!	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginStory
Original Position Fallacy - TV Tropes "When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." — Abraham Lincoln , Statement to an Indiana Regiment passing through Washington (17 March 1865) A situation in which a character promotes an action, revolution or social system that harms or will harm other people, under the assumption that it will not harm them. They will invariably discover that they were wrong, with the double whammy of knowing they supported the measure that caused their suffering when they thought it would happen to 'somebody else'. Imagine that Bob attends a banquet for 200 people at the mayor's house. When he arrives, he is informed that they made an error when ordering the food: there is enough steak for the first 100 guests, but everyone else will have to make do with vegetables. Bob, looking around and seeing the room less than half full, says he thinks this is fair. Only afterward does he see the second dining room, filled up with people who arrived earlier, and realize that he isn't going to be in the group that gets a full dinner. Poor Bob. He would have been wiser to remember the thought experiment from which this trope takes its name: John Rawls' "original position", which says that the only fair laws are those passed from behind the hypothetical "veil of ignorance" (i.e. you don't know whether you'll benefit or suffer from the change). If he had realized he could be in the group that wouldn't get a steak, he might have suggested serving half portions so everyone could have some meat. Instead, he refused to share 'his' steak, and that was his missed steak. The main use of this trope is to show that blind self-interest is a bad thing Bob shouldn't have been so quick to give "someone else" a steak-less dinner when he thought his meal would be fine. If he is fortunate, the plot will hand him a second chance to approach the question presumably with a bit more compassion this time. But in many cases it's too late for regrets: Bob has his vegetables, and now he must eat them. Of course, it is also possible that the mayor who did know the outcome and could assign the menu options steered Bob into making a choice that was worse for him, perhaps to damn him by his own words. Call it an "Original Position Gambit" if you will. This trope is also one of the places where Off the Table doesn't shift sympathy away from the person who refuses to re-extend the offer. ("Oh, Bob wants everyone to share their steak now? Too bad.") A character whose thinking falls into the Original Position Fallacy may start out as a Hell Seeker, end up as a Boomerang Bigot, Dirty Coward, or any combination thereof. One category of person particularly vulnerable to this thinking is the Sub-Par Supremacist. If someone pulled the gambit version on Bob, it was probably a Magnificent Bastard skilled in Gambit Speed Chess. See also The Window or the Stairs, which weaponizes this trope by disguising the worse option as the better one. This fallacy also drives a Prophecy Twist or two - someone hearing a prophecy thinks it'll come true on terms that'll be favourable to them, or that they'll never be in a situation where the prophecy might screw them over. May result in a Karmic Transformation or a Color Me Black situation; sometimes forms the 'twist' of a Karmic Twist Ending. Contrast Who Will Bell the Cat?, where a change that would benefit most at the cost of a few never gets implemented because no one wants to be "the few." Closely related to Moral Myopia and Protagonist-Centered Morality. Compare A Taste of Their Own Medicine, where one receives the same poor treatment they inflicted on others as a form of revenge. The Inverted Trope is of course The Golden Rule: Only do things unto others that you can agree would be fair if done unto you. ## Examples: - Cross Ange: Humans exile Norma (humans who cannot use Mana and negate Mana that comes into contact with them) to an island in the middle of nowhere to act as Slave Mooks to protect their Crapsaccharine World, making them Un-person. Princess Angelise of the Mitsurugi Empire considers this entirely appropriate... until it turns out in the first episode that she's a Norma herself and her royal parents had covered it up. The fallacy is pointed out to her face in episode three. - In Death Note, Light Yagami spends much of the series as The Social Darwinist, believing that anyone he assassinated with the Death Note deserved it. Naturally he doesn't believe the same of himself. \|\|In the manga, at least, he screams and pleads with anyone to try to extend his own life once Ryuk writes Light's name into his own Death Note. In other versions, once he's been identified as the wielder of the Death Note, Light makes a run for it.\|\| - In Fullmetal Alchemist, both the Emperor of Xerxes and the military leadership of Amestris fall victim to this. They both conspire with Father, the original Homunculus, to commit mass human sacrifice in order to achieve immortality; none of them realize that their immortality will consist of having their souls transmuted into a Philosopher's Stone. - Monster Rancher: Allan wants to join Moo, assuming that he'll get to be in charge because he's human. He fails to consider that Moo might not want human followers, or that many of the monsters working for Moo want Revenge on abusive trainers like him. He's shocked beyond belief when the Seed Sisters immediately betray him and offer Worm the chance to do the same. - Naruto: Danzo was all in favor of instructing his ninjas to sacrifice themselves if need be, in part because his own high rank made his chances of doing so himself extremely low. In a rare variation of this trope, he was aware of this hypocrisy and hated himself for it. Even more so because when he was younger, he hesitated at a crucial moment and instead it was his master the Second Hokage who sacrificed himself for the sake of the village. \|\|Ultimately he does end up making one to stop Tobi from getting Shishui's eye.\|\| - In Chick Tracts, one of the most common types of Straw Loser is the guy who isn't afraid of Hell. One variant of this is that he believes that hell exists and that it is a horrible place for the damned, but also believes that he'll be one of Satan's demons reigning in hell. His fate invariably turns out to be much crueler. (The two other main variants are those who don't believe that hell exists and those who think that it's not such a bad place.) - One pre-Comics Code horror story ("The Pit of Horror!", Adventures into Weird Worlds #10, September 1952) features the Devil noticing that hell isn't much of a scary place anymore, so he abducts and hires a human efficiency expert to whip the place into shape. After a few months, the demons are sadistic torturers and hell is once again filled with the screams of the damned, so the Devil pays the expert with a chest of jewels — and informs him he had only a few minutes left to live on Earth, so not much point in going back! The expert's soul is judged and sent to hell... where his former students (who resent him for making them work hard when they'd gotten used to slacking off) are very eager to show off their progress. Read it here. - Judge Dredd: The worldwide nuclear war behind most of the setting's problems was started by the American president, certain as he was that the US's radiation shields would prevent fallout from affecting them. He was disbelievingly disabused of this notion after the nukes started flying. - The Walking Dead: From the fall of the prison safe zone onwards, Rick and Abraham stress that survival is the most important thing and that morals simply hold people back. They end up profoundly shaken when they meet those who take such ideas to their natural conclusion; Gabriel, who abandoned his congregation to hide in his church, The Hunters, who cannibalized survivors, and Eugene, \|\|who lied about being able to cure the zombie virus to save his own skin\|\|. In the end, they conclude that they have to set better examples and that the zombie apocalypse cant be an excuse to do otherwise. - Watchmen by Alan Moore tackles this with his superheroes Rorscharch and the Comedian. - Both of them are Sociopathic Heroes who take on positions of Straw Nihilist and The Antinihilist respectively. They keep telling people that Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!, that they alone know "the truth" about the absurdity and harshness of the world. Then they come face to face with someone who internalizes their sayings and decides to do something about it, and their facade of cynicism cracks. - Rorschach earlier espoused support of Harry Truman using the atomic bombs to end World War II, saying it was a terrible act that saved millions. \|\|When he comes across Ozymandias who uses a similar justification to unleash an attack on New York City (as a Genghis Gambit to end the Cold War and avert an incipient nuclear war), he denounces this action and states that he will expose the truth instead, only for him to be killed by Dr. Manhattan, one more sacrifice for the greater good. It's implied that this is sort of Suicide by Cop due to Rorshach being unable to reconcile the outcome of Ozymandias's actions with his own Black-and-White Morality.\|\| - Calvin and Hobbes: - There's one Non Sequitur arc wherein Danae visits an alternate reality where every person on earth had one wish come true. She and her alternate come across an Acceptable Target politician, and the alternate Danae explains that he'd wished that slavery would become legal again. Danae then asks "And what about the guy who owns him?" The alternate says that he made the same wish. - Humorously averted in a Dutch Sjors & Sjimmie comic. Their guardian the Colonel is outraged when hearing the news that a Disco has opened in their town, while in another town's disco a man causing a violent disturbance was given a mere slap on the wrist. But as part of his attempts to get the title characters to not go to their town's disco, he's arrested for causing a violent disturbance in that disco. The comic ends with The Colonel on a medieval execution platform, complete with an axewielding headsmen... and him being happy that at least in their town they don't just give violent offenders a slap on the wrist. - Happens quite a lot in fairy tales. The usual scenario is that at the wedding of the long-suffering female protagonist, the king will ask whoever tormented her what the proper punishment should be for a series of crimes (these crimes inevitably being the ones they did to her). The evil characters grab the Idiot Ball and callously suggest something horrible (e.g. "They should be put into red hot iron shoes and forced to dance until dead"), which is promptly done to them. - "The Three Little Men in the Wood": After his son's baptism, the king asks his mother-in-law what should be done to someone who drags another person out of their bed and throws them in the water. The old woman answers, "The wretch deserves nothing better than to be taken and put in a barrel stuck full of nails, and rolled downhill into the water." And so it is done. - The Brothers Grimm's The Goose Girl: The chambermaid impersonating a princess is asked how to punish a servant who deceived her master — not realising that her deception is already known. She vindictively calls for the false servant to be dragged around in a barrel studded with nails until death, and so she meets her end. - Giambattista Basile's The Myrtle ends with six jealous murderesses Buried Alive, just as they suggested should be done to anyone who dared harm the prince's lovely bride (she came Back from the Dead). - There is a fairy tale where a Lazy Bum hears about an island of one-eyed men, so he decides to go there, kidnap one, and make a living from The Freakshow. He didn't even consider the fact that two-eyed man is quite the freak show for the one-eyed... - One Eastern European folktale features a married couple who become upset when the wife's aged father comes to live with them. When the old man drops and breaks a ceramic bowl, they angrily scold him, give him a wooden bowl to use, and banish him from the table to eat alone. Later, the husband sees their young son playing with some scraps of wood and ask what he's doing; the boy innocently replies "I'm making a wooden bowl, so that when you and Mama are old, I can feed you from it!" The husband and wife have a quick Heel Realization, apologize to the grandfather, and welcome him back to the table without another word of complaint. - A variant of this story is also told in Japan: this time, the patriarch of a large family becomes upset with his aged father's feebleness and tells his children to bring him a large basket so he can take the old man to the river and drown him. The man's youngest daughter promptly replies "When you have finished, bring back the basket — we will need it for you someday." - Harry Is a Dragon, and That's OK: Professor Umbridge puts up a number of blatantly and aggressively pro-human and authoritarian posters around Hogwarts — without putting her name on them, so even Hermione feels no qualms about pulling them down. When Professor Umbridge complains to the Headmaster about it, he agrees that letting people put up anonymous posters might be worth a try — so he announces that anyone can put up posters, and that people should please not take them down. Umbridge soon has reason to regret her request, as large numbers of much more creative and impressive posters appear in support of the "unusually shaped" students, including many that express thanks to them for how helpful they've been, along with some that poke fun at Umbridge herself. Then there was one which asked if anyone had seen an escaped toad, adding that the toad in question had a Dreadful on its Defence course and seemed to think it could teach the subject anyway. - Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: This is the one thing that pragmatic and bitterly cynical Professor Quirrell actually likes about democracy, that it brings Laser-Guided Karma to people who don't think it through. Quirrell : You see, Mr. Potter, no one ever quite believes that they will go to Azkaban, so they see no harm in it for themselves. As for what they inflict on others... I suppose you were once told that people care about that sort of thing? It is a lie, Mr. Potter, people don't care in the slightest, and if you had not led a vastly sheltered childhood you would have noticed that long ago. Console yourself with this: those now prisoner in Azkaban voted for the same Ministers of Magic who pledged to move their cells closer to the Dementors. - He Can Only Blame Himself: Since Adrien already knew Lila was a Manipulative Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, he assumed that she'd never be able to trick him. As adults, Lila drives a wedge between him and Marinette by claiming his overworked girlfriend is intentionally choosing her career over their relationship, seducing him into cheating on Marinette with her. - The Karma of Lies: Adrien presumes that Lila's scheming and scamming doesn't really matter because he's already aware of her true nature; thus, nothing she does can really impact HIM. The fact that she's conning his classmates isn't a big deal since he's not personally affected (and he's too rich to understand how much they're losing). Naturally, Lila exploits his Moral Myopia to string him along, luring him into helping her out despite knowing what she's like, then stabs him in the back for a major payday. Then and only then is he willing to tell the others that she's a Con Artist, with his classmates abandoning him when they learn that he's known from the start and happily watched her grift them of their most prized belongings. - Two Letters, a Spiritual Successor story by the same author, also invokes this trope with Mayor Bourgeois. He wanted a Ladybug who could be bribed into supporting his corrupt activities, but he forgot that he's not the only person around who wants Ladybug's endorsement, and that the original Ladybug's honesty was the only thing stopping her from being paid by those other people to destroy him. So, when Marinette retires and her Sketchy Successor \|\|also known as Lila Rossi\|\| takes over and begins accepting bribes, Bourgeois finds himself going broke making bigger and bigger payments just to keep her from being bought by someone else who wants her to denounce him. - Knight of Salem: Vernal gets incredibly tired with Tyrian's threats to fight her to the death whenever she doesn't do something he wants, and as such calls him out on it. His retort? He's merely following the Branwen Tribe's own rules, and rightfully points out she's upset because she's on the losing end of the argument. Tyrian: Make a society where I can win arguments by stabbing people to death and I'm going to start stabbing. - In Mutant Storm, Pansy Parkinson spends a lot of time claiming that other girls should be happy and pleased with their place in life once Voldemort takes over. Then, Bellatrix Lestrange gets killed, and Pansy gets a letter demanding she take her place as the Dark Lord's concubine without anyone caring about her opinion. The next day, she's groveling at the knees of the other side. - The Rigel Black Chronicles: Daphne Greengrass \|\|is a proud pureblood — until an ancestry potion reveals that her mother had an affair with a muggle-born wizard and she's actually a half-blood, causing her to be expelled from Hogwarts\|\|. Harry calls for compassion and understanding from her friends (some of whom are rather scathing of Daphne), pointing out that it could in theory happen to them too. Harry: What if it had been you? How would you feel if \|\|you found out tomorrow that you were a halfblood and your family lied to you? Would you feel like you didn't deserve to be here? Like it was okay to rip four years of hard work out from under you for something that wasn't your fault\|\|? Would you feel like a monster? Or would you feel exactly the same as you do today, and the world would seem monstrous instead? - Superman vs. the Elite: Manchester and his team operate under a philosophy of Might Makes Right and consider it the best response to kill anyone who's threatening violence against others. They're horrified when Superman (who's stronger than all of them) responds to their violence in kind \|\|or so it seems\|\|. - Played with in Avengers: Infinity War. Thanos plans to kill half the universe to prevent an Overpopulation Crisis. When Doctor Strange asks how he'll ensure that he doesn't die, Thanos bluntly responds that he won't; the deaths will be entirely random. note : To a point: he appears to halve the population of each world individually (rather than have the deaths be randomly distributed across the universe as a whole) and spares specific people he promises will live and any world he's already purged through old-fashioned genocide. His plan also doesn't take collateral damage into consideration, as shown in The Stinger and Avengers: Endgame. However, at another point, Thanos states he will gaze upon a grateful universe, suggesting he knows he'll be around after killing half of the universe. \|\|When he succeeds at the end, Thanos is still around, but using the completed Infinity Gauntlet is shown to take its toll on him (and moreso in Endgame), implying he anticipated the backlash and wasn't sure if he'd survive.\|\| - The "I was a celebrity in a past life" variant is humorously discussed in Bull Durham. Annie: I think probably with my love of four-legged creatures and hooves and everything, that in another lifetime I was probably Catherine the Great, or Francis of Assisi. I'm not sure which one. What do you think? Crash: How come in former lifetimes, everybody is someone famous? (Beat, then they both bust out laughing) I mean, how come nobody ever says they were Joe Schmoe? Annie: Because it doesn't work that way, you fool! - In H-E Double Hockey Sticks, a hockey player obsessed with winning the Stanley Cup makes a Deal with the Devil so that his team wins the cup. Yay, right? Nope. The demon's boss then has him traded to the worst team in the NHL. So now, not only will he not get the trophy, he's also sold his soul for nothing. Luckily, said demon has a change of heart and points out a loophole - if another team wins the cup, the contract is null and void. So the player has to beat his team of losers into shape in order to win the cup and regain his soul. - In the first X-Men film, Magneto attempts to invoke this trope with a machine that can turn humans into mutants; the idea is to use it on a gathering of world leaders, many of whom have anti-mutant sentiment, to show them what it's like to be persecuted and feared. However, the machine only works using Magneto's own mutant gift, and the process nearly kills him, so he kidnaps the power-copying Rogue to forcibly transfer his ability into her body and use her as the fuel source. Wolverine calls Magneto out for falling into the same line of thinking he claims he's trying to avoid: if he really cared about mutant rights, he would willingly sacrifice himself in the machine. - The wife pull out her suitcase and starts packing as well. "Uh... what are you doing?" "Packing, I want to see how you manage to get by on $20 a month." ## By Author - Isaac Asimov was acutely aware of this phenomenon, both when selectively pining for the Good Old Days and when imagining the societies of the future. - A dinner conversation with his wife about the time "when it was easy to get servants", in which Asimov claimed that they themselves would be the servants, was later incorporated into one of Asimov's essays as an example. - The short story "The Winnowing" describes a global food shortage which the World Food Council intends to remedy by poisoning the most famine-struck areas all of them comfortably distant from their own homes with a biological agent that would kill 70% of the population at random. Their high-minded platitudes about "the finger of God" selecting the victims evaporate when the scientist they coerced into assisting reveals that he added the agent to the sandwiches they've just eaten. note : And when someone on the Council points out that he also ate some of the same sandwiches, he (effectively) replies "Yes - and the agent was matched to my DNA, so I'll almost certainly die. Everyone else will be random." He was willing to die to prove his point. - In C. S. Lewis's commentary on the Book of Psalms, Lewis points out that the Psalmists asking God to strike down the wicked rarely think that they themselves could be wicked (though in other Psalms the tone is more humble), and that in real life, some people's reaction to discovering a system to be unjust and exploitative is to work towards being on top of the heap so they can take advantage of it. - In a short story by Robert Sheckley, in an anthology compiled by Isaac Asimov, a young man, obsessed with sex, finds a magical text that will allow him to assume the job of feeding griffins, aware that griffins' favorite food is young virgins (thinking he might have some fun with offering a girl the obvious way out). It turns out that the young man is actually a virgin, and that he is not serving food for the griffin, he is the food. - In one of the stories of Ooka Tadasuke, a famous Japanese judge of the 18th century, he has to divide a father's estate between twin sons. One is known as greedy and selfish; the other is known as having helped the father and for being honorable. No one can tell which son is which. Ooka picks one son at random and tells him to divide the estate using tokens representing the various assets. The chosen son starts giving himself all the money and property, and gives his brother merely the good will of the neighbors. The crowd thinks Ooka made a huge mistake \|\|until Ooka announces that he told the son to divide the estate, but that only Ooka has the power to award the items. Ooka gives the money to the honorable son and tells the greedy son that he needs the neighbors' good will more\|\|. ## By Work - Ascendance of a Bookworm: - The series' basic concept plays with the trope. Our heroine is reincarnated into a Medieval European Fantasy world, But unlike many other Light Novel protagonists, ends up born to a family of commoners. - A knight named Shikza finds himself needing to guard a person of lower status than himself, whom he happens to resent. The only other two people present are of lower status than him, as well. Because of this, Shikza assumes he can do as he pleases with the person he's meant to guard and attacks her. Tables are turned on Shikza when he's reminded that the person who asked him to stand guard is of higher status than him. - Averted in Atlas Shrugged. The population of Galt's Gulch consists entirely of people who were either wealthy in the outside world or aspired to be. Clearly, a functioning society requires menial laborers, and some people will be at the bottom of the heap. But because Galt's Gulch is part of Ayn Rand's utopian Author Filibuster, everyone's presented as very happy with this system: former CEOs who end up as underlings claim to be completely satisfied, as long as their boss is more skilled and qualified than they are. - The Beast Arises: After the Astra Militarum, Mechanicus, and every Imperial Fists successor chapter join forces to defeat the ork invasion of Terra, they mount a Military Coup against the High Lords of Terra with the help of the Inquisition and the Adeptus Arbites and appoint Captain Koorland, the Sole Survivor of the Imperial Fists, as Lord Commander of the Imperium. The High Lords are understandably miffed at this, so when Vulkan, Primarch of the Salamanders, is discovered, they try to get him to take over, hoping he will give them their power back. Vulkan agrees to accept the Lord Commandership... and then immediately orders the High Lords to obey Koorland's orders as if they were his own and goes into seclusion. - Discussed in Colonel Butler's Wolf by Anthony Price. Butler compares himself to one of his more liberal-minded colleagues, noting that the colleague assumes he'd have been one of the masters in the old days but prefers modern society anyway, while Butler himself thinks the old ways were better even though he knows perfectly well he'd have been one of the servants. - Discworld: - Inverted for (pre-Ridcully) wizards and Assassins, who view their respective hierarchies as stifling and extremely unfair, but are very happy with it once they become high rankers themselves. Those who don't achieve high ranks... let's just say their complaints are unlikely to matter. - In The Last Continent, the Chair of Indefinite Studies darkly mutters that in "the old days" they used to kill wizards like Ridcully. The Dean points out that they also used to kill wizards like them. This is also a bit inaccurate. Ridcully was originally recruited as a useful hick who could take the job and not make waves but be easily assassinated if he was a problem. Turns out that, as a country wizard, he's in alarmingly good shape and a crack shot with a crossbow. - The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman tackles this head-on. Sophie — a girl from 1960 — gets to travel back in time to 1860 and visit her ancestors' plantation. She assumes they'll recognize her as part of the family. They do, but her tan skin, frizzy hair, and lack of 19th-century manners mean they figure her mother must have been black, and so she winds up as a slave by the one-drop rule. - In the novelization of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), the main human antagonist Alan Jonah genuinely doesn't realize once he decides to let King Ghidorah destroy the world that him and his men will surely die with everyone else in that scenario regardless of how well they hide themselves underground. He says that he and his men will live like kings once Ghidorah's apocalypse has finished, and Madison mentally calls out the absurdity of such a notion. - In one of the books of Guardians of Ga'Hoole, the main character Nyroc is born to Nyra, head of the "Pure Ones", an organization of owls made up of the family Tytonidae (the barn owls) whose goal is to eliminate the Guardians of Ga'hoole and purify the owl kingdoms. One of Nyroc's friends is Phillip, a member of species of Tytonidae called greater sooty owls. When he and his father were starving, they decided to join the organization as new recruits in hopes of a better life. Unfortunately, as Phillip discovers, not only are the Pure Ones racist towards other owls, but discriminate among their own kind based on feather color, with the white Tyto albas at the top of the hierarchy. Phillip (or Dustytuft as the other owls called him) ended up on the lower ranks of the social ladder, just above lesser sooty owls, forced to do the most menial and worst of jobs. - Harry Potter: - Many people who joined the Death Eaters were merely in it For the Evulz, or the chance to get ahead in wizarding society, or because Voldemort's victory seemed certain (and many were half-bloods masquerading as pureblood). Some found out that his evil was far beyond the bullying and Muggle-baiting they were used to, some tried to claim they'd been mind-controlled the entire time, and others still found themselves too deeply compromised to do anything but keep serving him. - In the backstory, Severus Snape turned on the Death Eaters and became a Double Agent for Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix after Voldemort targeted Lily Potter (nee Evans), with whom he had been in a Love Triangle with James Potter when they were all students at Hogwarts. Meaning that he was all on board with Voldemort's plans until they affected somebody he actually cared about. Worse yet, he openly begged Voldemort to let her live after killing her husband and son, which best case scenario would've left her to live in grief. He only turned to Dumbledore for help when Voldemort refused to do even that, causing Dumbledore to call him out for his immense selfishness. - The goblins welcomed Voldemort's upheaval of the wizarding world at first, thinking it the end of wizardkind's casual contempt on nonhuman magic beings. Instead, they seemed to have been reduced to menial work (quoth Griphook, who escaped: "I am no house-elf."). You'd think going with an organization that prides itself on purity of wizarding lineage would have set off more warning bells. - Discussed in the Heralds of Valdemar novels, where "May you get exactly what you deserve" is considered a curse. The implication is that the target might initially accept it, thinking they deserve better than what they have, but will shortly discover that they deserve worse. - Robertson Davies once wrote a short story (collected in the anthology High Spirits) in which a group of academics, after being bored to tears listening to a newly minted literature graduate student gush about how cool it would be to go live in the past, proceeded to summon the minds of their ancestors to inhabit their present bodies. And it turns out none of them had a particularly interesting past. - How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: - Amidonia's Prince Gaius VIII attempts some Loophole Abuse of the Mankind Declaration's ban on military conquest for the duration of the conflict with the Demon Lord: he argues that since Elfrieden is not a signatory, then trying to reconquer some of the territory Amidonia lost in their last war is not illegal. King Souma Kazuya soundly defeats Amidonia, killing Gaius in action and occupying his capital, so his heir Julius goes running to the Gran Chaos Empire (the western superpower that backs the Declaration). The Imperial heir apparent agrees to negotiate on their behalf to end Souma's occupation to save the credibility of her sister's treaty... and then, after negotiating with Souma, informs Julius he can either accept Souma's perfectly reasonable demand for war reparations and handover of war criminals for prosecution, or else be kicked out of the treaty entirely and have to risk other neighboring countries making the same Loophole Abuse argument to prey on a now much-weaker Amidonia. Julius takes the deal. - In a scene reminiscent of Henry V Act II, Scene 2, while deciding the sentences of convicted traitors Castor and Carla Vargas, Souma asks the jury of nobles what should be done with them. Two of them suggest clemency and are escorted out of the room. The others call for the Vargas' heads—and are promptly decapitated for their own treasonous activities by Souma's Black Cat ninjas who had infiltrated the room. Souma then sentences the Vargases to enslavement, while the two nobles who called for clemency are given jobs in Souma's administration. - One Judge Dee story has the judge attend a play, in which two brothers are complaining about their inheritance, each claiming they got shafted while waving the paper that lists their share. The judge of the play tells the brothers to exchange lists. - Played for Laughs at the start of KonoSuba. After dying in a freak accident, Kazuma is offered the option to Reincarnate in Another World by the goddess Aqua, and told he can pick any item or power as his New Life in Another World Bonus. Annoyed at her flippant attitude towards his circumstances, Kazuma picks Aqua herself out of spite, and Heaven ratifies the Loophole Abuse, much to Aqua's dismay. - Shirley Jackson's townspeople in "The Lottery" are perfectly fine with the annual Lottery of Doom that will end in a Human Sacrifice (it's traditional!). Only the victim protests, and only when it becomes clear that her life is at stake. - In the Nemesis Series, man-hating female mage Graywytch casts a spell to kill off all men, defined for the purposes of the spell as having a Y chromosome. She nearly dies herself, which Danny (a trans-girl and target of Graywytchs transphobic tendencies) theorizes that she's actually intersex, i.e. genetically XY male with androgen insensitivity. Though Graywytch refuses to accept this explanation, insisting she accidentally Cast From Hitpoints instead. It's never explicitly confirmed which is true, but the book seems to lean to Danny's explanation. - Slave World: - In the first novel, the heroine is horrified with how naively her colleagues embrace the Alternate Timeline world they have found. The scientists join the society, believing that they will get to be part of the aristocracy and thus accept the social order where the aristocrats have absolute power over everyone else. \|\|And yes, they do end up enslaved.\|\| - Zigzagged in the third novel, as Sarah seems to be falling in the same trap as her predecessors. \|\|She's actually setting herself up for permanent enslavement, although her plan is to belong to the woman she loves... who then gives her the basic "thanks but no thanks" and auctions her off to a random aristocrat... a young lady who grows to become the true love of her life.\|\| - In These Words Are True and Faithful, Cassilda advocates for government to constrain others' lives, assuming that she and people like her will be the beneficiaries. Her opponents invoke the same government powers whose expansion she advocates to shut down her pet project. - In the Thursday Next novel One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, Thursday is trapped in the Oral Tradition aboard the ship Ethical Dilemma, which is the setting of an ethics lecture about the morality of killing or torturing one person to save a larger group. Thursday chooses to give the lecturer an aneurysm in order to save the ship. - The War of the Worlds was partially written as a critique of Social Darwinism. Many people who believed that superior people should be in power would be extremely unhappy if a superior race of alien invaders took over. - "The Destiny of Milton Gomrath" has a garbage collector being convinced all his life that there's something wrong with the world and his position in it. One day he's visited by a being who says there's been a mistake and he actually belongs in an Alternate Universe, a Medieval European Fantasy world of brave knights, beautiful princesses, and heroic deeds. The garbageman eagerly agrees to go there instead, where it turns out his job is to clean the manure out of the castle stables, and his home is a pile of straw in the corner. - X-Wing Series: - Played for Laughs in Rogue Squadron. At Bror Jace's instigation, the unit holds a mock Court Martial of Ensign Newbie Gavin Darklighter, Jace arguing that he should be "apprenticed" to the highest-scoring pilot (currently himself) on the grounds that he has, as yet, scored only one kill in three engagements. Nawara, a former defense attorney, defends Gavin to Wedge, Tycho, and a bit character, and reaches a "plea deal" where Corran agrees to split his nine kills with Gavin and judge the best and worst pilot by percentages. Wedge then wryly points out that, having been awarded four additional kills in the plea deal, Gavin is no longer the worst pilot in the squadron: Nawara himself, with one kill, is. - Wraith Squadron: After ambushing the Wraiths, resulting in \|\|Jesmin Ackbar dying and Myn Donos having a PTSD break\|\|, the leader of a gang of Space Pirates tries to argue to Wedge Antilles that the battle had taken place in an unclaimed star system, and so there were no laws there and they had the right to defend themselves. Wedge sarcastically agrees and says in that case they were free to go—but if there were no laws, that also meant there were no laws against the Wraiths killing all the pirates and looting their supplies. The pirate leader quickly changes his mind about whether there are any laws in the star system. - In The Bible: - In the Book of Esther, King Ahasuerus asks his advisor Haman what a good reward would be for someone who had done the king a great service. Haman assumes it's for him and suggests an elaborate display, with the honored person riding the king's horse, wearing the king's robe, and being led by a noble shouting "See what is done for the man the king wishes to honor!" Ahasuerus thinks it's a great idea — and then tells him to go do just that for Mordecai, Haman's hated rival who had foiled a coup attempt against Ahasuerus but was never rewarded properly. And it just gets worse for Haman after that. - In 2 Samuel chapter 12, the prophet Nathan invokes this to guilt-trip King David after learning that David had Uriah killed and took Uriah's wife Bathsheba for himself in the previous chapter. Nathan tells a story about a rich man with many sheep, whose neighbor is a poor man with only one lamb, and the rich man steals his neighbor's lamb and slaughters it for his dinner. David angrily says that such a man deserves to be put to death. Nathan replies "You are such a man!" David isn't killed, but he is horrified at what he's done and immediately sets about trying to repent, and the Kingdom of Israel is cursed to fall as a consequence of his misdeed (first by the split between Israel and Judah in the reign of his grandson Rehoboam, then by the Babylonian conquest). - The Book of Mormon: When Laman asks his relative Laban to give him the brass plates containing their genealogy and scriptures, Laban angrily accuses him of being a robber and tries to have him killed on the spot. However, when Laman flees, returns with his brothers, and offers all their family's wealth in exchange for the plates, Laban gets greedy and takes all their valuables by force without handing the plates over, making him a robber. God later arranges for the youngest brother, Nephi, to come across Laban passed out drunk, and tells Nephi that it's acceptable to kill Laban. - Brent Butt (of Corner Gas fame) had a bit where he recalled encountering an extremely scrawny guy wearing a shirt bearing the anarchy symbol, and naturally mocked how unlikely he'd be to survive if he ever got his wish. Butt: You think he's thought this through? You think he wants to live in a world without rules? All 74 pounds of him? Think he's gonna do well in a Mad Max society? They're gonna give him the Grand Puba horns and let him call the shots, you figure? Or is he gonna be the hood ornament on a dune buggy around Day 2? Some 300-pound biker eatin' soup out of his skull, that's what's gonna happen. - Ars Magica: Some diabolists are Hell Seekers in the belief that their loyalty to Satan will get them promoted to devilhood when they die, so they can be the torturers instead of the tormented. Hell offers no such accommodations. - In BattleTech, Brett Andrews, Khan of Clan Steel Viper, was elected ilKhan of the Clans and declared his intent to purge them of the "taint" of the Inner Sphere. This led to the Wars of Reaving, which saw the destruction of many of the Clans and several others being forced to flee to the Inner Sphere. Finally, he declared that all the tainted Clans had been destroyed, only for Khan Stanislov NButa of Clan Star Adder to remind him that there was one Clan that had been tainted by its time in the Inner Sphere left: Clan Steel Viper. Andrews challenged him to an unarmed duel, then killed him with a laser pistol, violating both the prohibition of carrying weapons into the Clan Council and the honor of the duel, which the other assembled Khans used as evidence that N'Buta was right. The Steel Vipers promptly became the final Clan to be destroyed for being tainted by the Inner Sphere; Andrews himself, meanwhile, was beaten to death by Star Adder saKhan Hannibal Banacek. For added irony, the Steel Vipers were the only Clan that had actually occupied a part of the Inner Sphere that were wiped out in the Wars of Reaving, as all the other Clans that invaded the Inner Sphere either survived (Clan Jade Falcon, Clan Wolf, Clan Ghost Bear, Clan Snow Raven, Clan Diamond Shark, Clan Nova Cat) or were destroyed prior to the Wars of Reaving (Clan Smoke Jaguar, Clan Ice Hellion). The other Clans that were destroyed were ones that had never gone to the Inner Sphere. - Dungeons & Dragons: - This is a common ploy of the Lawful Evil alignment, inviting people to join a system that benefit the strong at the expense of the weak. The regular adherent is an Asshole Victim who overestimated his strength and is really unhappy with finding himself as one of the despised and exploited weaklings. Similarly, Fiendish Codex II explains this is why someone would willingly sell their soul in a Deal with the Devil — they expect their natural ability or special relationship with their fiendish patron will lead them to swiftly take positions of power and prestige in the diabolic hierarchy after their deaths, allowing them to pursue their mortal ambitions as a mighty pit fiend. Unfortunately for them, as soon as mortal souls arrive in Baator they're tortured until they suffer a Death of Personality and have been twisted into the very least of devils. "No tyrant looks upon a wretched lemure and thinks that this will be their afterlife." - In the Dark Sun setting's history, the Companions helped the insane Absolute Xenophobe Rajaat execute his genocide of all the "impure" sapient races of Athas, right up until they realized that he wasn't actually human and counted humans among the impure races. Cue a collective Oh, Crap! and hasty ploy to seal his evil in a can. - In the Mutant Chronicles book Ilian, there are two short-stories on this theme. Humans who joined the cult of Ilian because they wanted to become the exploiters rather then the exploited. And their futures are so bright, since Ilian will smile upon them forever... until they fail or get backstabbed by each other, that is. Suckers. - In Book of the Dead, a book for the New World of Darkness (mostly Geist: The Sin-Eaters and Mage: The Awakening), all the underworld realms presented are designed so the gamemaster can play them this way. It's outright encouraged in general, and one of the realms is designed so it's hard to NOT play it this way. This realm is called Oppia, and is a place of abundant soul-energy in the form of delicious food. The rulers are very generous and hospitable, and their rules seem simple enough. Sure, the system runs on enslavement of souls, but those idiots are bad guests who broke the rules. Seems easy enough to accept... until you realize how very easy it actually is to break the rules. Including by accident. - Pathfinder: Defied by the Gray Gardeners, the secretive order of executioners that maintains the Final Blades of Galt—the magical guillotines upon which accused enemies of the Red Revolution are beheaded. note : Galt is a Fantasy Counterpart Culture for France at the height of the Reign of Terror. As the only lasting power center amidst the Red Revolution, the Gray Gardeners keep their own identities secret to lessen the risk that the mob might turn on them as well. - Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy Battles: - Many who devote themselves to the Gods of Chaos do so for personal gain, with the most ambitious hoping to be rewarded with immortality as daemon princes. Unfortunately for them, their patrons are just as likely to ignore them, drive them insane, give them what they want in a cruelly ironic way, or subject them to awful transformations. Many instances of Chaos Spawn were once up-and-coming champions of Chaos until they washed out and mutated beyond control, becoming little more than feral attack-animals herded into battle by their former subordinates. - In 40K, the fall of the Eldar was brought about by the psychic Space Elves' continuous hedonism creating a new Chaos god/dess in the Warp. Some pleasure cults actually did their best to accelerate this process, believing they'd be rewarded with an eternity of new sensations. The Dark Eldar are now a race of Klingon Promotion-enforcing combat sadomasochists who need to hide in the Webway lest the Chaos god Slaanesh devour their souls, and can emerge into realspace only long enough to conduct quick raids for slaves. - In Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, mutants are hated and feared for their obvious taint of Chaos; but one book points out that, while many denizens of the Empire have little problem condemning mutants if they're someone they don't know (or like), attitudes change fairly quickly once they or their loved ones experience mutation themselves. In particular, families that experience the birth of mutant children usually decide to either hide the baby or abandon them in the woods, rather than kill them or consign them to the witch hunters as is their duty. - In Act II of William Shakespeare's Henry V, a trio of nobles are secretly plotting against Henry. In Scene 2, Henry mentions he plans to forgive a man who spoke against him in public, attributing it to drunkenness. The three nobles say the man should be punished, at which time Henry reveals that he knows about their treachery. They beg for mercy, and Henry says they'll get the mercy they wanted for the drunk and sentences them all to death. - In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock demands that the court award him the Exact Words of the contract, thinking it will be in his favor and allow him to dispose of a hated enemy. Portia, disguised as a lawyer, asks him to choose mercy, but all in vain. After the judgment, she springs the trap — he can carve a pound of flesh from Antonio, but he can't take any blood. Shylock, understandably, tries to either accept a different offer or drop the suit, but both of those options are now Off the Table. - BioShock: - BioShock: In one of the Apocalyptic Logs, the speaker says that when intelligent, hard-working, and powerful individuals from the surface are invited to come to Rapture and help build a world of freedom from rules and regulations, they accept because they think they'll be captains of industry like they would be on the surface. They then find out that "someone needs to clean the toilets". It seems that nobody, not even Andrew Ryan, fully realised that if you have a city comprised solely of the human race's elite, those who could be great leaders when surrounded by normal people to do the menial work, won't be special any more when everyone is just as clever and driven as they are. Apparently, this unwelcome discovery contributed heavily to the people's rapid disillusionment with Rapture, and Ryan realising that there were people who could compete with him as equals helped spur an already self-centred narcissist past the Moral Event Horizon to stay on top. - This is also discussed in BioShock 2 where you find out the backstory of the railroad that connects the various parts of the city. Ryan and his supporters invested heavily in the railroad, but it was quickly upstaged by the invention of the bathysphere and the railroad went bankrupt. Ryan's followers never considered that their own investments could go sour and were confronted by the fact that they were about to find themselves broke and on the bottom of the economic and social system of Rapture. Faced with losing his power base, Ryan forced a bank bailout for the railroad, which saved the investors' fortunes but destroyed the savings of everyone else. Rapture's economy went into a downward spiral, which resulted in the civil war that wrecked the city. - While not as prevalent, the fallacy is also reflected in Bioshock Infinite regarding Comstock's flying paradise for the American People. Fink realized that none of the white, wealthy, religious patrons who'd flock to Comstock's city as "God's Kingdom" would be eager to do manual labor or menial tasks to maintain the 'heavenly' city, so he brought in "Cherubs for every chore", i.e. a massive foreign labor force that would eventually revolt and become the Vox Populi. This didn't end well for anybody. - The plot of Devil May Cry 5 is kicked off by \|\|Vergil's\|\| decision to split himself into his human and demon halves. He discovers seconds later that he is not The Unfettered demon Urizen but the helpless human V and spends most of the rest of the game trying to find someone powerful enough to defeat Urizen so they can reunite. - Dragon Age: Inquisition: - One of your mage companions, Vivienne, is strongly in favor of reinstating the Circle of Magi, under the reasoning that mages must be imprisoned and controlled by Templars for their own safety and the safety of the general public, and that so long as the mages behave themselves they'll be allowed to live. However, she submits to none of those restrictions, being the Court Mage to the Orlesian court and essentially living the free life of a noble while claiming every other mage should be contained for their own good. - Toyed with regarding the Venatori, one of the main antagonist factions. Their leader the Elder One wants to enter the Fade and claim the power of a god and use it to reshape the world and restore the Tevinter Imperium to its glory days. \|\|The Bad Future you see in one quest line is not hospitable to human life, let alone Tevinter's restoration\|\|, and several of the Venatori seem to think they'll be made the sole ruler of the world for their service while the Elder One takes up the position of deity, rather than simply another slave. However, it's unclear how much they know of his plans and their actual effects. - In the Jaws of Hakkon DLC, the First Inquisitor Ameridan \|\|who was an elven mage was fine with his close personal friend Emperor Drakon leading religiously-motivated imperial expansionist campaigns against neighboring human kingdoms because Drakon assured him he and his descendants would always honor Dales elven sovereignty. When Ameridan learns that Drakon's own son annexed the Dales one short generation after he disappeared\|\| he's horrified, as he'd assumed that \|\|his people would be exempt from Drakon's imperial expansionism\|\|. - Dragon Quest VI: One optional area in the dreamworld is a "Groundhog Day" Loop of a king who decided to deal with the threat of the Archfiend by summoning an even bigger demon to kill it. The idea that they wouldn't remain in control past the first five seconds of the ritual didn't occur to them at all. \|\|If you actually fight and defeat this demon quickly enough, it turns out the plan wasn't as stupid as it seems: the demon cheerfully destroys the Big Bad in a humiliating Curb-Stomp Battle without taking any damage. The problem being that the demon will only respect anybody strong enough to beat him, and if you're strong enough to beat him that means you're also strong enough to Curb Stomp the Big Bad even without his help.\|\| - Fallout: New Vegas: Vault 11's sadistic social experiment, revealed by their Overseer after they permanently sealed the exit, was to force the citizens into sacrificing one person a year or the vault would self-destruct. They unanimously decided to sacrifice their Overseer. This turned into a tradition of sacrificing their elected overseer at the end of every year, under the premise that the one with all the power is / will become an asshole and should pay the price. Which turned corrupt as the majority formed voting blocs to target minorities and annoyances, and the Justice Bloc's leader took full advantage of their influence to bully anyone into submission with threats of getting them or their loved ones elected, then get them elected anyway. Except one pissed-off victim intentionally got herself elected in a landslide with a string of bloc serial killings, and used her overseer powers to make all future sacrifices selected at random, screwing the blocs over with their own voting power and belief in electing a Strawman Political to blame. Which went horribly wrong as the formerly smug, untouchable Justice Bloc went berserk and launched an armed coup to reinstate their voting entitlements, sparking a bloody civil war that ended with the decimation of the vault. When the vault sang its final insult - unlocking the vault doors and praising the citizens for not sacrificing anyone that year (because they were too busy shooting each other) - four of the five survivors committed suicide from the realization that they only passed the Secret Test of Character by failing every other test of basic human decency. The sole survivor begged them to listen to the announcement that they could just leave, even after he personally insulted the Vault's AI and demanded it do their worst to try to make them listen to it (and oh, it did). - Knight Eternal: The people of Zamaste worship Zamas in the hopes that he'll spare them, but it's clear that Zamas has no intention of doing so and that he hates all mortals equally. - The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: Chancellor Cole's plan rests on finding a suitable host for his master Malladus, but he breaks down in fear \|\|once Malladus chooses him after losing Zelda\|\|. - Neverwinter Nights 2: The Faceless Man, Big Bad of the Mask Of The Betrayer expansion, was once \|\|Akachi, the high priest of the dead god Myrkul, until he renounced his devotion to Myrkul and tried to storm the afterlife to liberate his wife's soul from the Wall of the Faithless.\|\| It sounds noble, and to an extent it was, but it is pointed out that \|\|Akachi had been gleefully condemning souls to the Wall for decades before his wife ended up there.\|\| He knew full well what Myrkul was doing (and what he was doing in Myrkul's service), as well as how corrupt the whole system was; he just didn't care until that corrupt system affected him and someone he cared about. - In Persona 5, many members of the Conspiracy are like this. They're fine with \|\|Shido\|\| causing people to have mental breakdowns as long as those breakdowns are people who are their rivals and enemies. However, few stop to think about the fact that his targets tend to be people who are dangerous to him. Such as people who know he's the one causing the breakdowns. They're far less happy when they realize (as they die) that they're on the chopping block as well. - This tends to be a problem with online trading in the Pokémon games. Players will often put up a freshly-caught and untrained Mon for offer while demanding you give them legendaries or max-levels in return, a trade they would've never accepted if made by someone else (a problem exacerbated in early iterations by a search UI that wasn't designed well enough to let players screen out bad offers properly). The addition of Wonder Trading, in which you trade Pokémon with a random player without knowing what you're going to get, has only made this worse, with everyone assuming THEY will be the one of the lucky ones. - Rise of the Third Power: Prince Gage initially bought into Emperor Noraskov's rhetoric of how some people are chosen as fate and others are disfavored by fate, and that the former group is morally superior to the latter regardless of circumstances. \|\|As a result, he's complicit in Noraskov's purge of dissenters and undesirables. He is eventually labeled a traitor for stopping the assassination of his fiancée, Princess Arielle, making him disfavored by fate according to this ideology.\|\| - The premise of Sea Salt. A seaside town has prospered by making a deal with Dagon. The game opens with the Archbishop praying to Dagon to find out which people need to be sacrificed for continued blessing. As soon as his own name is mentioned, he goes from happy obedience to stammering excuses about how he's too important. It's up to the player to command Dagon's minions and collect the payment the hard way. - Most representatives of the Chaos alignment in Shin Megami Tensei support the creation of a world where Might Makes Right because they believe they're strong enough to end up on top in such a world. Many don't take it well when the protagonist defeats them in battle, thus proving themselves stronger. - Accentuated in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. The Chaos ending is the typical scenario, transforming Earth into a a world of survival of the fittest, though Humanity fails to take into account that demons are inherently stronger than them, so they're quickly wiped off the face of the earth. You're urged to take a plan B to do something similar, but by taking demons out of the equation. - Silent Hill 3: There's a notebook in the hospital that envisions the writer (most likely Leonard Wolf), as some righteous crusader defending the world from all the "unnecessary people" in it. As Heather reads the journal, she scornfully notes that she'd like to meet the lunatic who wrote it and ask if they think they're "one of the necessary ones". - Several of the debates in Exile Election involve this. For instance, Miori's debate revolves around the concept of a world where everyone's abilities are translated into stats, with this information being widely known. Most of her supporters naturally believe that their stats would be high enough that they'll be recognized as special and be treated accordingly. \|\|Ironically, Miori believes the exact opposite. She thinks her stats would be low enough that she'd be dismissed as worthless, and everyone would leave her alone and stop expecting anything from her.\|\| - 8-Bit Theater: - Several times, including with the final boss, Black Mage has attempted to cozy up to whatever force of evil is attempting to destroy the world under the belief that they'll team up and get to do it together. Then said evil force makes it clear that this is not a case of Evil Is One Big, Happy Family and Black Mage will get destroyed along with everything else, forcing Black Mage to go back to the heroes. - At the end of the comic with it looking like the end is imminent, Thief attempts to back out thinking his wealth will allow him to live the good life in whatever's left. Black Mage and Red Mage have to point out to him that Money Is Not Power if there's no economy to support it. Thief is quick to return to world-saving as a result. - Freefall: A man discusses this when he refuses to attack someone for a large bribe: "The Needs of the Many" sounds good until you're designated one of the few. - Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger: Referenced when a group of Space Pirates who were fighting Quentyn find themselves helpless against a single Kvrk-Chk until Quentyn saves them. Quentyn: Omnibus, pirates and gangsters and other "outlaws" are nothing but arrogant children. They think that the rules are just there to spoil their fun, and that only wimps and losers live by them. And so they figure that being an outlaw makes them the biggest, baddest predators in the universe. They're dead wrong. What it makes them is rightful prey. Of the civilization they spurned, and of the things their civilization protected them from without their ever knowing. There are powers and principalities out there that pick their teeth with the bones of "big, bad outlaws" that wander out past the fence. Our three eyed buccaneers just learned that their worst nightmare is true: The bars on the cage aren't there to protect the tiger ... and the tiger isn't them . - SomethingPositive* has an already-frustrated Davan makes a goth clubber start hitting himself for his desire for "divine Anarchy", giving an object lesson in this trope in the process. - Played With in this article for The Onion, where a man expresses his desire to see all Mexicans deported from the United States, despite his love of Mexican food and being on good terms with all of the Mexicans that he knows. "But the rest of you, the ones I don't know personally, I won't miss you at all." - From Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance, an expectant mother's mother-in-law decided "grandparents deserve a vote" on the names of the grandkids. OP agreed... and invited the other grandparents to the vote as well. Mother-in-law lost 4 to 2. - A thread on StarDestroyer.net's forum concluded that of various fictional worlds, Star Trek's United Federation of Planets is probably the best one to live in, on grounds that, since you're far more likely to be some random average guy than one of the heroes of The 'Verse, the Federation's standard of living has a lot to recommend it. - Lampooned in a widely-shared tweet by Adrian Bott: "I never thought leopards would eat MY face," sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party. - This quote serves as the inspiration for the subreddit r/LeopardsAteMyFace, which documents several posts about this occurring in real life, as well as the "Leopards Eating People's Faces" Party meme. - The Dragon Prince: When King Harrow was crowned, he told his wife about a dream he had where Lady Justice came to him and offered him a gift. He took her blindfold, and she explained how he should try to imagine he was not born with the wealth or position he has, or even the culture or skin color. Later in the episode, he tries to make good on this promise by offering supplies to a nearby kingdom suffering a famine — they don't have much to spare, so the same amount of people will starve, but half of them will be from his kingdom instead of all from his ally. However, he stumbles a bit when his court wizard offers him an alternative; kill a powerful magical creature and use its heart to bring fertility to the land. His wife points out that they don't even know if the creature is intelligent. They ultimately go through with it and it works, but it kicks off a Cycle of Revenge that results in Harrow's wife dead, the queens of the allied kingdom dead, himself dead years later, and brings the land within inches of war. - In the Family Guy episode "Padre de Familia", Peter, driven by Patriotic Fervor, demands that his company institute a policy of only hiring American citizens in order to weed out illegal immigrant workers. When the policy is passed, he approaches his mother to ask for a copy of his birth certificate, only for her to reveal that she was across the border at the time of his birth, and he was born in Mexico... and since he can't provide a birth certificate that demonstrates his citizenship of the USA, he gets fired as a result of the policy he helped implement. - In The Owl House, this is why several characters - including \|\|Odalia Blight and most of the nine Coven Heads\|\| - support Emperor Belos' plans for the Day of Unity despite knowing of its true purpose as \|\|a means of committing genocide\|\|. They naively assume that Belos will allow them to join him in the "paradise" that the Day of Unity will supposedly create, not realising that \|\|Belos fully intends to kill every single witch and demon on the Boiling Isles, without exception\|\|. - Sonic Boom: In the episode "Mister Eggman", Eggman signs up for the class of the Sadist Teacher Professor Kingsford and is eager to see who the "goat" - the student turned into the professor's Butt-Monkey - will be, not realizing that as one of his students, he's just as vulnerable to getting that position himself. Sure enough, it's Eggman who ends up being the goat. - Many Tom and Jerry shorts have Jerry seeming to favor having an Angry Guard Dog around since it usually gets Tom off his back and often getting kicks from watching a cat getting chased and tormented by the larger beast. Though, there are a few shorts where "said dog" doesn't just settle on the cat but then shows every bit of animosity on wanting to do the same to the mouse. Thus, Jerry then finds himself teaming up with Tom, with the two of them having to work together in order to deal with an aggressive and large canine bent on chomping them both.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginalPositionGambit
Orochi - TV Tropes Quick: we need a truck of live mice, a thousand kegs of sake and the world's biggest heat lamp! note : Well, at least you've got one of those things . The Yamata no Orochi is an eight-headed, eight-tailed serpentine monster in Japanese Mythology, similar in appearance to the Lernaean Hydra, give or take a head or two. According to Shinto legend, the Orochi was defeated by the storm god Susano-o, who while Walking the Earth after getting booted out of Heaven, answered a request for aid by two earthly deities who were forced by the Orochi to hand over one of their daughters every year to be devoured by the beast, and were now down to their eighth and last one, Princess Kushinada. Just to distinguish the tale from Western dragon slaying myths, Susano-o first lured the Orochi out by disguising himself as Kushinada (with the real one disguised as a comb in his hair), and then killed it by setting out a bowl of strong sake for each head, letting it drink itself into a stupor (as it only had one stomach), then lopping them off. Inside Orochi's body, Susano-o found the sword Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi ("Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven") that was later renamed "Kusanagi" ("Grass Cutter"), and is one of Japan's Three Sacred Treasures. According to a wide assortment of anime and video game series, the Orochi is alive and well and at large in present-day Japan. Sometimes it's literally Orochi, or anything from a Monster of the Week to a Big Bad with snake-themed powers. The trope holds pretty strong and is different than simply being associated with snakes; if your anime or manga story has a Crystal Dragon Jesus, chances are that Orochi will be its Devil. Compare the Hydra from Greek Mythology and Our Hydras Are Different; although (usually) those serpents aren't as intelligent, or the multi-headed Dragon from the Book of Revelation. ## Examples: - Ranma ½: - The series has character that shares a personality almost identical to its mythological counterpart; when it stirs it does little more than desire to eat women and drink booze. However, it appears to have only seven heads. \|\|Turns out the eighth is in back — it's the size of a small mountain, with the seven smaller (though still huge) dragon heads and necks sprouting from the back of the main head's skull. Kind of like a dragon version of a Beholder.\|\| This Orochi has magical moss growing on its main head that is a powerful curative- even drinking water that flows past the moss can sustain a person's life, as well as making animals grow to unnatural sizes. Notably, the male characters also have to dress in drag in order to lure it out (while Akane disguises herself as a boy to avoid it). Unfortunately, they all look so hideous the Orochi isn't fooled. - Another spiritual example/reference is Happosai, note : "Master of the Eight Treasures" a sake-swilling Dirty Old Man who goes into withdrawal if he is unable to sate his perversion and perhaps the most powerful martial artist in the series. In his Back Story, he was only beaten when his students re-enacted the myth; left out enough sake for him to drink himself into a stupor. Then, lacking any weapon they trusted to cut the nut's head off, they sealed him in a cave with a bundle of dynamite by means of a Zigzag Paper Tassel-adorned boulder. He of course returns to bug Ranma, and finds himself thwarted time and time again by his intended victim - a Hot-Blooded "Manly Man" acting as a perfect Susanoo figure, complete with an Attractive Bent-Gender curse that Happosai always falls for. - Blue Seed. Unless you read the subtitles, which tend to mistranslate it as "Orochi no Orochi". - Destiny of the Shrine Maiden has an Orochi whose 'necks' are giant mecha. - Naruto: One of the main villains is Orochimaru, a rogue ninja with the ability to summon snakes. (And oddly, the Kusanagi sword.) In this case, he's actually based on the character of the same name from the folktale Jiraiya Goketsu Monogatari (As are Jiraiya and Tsunade, of course). However, since the original Orochimaru was likely named after the Orochi, we'll keep him here. Later on, Orochimaru briefly displays the ability to turn into one (pictured above on this page) with a technique called Yamata no Jutsu;. Shortly afterward, \|\|he is killed by Itachi using a technique named Susanoo in a pseudo - Shout-Out / Mythology Gag. The sword wielded by Susanoo is even made of sake.\|\| - Many of the plot elements in Masamune Shirow's science-fantasy manga Orion are loosely based on the Yamata no Orochi legend, with the Orochi itself showing up as an unintentional byproduct of activating a "nine-headed naga reactor" that was intended to gather and eliminate negative karma. - Manga/Orochi The protagonist of Kazuo Umezu's horror manga, who appears as a young girl with psychic powers. - The☆Ultraman has a robot Orochi called Janyur III, who is also The Juggernaut and one of the most powerful monster Ultraman Joneus need to defeat. - Yu-Gi-Oh!: - Yamata Dragon, one of Noah's monster cards in the Virtual World Arc. - Chimeratech Overdragon is a mechanical version of this, and the anime depicts it as growing heads equal to the number of Machines you use to summon it. - Evil Dragon Ananta, which gets stronger the more Reptiles you banish to summon it. - Digimon: - Digimon Tamers has Orochimon, who is a cyborg with seven robotic heads and one biological one. They grow back after being damaged by most attacks, too. Inverted in that drinking sake made it stronger, not weaker. - Digimon Frontier has Susanoomon. He has a BFS named Orochi note : Well, maybe it's the doohickey that projects it is named Orochi. Not much difference there, though. How big? It's more of a BFG whose beam has a fixed length. Imagine a lightsaber the length of a football field and the width of a tree trunk. Sadly, he and Orochimon never met, and Susanoomon being an end-of-season super-duper mode and Orochimon being a mid-season Monster of the Week the previous year, they're not really in the same league. - Doraemon has an episode where Nobita and Doraemon, on one of their many time-traveling escapades, ends up in a prehistoric village where they battle an eight-headed, invincible orochi who can No-Sell all of Doraemon's gadgets. \|\|The monster is later revealed to be a hologram and never actually exists\|\|. - Maken-ki!: Contrary to the Japanese legend and most other depictions, here, the Orochi is portrayed as a benevolent deity, who was revered by man. She lived among them in human form and was given the name "Himegami" (lit. "god princess"), since her shikigami felt the name "Orochi" note : which means, "snake" was unbefitting of her. \|\|And she's revealed to have been Kodama's biological mother\|\|. - In Shaman King, Bokuto no Ryu's \|\|spirit ally Tokagero's Oversoul form is an eight-headed dragon on top of a Formula One car.\|\| In addition, one of Ryu's strongest attacks is his "Ame-No-Murakumo that slew Yamata-No-Orochi", which surrounds his wooden sword in cloud-like swirls of energy before slashing. A bit of a mix-up of the legend's particulars, note : as mentioned above, the ame-no-murakumo was found after the orochi was killed but cool either way. - In Ayakashi Ayashi a main character just happens to be Orochi himself, and the fight with Susanoo is re-enacted in the end (well, more or less), with interesting results. - In Hell Teacher Nube, the most powerful Yokai of all (surpassing even Baki) is the great and terrifying Yamata No Orochi, whom a Mad Scientist summons from the netherworld using ancient technology and mystic rituals. It would have devastated all of Japan if not for Nube and his students' intervention. The method by which it was dispatched is actually an awesome moment for the manga — \|\|Nube's kids use the same Magitek to summon a city-wide Kesaran Pasaran (a benign, wish-granting white fluffball with eyes) and ask it to send the Orochi back where it came from. The Orochi isn't so much whisked away as torn to shreds when the Kesaran Pasaran squashes it.\|\|. - Mugen Densetsu Takamagahara: Dream Saga, based on Japanese myth, has a chapter re-enacting the Orochi story. - In Sekirei, Tsukiumi has an attack called Yamata no Orochi. - In Tenjho Tenge, the story of Susanoo and Orochi is presented as a symbolic allegory for the story of the founding of the Gaoshiki clan, to which most of the characters in the series belong. \|\|the story goes that a shogun who was referred to as "Susa" discovered that the rivers of his domain were being polluted by the runoff from iron mines run by eight clans (portrayed as the eight heads of Orochi). Susa invites the eight clan heads to a party, tricks them into lowering their guard and then decapitating them. Going a bit further, Susa then rapes the clan heads' daughters, who commit suicide, all except one, whose attempts fail, thus putting her in the role of Kushinada, albeit considerably less willing than the traditional version.\|\| - Akazukin Chacha and friends defeated a nine-headed snake who ate virgin girls by getting him drunk on sake, just like in the myth- though, since this was a Magical Girl show at the time, Chacha had to transform to finish him off. - Yaiba: The Yamata no Orochi dragon appears in the penultimate story arc. Is revealed that \|\|his body actually IS Japan, and when revived he turns into a country-sized, planet-wrecking abomination.\|\| - In Kanokon \|\|the female protagonist Chizuru is revealed to be its reincarnation.\|\| - In Persona 4: The Animation, Yamata no Orochi is one of Yu Narukami's personas. Notably, it's the first persona Yu created through fusion. - In Bleach, Hiyori Sarugaki's Zanpukuto is called Kubikiri Orochi. Its Shikai is a saw sword. - Renji also gains this theme to an extent. \|\|His reforged Bankai, Souou Zabimaru, also has a serrated blade, representing its new half: Orochiou.\|\| - Tokyo Ghoul: In the sequel, a mysterious and powerful Ghoul that hunts other Ghouls is given the alias "Orochi" (or "Serpent"), in reference to the mythological beast. - In A Certain Scientific Railgun, \|\|in order to stop Mikoto's out-of-control Level 6 Shift, Touma tries to use his Imagine Breaker and ends up losing his right arm. In response, a dragon head emerges from the stump of his arm (something that previously happened in A Certain Magical Index) and extends into a large serpentine form. Then seven other serpentine dragons emerge as well (each wildly different in appearance from the other) and all of them join efforts to bite and seal away Mikoto's power\|\|. - In Gintama, the Yato's devastated and abandoned home world Rakuyo is inhabited by a giant 108-headed dragon known as the Orochi. - Hozuki's Coolheadedness: Yamata no Orochi works in the Screaming Hell, the part of hell where drunkards are punished. - One Piece: Wano arc villain Kurozumi Orochi has an Orochi motif to him, up to and including \|\|his having eaten the Mythical Zoan fruit Hebi Hebi no Mi, Model: Yamata no Orochi\|\|. Due to his multiple heads, \|\|he can also survive being decapitated, even in his human form. After several fakeouts, he eventually dies for real after having his last head cut off.\|\| - Fairy Tail: Former Wizard Saint and current Spriggan 12 member God Serena is able to cast a spell that creates eight serpentine dragons at once, \|\|each representing one of his eight Dragon Slayer Magics and color-coded to the respective element\|\|, that visually resembles an Orochi. - Magic: The Gathering: In the Kamigawa setting, the term "orochi" refers to a race of forest-dwelling four-armed bipedal snake-people. O-Kagachi, the biggest and baddest of all spirits, is a take on Orochi proper. - The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon: Orochi (though not mentioned by name) appeared when Susano (who appears here as a cute little kid), battles him in by killing the heads one-by-one in a 21-minute long battle that takes up a quarter of the film. - Strike Witches: The Movie: There's a picture early on what depicts Susano-o fighting against Orochi alongside two Witches. The appearance of Orochi of a eight-necked black snake with blue hexagonal pattern on the back and eyes made out of red hexagons seems to indicate that Orochi was actually an ancient Neuroi. - Godzilla - King Ghidorah is a three-headed dragon who Ishiro Honda says was based on Orochi. At one point he was supposed to have the full eight heads, but this was reduced to three to make things easier for the special effects team. This is subtly referenced in Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack!, where King Ghidorah is alluded to be an immature Orochi— having only grown 3 of his fated 8 heads. - Godzilla himself is indirectly compared to Orochi in Shin Godzilla. Operation Yashiori, the plan to freeze Godzilla by pumping a liquid coagulant down his mouth, is named in reference to the sake that Susano-O used to subdue Orochi. - Subtly referenced in the climax of Godzilla vs. Kong. \|\|Mechagodzilla gets possessed by the uploaded mind of Orochi-analogue King Ghidorah and comes very close to killing both Godzilla and Kong. Josh gets the idea of short-circuiting Mechagodzilla's controls by pouring Bernie's whiskey flask into its control panel, much like Susano-O getting Orochi drunk on sake. This interrupts Mechagodzilla just long enough for Kong and Godzilla to recover and destroy the mech.\|\| - The Thrilling Sword, a Taiwanese fantasy movie, had a nine-headed sea serpent summoned by the main villain, Lord Xia, to terrorise the kingdom. - Yamato Takeru (or Orochi: The Eight-Headed Dragon) had a very chubby Orochi, here the Scaled Up form of Physical God Tsukuyomi. It also bore an notable resemblance to Ghidorah, another Toho creation. - In Onmyōji II, the two chosen children, who are actually reincarnations of Susanoo and Amaterasu, are each marked with a four-headed serpent tattoo that combine to make the Mark of Orochi. - A Nine-headed Chinese dragon shows up in the So Bad, It's Good fantasy action film, The Invincible Dragon. The protagonist claims he encounters this dragon as a child, which somehow inspires him to grow up to be a martial artist and fighter who calls himself "Jiu-long" (Nine Dragon), even though most of the characters of the film thought he was bluffing, or he was merely hallucinating a childhood memory. The movie even toys with the notion that the dragon encountered by the protagonist is All Just a Dream or a hallucination. At the end of the film, \|\|the Nine-headed dragon personally appears in the climax to save him and devour the Big Bad, revealing the childhood memory to be Real After All\|\|. - Ultraman Tiga Gaiden: Revival of the Ancient Giant has the monster Kurayaminoorochi being a direct reference to the orochi mythos, being a monster that carries the Yaminaginotsurugi sword which is crucial in helping Ultraman Tiga defeating the villain Dogouf at the end of the film. - Book of Imaginary Beings: The Eight-Forked Serpent of Koshi, which had eight tails and eight heads, was so large that trees grew on its backs and heads and that its body stretched over eight valleys and eight hills, and had devoured a king's seven daughters over seven years. When it came back for the eighth, a god (whom Borges names "Brave-Swift-Impetuous-Male") got it drunk on rice beer and cut off its heads. - Cursed World alludes to the Orochi in the name of it's big bad, Lord Orochi. \|\|Whose full name, as president of the ONY megacorp, is Orochi Yamata.\|\| - Dracopedia: The Yamato no Orochi, or Japanese hydra, is a species of hydra native to Japan, South Korea, Sakhalin and Kamchatka. They resemble giant salamanders with necks branching into many small heads, and grow to around three meters long. They mostly hunt by hiding near riverbanks and snatching small animals as they pass by, and have become critically endangered due to habitat loss as a result of heavy industrial development in their natural habitats. - Kamen Rider Hibiki: - The Big Bad of the movie is actually Orochi, but it only has one head. But other elements of the legend are used: the villagers are forced to give one of their daughters as sacrifice each year, and Ibuki disguises himself as the sacrifice. - Orochi is also the name of the event at the end of the TV series, where if it is not stopped "everything will be destroyed", but Orochi itself doesn't appear. - Ultraman Orb: Maga-Orochi is the most powerful of the King Demon Beasts . While the monster bears very little resemblance to its namesake, its sealing at the hands of Zoffy and a psychic princess is implied to have inspired the legend. \|\|Its true final form, Maga-Tano Orochi (or Magata no Orochi depending on the translation)\|\|, bears more of a resemblance due to having multiple heads, and is by far the most powerful monster in the series as well as the Final Boss. - The Xiangliu or Xiangyao of Chinese mythology is basically a Chinese counterpart of Orochi, but differs from it by having nine heads rather than eight. According to the myth, Xiangliu was essentially a Walking Wasteland, devastating the ecology wherever it went and causing clean water to become pungent and filthy simply by breathing. It was ultimately slain by Yu the Great. A Living Statue of Xiangliu turns up as a minor obstacle in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb. - The King of Fighters: - The Orochi Saga, the Story Arc spanning from The King of Fighters '95 to KOF '97, has the literal Orochi as the Big Bad. (He's technically sexless but is referred to as a "he" in this entry due to plot developments and for convenience's sake.) In this series, he's a fanatical servant (and the offspring) of Gaia, who believes that Humans Are the Real Monsters and considers the very beings that Gaia made a threat. Similar to the myth, he is defeated by the Kusanagi, Yasakani, and Yata clans, who sealed him away. (A scant amount of official artwork and The King of Fighters: KYO actually depict Orochi as a woman during this period, implying he reincarnated into a female host back then.) Unfortunately his influence spread to the Yasakani — who were already envious of the Kusanagi — and after a time, they made a contract with him to gain power. This caused a civil war with their former allies, much to Orochi's glee. He's also got a cult of servants known as the Hakkesshu, who in the present are made up of a musical band (Chris, Yashiro, Shermie), a Sinister Minister (Goenitz), two sexy secretaries (Mature and Vice), a homicidal maniac (Ryuji Yamazaki), and the father (Gaidel) of a hot soldier girl (Leona) who was killed by the Sinister Minister because he decided to bow out on Orochi's plan, and his plan is to gather enough energy so he can be fully revived and destroy humanity (alongside a backup plan consisting on the Human Sacrifice of a Girl Next Door who happens to be the reincarnation/descendant of Princess Kushinada). He doesn't make an actual appearance until '97, where he possesses Chris to act as the Final Boss (an Anti-Climax Boss, given his predecessors). In the end, he is defeated by the Three Sacred Treasures (Chizuru, Kyo and Iori). In a last-ditch effort, he tries to turn Iori against Kyo and Chizuru by stirring up Iori's half-Orochi blood and turning him into Orochi Iori. This fails, as Orochi Iori ensnares Orochi long enough for Kyo to deliver the deathblow (under approval of the spirit of Iori's ancestors, who regret what they've done), thus letting Kushinada's current incarnation/descendant Yuki (who also happened to be Kyo's girlfriend) escape her destiny and giving Chizuru the chance to seal him away again and prevent The End of the World as We Know It. Orochi, on his death throes, decides to wait and observe humanity to see if they're truly deserving of his "judgment." - While the second KOF saga (The NESTS Chronicles) had — for better or worse — a plot that heavily distanced itself from the above mythos and instead focused on the technological exploits of the titular Nebulous Evil Organization, the next arc (The Tales of Ash, which started in 2003 and ended in XIII) sticks more closely to the original Orochi Saga in terms of mysticism. Not only is there a new Nebulous Evil Organization known as "Those From the Past" trying to undo the seal on Orochi \|\|(and they've partially succeeded as early as Act 1, thanks to their hold over Chizuru in 2003)\|\|, but the (unaffiliated and divisive) Villain Protagonist of the saga, Ash Crimson, goes around with the facade of a weak and unassuming fighter, only to pop up and steal the powers of Chizuru and Iori (as Orochi Iori, no less) at the end of 2003 and XI, leaving Kyo as the only remaining non-depowered descendant of the three clans that sealed Orochi. Of course, Ash has singled out Kyo as his final target. - In XIII, it turns out that \|\|Ash is a mix of Fake Defector, Well-Intentioned Extremist and Guile Hero whose actions have been one long Batman Gambit to counteract the ambitions of his time traveling identical ancestor Saiki, the leader of Those From the Past. In an unforeseen Heroic Sacrifice, Ash attempts to take Saiki's own powers, and when Saiki performs a Grand Theft Me on Ash (the infamous SNK Boss Evil Ash), Ash regains control and stays in the future, creating a Temporal Paradox: as Saiki is stuck in the present, Ash will be erased from history, with Saiki in tow. All to protect the Lady of War who was supposed to battle Those of the Past instead, Elisabeth Blanctorche, who doubled as Ash's Only Friend and Cool Big Sis. This causes a massive Cosmic Retcon, which reverts everything back to the way it was before 2003 and the story proceeded like normal, only with the exception that there's no Ash, and Those From The Past's involvement becomes so minor they cannot gather enough power to do the rest of their plots. End of story? Orochi's still sealed away. And Ash became a post-mortem hero for at least half the fandom.\|\| - Then it's revealed in XIV that \|\|Verse, the Final Boss, isn't quite a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere but tied to the aforementioned Temporal Paradox caused by Ash in the last game. And one of the many spirits residing inside this entity is none other than Orochi. Verse's defeat causes Orochi to escape into the world once more, only to be quickly sealed away by Chizuru\|\|. - Ōkami takes this trope even further by retelling the original legend, featuring the characters Susano (who deals the final blow to the monster) and Kushi (the woman who was to be sacrificed to it). It is a long, two-phase battle that involves force-feeding Orochi the legendary sake, then taking out its heads one by one, before Susano jumps in to deal the final blow. The player even receives their first sword/glaive as a prize from the battle, although it's not the Kusanagi blade. You get that from a different boss entirely. The sword you do get is a reborn version of Tsukuyomi, which is a sword in the game. Fitting that the same event would bring together Amaterasu, Susano, and Tsukuyomi. When the same battle reoccurs in the past, Nagi is even dressed up in Nami's sacrificial robes. Defeating him that time earns you the Thunder Edge, which seems to be based off of the Ame-no-Murakumo, the Kusanagi no Tsurugi's original name. - The party in G.O.D.: Heed the Call to Awaken encounters Yamata no Orochi at Izumo Shrine just as Ai is to be its sacrifice. A boss battle ensues, which is when Ai joins the party, and head by head the monster is killed. \|\|Shortly after, Ai's grandmother Gibo reveals that the aliens have the ability to materialize human fear and that the Yamata no Orochi and other monsters walking about are their doing.\|\| - Golden Sun: The Lost Age has Susa and Kushinada who fill similar roles. The party has to solve a puzzle involving mirror redirection before Susa's sake gambit can work, though. After the Orochi (here named Serpent, has only one head and looks like the standard Eastern dragon with wings on) dies, the party can return to where his body is, and retrieve the Ame-No-Murakumo, titled Cloudrender in the game. - Shin Megami Tensei. Orochi can usually become one of your Mons. Hilariously, in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (where the protagonist wears full-body-concealing armor), telling it you're a beautiful woman will cause Orochi to join instantly. - Warriors Orochi: A loose reinterpretation of Orochi as a demonic, humanoid Blood Knight with his own army of demons is the Big Bad of the game. - The very premise of Warriors Orochi is that Orochi himself essentially got bored and squished Japan's Sengoku Period and China's Three Kingdoms era together (represented by characters and areas from the Samurai Warriors and Dynasty Warriors series) in order to fight history's greatest warriors. Predictably, he's the final boss of every Story Mode but his own in the first two games and and is rather difficult to beat. Although it takes a fair amount to unlock Orochi in the first game, you're able to play as him right off the bat in the second. And in both he's still about as absurdly powerful when you're in command of the giant snake man with the funny hat as he is as a boss. - The third game has for its Big Bad the more familiar form of Orochi called Hydra (lit. "demon snake"/Youja in Japanese), which is stated to be the actual Orochi's power running so wild after his defeat in the previous games that the heroes have to employ time travel shenanigans against it, but such is its power that its mere existence created a space-time rift that's preventing time travellers from just going to a time before its birth and further assimilating France's Hundred Years War and Greece's Trojan War (respectively represented by characters and areas from Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War and Warriors: Legends of Troy) as well as the universes of Ninja Gaiden/ Dead or Alive, Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll, Soulcalibur and Arland of the Atelier multiverse in addition to the Sengoku and Three Kingdoms periods. The Ultimate expansion expanded Orochi's origin further: \|\|Instead of a demon out of nowhere, it turns out he used to a mythological Chinese Dragon, Yinglong, who rebelled against the Celestial Emperor because he saw the Emperor enslaving demons via a magic mirror and thinks that's terrible. Breaking the mirror to give the demons free will corrupted him into Orochi. Don't mind how doing such thing can change one's nationality.\|\| - Dragon Quest: - Dragon Quest III: The portion taking place in Zipangu/Jipang is a loose retelling of the Orochi myth, with your party in the place of Susanoo. - Dragon Quest XI has an even looser retelling play out in Hotto during the second act, with the chief differences being that the dragon is a furry one-headed creature, will eat any humans whether they're young maidens or not (the sacrificial victim the heroes themselves save is a middle aged mother), and \|\|the dragon is a Forced Transformation whose mother, the village's leader, is willing to feed other people to while she seeks a way to undo his curse\|\|. - Metal Saga: The primary sidequest in the Japanese village has you take the role of Susano-o in a loose retelling of the myth. This is strange, as it's an After the End game. - In Tales of Berseria, the fifth Empyrean is called Innominat — or the Nameless Empyrean — and is described in ancient text as an eight-headed dragon that eats Malevolence. In the game, it's revealed that seven of the heads are Therions that represent and feed a certain type of Malevolence, which Innominat must devour to eventually awaken himself as the eighth head. - In Gotcha Force, the green-haired main antagonist \|\|although if you win all the optional missions against her she does join your side\|\| of the game was named Orochi. None of the Borgs she uses has anything to do with the actual creature (granted, the closest the game has to it are Dragon borgs). However, she does sometimes make a hissing noise when she is losing. - Tengai Makyou: Orochimaru is depicted as a pretty blue haired bishounen and one of the hero characters, Also a Jiraiya Goketsu Monogatari reference, as his partners are Jiraiya (although spelled differently, as Ziria) and Tsunade. - In Bleach DS: Blade of Fate and its sequel Dark Souls, Yamata no Orochi is Head Captain Yamamoto's ultimate attack, consisting of sending a large snake-like pillar of fire straight upwards, which then comes back down as eight smaller streams. Subverting the trope, this character is actually a protagonist and ally. Furthermore, his basic special attacks are all numbered heads. Useable are heads 1 through 5, though sound test data reveals there were heads 6 through 8 planned. - Final Fantasy: Orochis, sometimes winged and sometimes not, appear in several games as stronger, green Palette Swaps of the hydras. The one in Final Fantasy II's Soul of Rebirth mode in Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls, as an optional boss, is a Palette Swap of Tiamat instead. - Mega Man Zero has the Guard Orotic, a Boss occupying a factory that La Résistance must take over. Two heads represent each of the three elements (fire, ice, lighting), while the last pair is non-elemental. - In Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom, the Orochi is actually a monster made of... bananas. - BlazBlue: - The Black Beast bears a heavy resemblance to Orochi in its appearance. It was created from the Murakumo Unit (ν-13), and defeated by the wielder of the Susano'o Unit (Hakumen). \|\|It was a failed attempt to create the Kusanagi Unit, and destroy the Master Unit Amaterasu.\|\| - Phase 0 reveals that \|\|Celica A. Mercury\|\| was engineered to be a sacrifice to the Black Beast to temporarily halt its rampage through the use of Kushinada's Lynchpin. Oddly enough, the one who rescued her from this fate is not the Susanoo figure. The original Bloodedge fought against the Black Beast to ensure that her sacrifice would not be necessary. - Hazama/Terumi \|\|who helped make the Black Beast\|\| also invokes Orochi imagery; one of his attacks involve creating a swarm of snake heads behind him and he has a few attacks that, with Japanese language settings, namedrop the serpent. To make things even odder \|\|he used to be in the Susano'o Unit, and is actually the real god Susanoo.\|\| - In Otogi: Myth of Demons, the Yamata no Orochi (or its equivalent) is the guardian of the tower that separates the afterlife and life. Raikoh must climb the tower while avoiding the creature, as it is almost impossible to kill without the Moonlight Sword. If one has the sword, though, they can kill the Orochi in about one hit, and the prize for doing so is the Orchid Malevolence, a sword that kills everything in one hit, but also makes Raikoh a One-Hit-Point Wonder. - Onmyōji (2016): Yamata-no-orochi appears as a Piñata Enemy of the mitama dungeons and \|\|the Greater-Scope Villain whom Yaobikuni serves.\|\| - Pokémon: Hydreigon is partially based on King Ghidorah, who is in turn based on Orochi. - In Len'en, there are siblings Adagumo no Yaorochi and Saragimaru who're youkai born from Yamata no Orochi's corpse. Yaorochi wants to restor the Kusanagi sword and provokes the incident. They are not evil whatsoever, it's just that they feel a connection with the sword because they were born from Orochi's arm. - In Asura's Wrath, the form \|\|Gohma Vlitra\|\| takes when \|\|it absorbs the Mantra stored within the Karma Fortress after Deus' defeat by Asura and Yasha\|\| is an eight-headed Orochi made of rock and lava, and is probably the biggest depiction of an Orochi ever, literally having his heads so big they cover the entire circumference of planet Earth. \|\|Also the center mass where the snakes originates from shifts to reveal a giant monstrous face\|\|. It makes the Yaiba version above seem tiny by comparison. - In The Secret World, the Orochi Group is the name of an Ambiguously Evil multinational megacorporation based in Tokyo. - Super Mario 3D World: King and Queen Hisstocrat. Their giant heads dressed in regal clothing emerge from the sands, and they can summon a maximum of seven smaller snakes each to help fight. Their smaller snakes are a different color than the Hisstocrats and you don't see them connect, but damaging the Hisstocrat causes all of their summoned snakes to take damage. - Senran Kagura: The Final Boss of the first game is called Orochi, where it is depicted as a female, humanoid snake construct with just five necks, with only one of its necks having a head. \|\|It is later explained that Orochi here is an yoma, and represents the grief of all of the Serpent Girls who have died.\|\| It is later revealed that the form Orochi took was an incomplete version of the true form, which turns out to look nothing like the creature of legend. It doesn't even look like a serpent in any way. - In Fire Emblem Fates, a recruitable character from the Hoshido kingdom is a spellcaster named Orochi. She doesn't seem to have lots of ties to Orochi itself save for the name and how she wears several hair decs, one of them being a huge golden comb. - In Smite since Susano is a playable deity, his lore obviously mentioned his feat of slaying Orochi (though it's never mentioned by its name, just 'the eight-headed serpent'). Likewise, in his winning animation, he's depicted of being attacked by an endless horde of giant serpent heads as a reference to Orochi... and he kills them over and over. - In Yo-Kai Watch, a yokai named Orochi (Venoct in English versions) is befriendable in the game's story. He doesn't share much of a resemblance to the giant eight-headed serpent, though his Soultimate is called Octo-Snake, referencing the yokai of legend. Yo-Kai Watch 2 introduces Slurpent (Yamaton in the original Japanese versions) who has only one head but also sports eight tongues as a reference to the original Orochi's eight heads. - Nioh: In a game with such a focus on yokai, it was only natural that Orochi would make an appearance, as a mutated, castle-sized Fusion Dance between Edward Kelley, his Guardian Spirit Uroboros and tons and tons of Amrita. The beast's eight heads spit globs of status-ailment causing element attacks, and while each ailment is its own flavor of annoying, it's very easy for them to add up to the disastrous Discord status. - Daily Life With Monster Girl Online, now defunct, had Kagachi, a Cute Monster Girl take on the legendary serpent. Her design is certainly unique: a bipedal, pretty girl in an elegant kimono with eight scaly tails, while her hair tapers off into seven live snake heads (and her human head makes eight). Despite her serpentine nature, orochi are considered a dragon subspecies, rather than lamia. In keeping with the legend, in both of her Care artworks, she's plastered on sake. - In For Honor, the Orochi is an assassin hero for the Samurai faction, specializing in fast, mobile attacks with the katana. The Orochi dragon itself is represented by several symbols that Samurai classes can wear on their armor, as well as helmet ornaments and mask effects. - Dark Souls has one, though it has seven rather than eight heads. - Fate/Grand Order - In the Nasuverse, Shuten-Douji is the Yamata-no-Orochi's (also known by the name of Ibuki Daimyojin) daughter, which is the source of both her Dragon and Divine Traits. She's powerful enough to be considered one of Japan's Three Great Calamities, but would much rather laze about and drink all day rather than actually do much destroying and has a very complicated relationship with Sakata Kintoki and rivalry with Minamoto-no-Raikou. Much like dear old dad, she died from getting her head chopped off after being tricked into getting blackout-drunk, though unlike him her severed head nearly managed to kill her enemies before it expired. Due to her connection with Orochi, she is capable of summoning a fascmile of him. \|\|She also has an Older Alter Ego called "Ibuki-Douji", which taps directly into her connection with Orochi to make her a monster worthy of the title of one of Japan's Three Great Calamities, but doing so warps her personality, which is one of the few things she's legitimately afraid of. This version of her wields the Kusanagi that was originally inside of her father's corpse, and is also able to summon an Orochi, though unlike any other Orochi in-game, including the ones summoned by Chiyome and even Shuten, this one is even bigger and has unique white scales, implying it's her calling on dear old dad himself.\|\| - Orochi appears as a boss-type enemy first in Shimousa, though mechanically it's a re-skin of the existing Hydra enemy with different skills, resembling a massive black-and-grey scaled many-headed serpent with red eyes. The Assassin of Paraíso \|\|Mochizuki Chiyome\|\| has the ability to summon Orochis at will with her Noble Phantasm due to her cursed blood as a result of one of her ancestors being cursed directly by Yamata-no-Orochi. This has left her with a complex, and for the enemy version of her in Shimousa it only gets worse when the Shuten-Douji on her side is ordered to excite her cursed blood into overdrive for a power boost, at the cost of her sanity. - In Miitopia, the Orochi is a blue-scaled serpentine dragon that carries a golden orb it uses to attack. It only shows up as an enemy in the Sky Scraper area, which is only accessible late in the game. It also has a counterpart named the Red Orochi (which has red scales and a blue orb) that can only be found in the postgame. - In Destiny Ninja 2, it turns out that \|\|when Ayame Kushinada purifies the polluted symbols with the Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven, it eats up her life force because her ancestor was a sacrifice to Orochi, and the sword was born from his body. The Orochi in this game is more of a good guy, and in one route he sacrifices himself to save Ayame and Yamato Island\|\|. - In Mutant Ninja Turtles Gaiden, \|\|the curse that caused the death of Splinter and devastated the turtles originated from the slaying of the Orochi and the creation of the swords Kusanagi and Tokuta, the latter being the cursed sword from the prologue\|\|. - In A Conspiracy of Serpents, it's revealed that Yamada is actually the legendary eight-headed dragon Yamata no Orochi, who caused mass destruction in Japan.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Orochi
Ornamental Weapon - TV Tropes "That thing on your back isn't ornamental, is it?" There are some characters who like to walk around with their weapons out in the open, presumably to intimidate other people or to have it ready right away in the case of a monster fight. However, upon close inspection, you might find that the weapon barely has any signs of being "broken in" — no scratches, no gunpowder... it still looks as sharp as the day the guy bought it. Some reasons for this may be that the weapon in question has a sentimental value to its holder, can only be used for certain situations, or may just be Too Awesome to Use. At times, it may make one wonder if they might just be better off leaving the damn thing at home. Subtrope of Useless Accessory. Compare Stat Sticks, where weapons aren't so much "physically" used as they're just there to add stats. May sometimes overlap with The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. Not to be confused with Bling-Bling-BANG!, where the weapon is covered in ornamentation but (usually) still sees actual use. Contrast Break Out the Museum Piece, where a seemingly obsolete or ornamental object (often a weapon) is still usable. ## Examples: - In Berserk, people usually think this of Guts' main weapon, a huge slab of iron even taller than he is, up until they see him use it. It's justified that they'd think so since in real life, there are many examples of oversized versions of standard zweihanders being made for purely ceremonial use. - In Blood: The Last Vampire, Saya steals a sword she had seen in a store window to use in a fight...only to watch the blade deform and twist on impact since it was ornamental and not functional. - Dragon Ball: Android 17 carries a pistol on his waist, which is odd considering his punches and energy blasts do far more damage than a pistol ever could. The only time he's seen using it is for kicks after he got shot at by an old man in the Bad Future. - Subverted with the Eto Gun in Et Cetera. It looks like a toy gun and could not be used to shoot normally, and Mingchao (initially) only keeps it to intimidate others. However, when added with a proper animal extract, the gun is considered one of the strongest weapons in the West. - A big shiny sword in The Familiar of Zero turned out to be ornamental and pretty useless. The rusted one, however... - Inuyasha: - Kouga carried a katana for ornamentation and used it only once in the whole story. - Naraku's dragon, Byakuya of the Dreams carries around a sword that doesn't get used \|\|until the final arc of the series, where it's revealed that it can absorb any demonic aura within the area and use its power.\|\| - Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny gives us Ornamental Mobile Suits, the ZGMF-1017 GINN Ceremonial Decoration Type, which could be combat capable if their weapons weren't a bolt-action rifle and a foam sword in a world where beam weapons exist and are ridiculously common. - One Piece: - Pekoms of the Big Mom Pirates carries a sword on his left hip, but he primarily fights with his fists and Devil Fruit, making it just a decoration. - Sentomaru of the Marines wields a massive axe but prefers to use sumo against weaker foes. - Meliodas of The Seven Deadly Sins carries a broken sword to deter customers from starting trouble in his bar by keeping it in a scabbard to make it look like a full sword. - In Slayers, one of the few things Naga wears is a large sword that seems to be purely for show. It gets stuck in the sheath the one time she tries to use it, and she tends to faint at the sight of blood (which shows up a lot around swords). - In Toriko, Starjun carries a sword with him, but he's never seen using it, until the Cooking Festival arc, revealing it to be a flaming special preparation kitchen knife. Lampshaded by Toriko himself. - Princess Millerna from the The Vision of Escaflowne movie carried a sword on her belt throughout the film, but she never, ever takes part in a single action scene, and never gets to draw it from its sheath, cementing her status as a Faux Action Girl. - In later seasons of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, Wolnie rarely hits anyone with her frying pan. She still carries it occasionally in later seasons but doesn't hit anyone. - Asterix: The titular hero has a Celtic sword, but fights exclusively with his fists. He does use it for Sword Fight twice, once for cutting cake, and once as a mountaineering tool, but he's never allowed to hurt anyone with it on the grounds that it would be too violent. - Fantastic Four: Doctor Doom wears a pistol on his waist that he only uses for opponents he considers unworthy of facing his powered armor and other abilities, which happens rarely enough nowadays that it might as well be ornamental. - Superman: The Fortress of Solitude has an armory full of alien super-weapons that Superman never touches. - The Transformers (Marvel): After Optimus Prime gets rebuilt as a Power Master he gains a pair of double-barreled shoulder cannons that he never uses. - The Kung Fu Panda 2 villain Shen is often shown carrying and posing with a wave-bladed guan dao but spends most of his fights throwing knives (and uses a flail and sword when he invades Gongmen City). When he finally uses his guan dao in the final battle, \|\|he cuts one too many ropes on his ship and gets crushed by the cannon that was being held up by it\|\|. - In the 30 Days of Night prequel Blood Trails, Pat is turned into a vampire and Jenny has to grab a wallhanger sword to fend him off. What follows is a gory affair where she needs eight tries to force the blade all the way through Pat's neck. - In Paul, an expensive replica sword is revealed to be useless when the blade snaps off upon drawing. - Zig-Zagged by Darth Sidious' lightsabers in Star Wars. He only really kept them for the sake of tradition as he believed that open combat was beneath him, and made them out of the most expensive and rare materials in the galaxy to mock Jedi humility. Before he used them to take out Savage Opress in Star Wars: The Clone Wars & Mace Windu's strike team in Revenge of the Sith they had been gathering dust in his office for 20 years, and he never used them again after becoming The Emperor. Vader borrowed one for a time before crafting his own and regarded them as antiques. - In Star Wars Legends lightsabers in general were once this, as their early designs required the use of large battery packs that made them Awesome, but Impractical. Ironically it was the Sith who refined them into a viable weapon around the time of their first Empire. - One of the bad guys in Swamp Thing wears ammunition belts over both shoulders. He never picks up a gun during the film. - In Yojimbo, the villain Unosuke wears a katana for show but does all his fighting with a revolver. - In The Bridge Kingdom Archives a married woman from Maridrina is supposed to wear two ornamental daggers, which her husband is supposed to use to protect her honor. Lara gets her set when she gets married as a part of peace treaty and they are really beautiful, their handles and scabbards are set with famous Maridrinian rubies. Subverted in that \|\|they are only a decoration, real weapons, small throwing knives, are cleverly hidden inside their handles\|\|. - The Hunger Games: Subverted with Katniss' bow. After all, just because it's pretty doesn't mean it can't be deadly. - The Big Bad in the Left Behind series of books carries one of these during the war of Armageddon. The sword is constructed to appear Too Awesome to Use, so it just gets waved around a lot. The books make it clear that when the Big Bad really needs to kill somebody, he uses a gun. - In Monstrous Regiment, Maledict carries a sword he doesn't know how to use. As a vampire, he doesn't need one, but people see the sword and don't attack him. - One of these almost gets Captain Lawrence killed in the second Temeraire book when he gets pulled away from a formal occasion to face combat still wearing his dress sword. It's still a live blade, but it's a lot flimsier than a service weapon and comes perilously close to breaking. Near the end of that same book, Temeraire gifts Laurence an antique Chinese dao adorned with images of dragons in gold and jewels to replace his old broken dress-sword, but this sword winds up being a subversion when Laurence swings it at a man's neck a book later, much to his reluctance, and it slices the dude's head off with almost no resistance. - Power Forged weapons in The Wheel of Time look like this because they have been enchanted to never break, rust, or need sharpening. One character mentions that over the thousands of years since his sword had been made his family has only had to replace the hilt. - The Big Bad of Season Five of Arrow, Prometheus, carries a bow and quiver on his back. When it comes to actual killing, however, he relies on his chokuto and shuriken. - In Game of Thrones, Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish is a minor noble who manages the books for the Seven Kingdoms and carries a dagger on his belt instead of a full-length sword. He is not expected to use it, and only once draws it to threaten Ned Stark. - Ricky "The Rocket" Roberts, who has appeared in the Florida branch of All Pro Wrestling, used brass knuckles as his belt buckle. - Dementia D'Rose carries around a rather large knife because it looks pretty. She'd rather fight barehanded, and if she needs a weapon, it will likely be a random object or her signature ball n'chain. - BattleTech: - Sun-Tsu Laio, ruler of the Capellan Confederation piloted a blinged out Emperor Battlemech that he never actually took into combat. Any time he took it out, it was only after the battlefield had been secured and no actual threats remained. The few times that it was deployed in real combat, one of his elite Death Commandos piloted it in his place while wearing a disguise so that people thought he was in it. - The Flashfire, a light mech designed for use in the Gladiator Games of Solaris 7, featured a cosmetic gun housing in its right arm that had no actual to make it look more impressive and heavily armed than it actually was. - The Magic: The Gathering card Garrison Sergeant has the following flavor text: "In the Legion, no flagpole is merely decorative, and every ceremonial sword bears an edge." The Boros Legion, the military forces of Ravnica, are Crazy-Prepared when it comes to combat, and so when they are marching in a parade their ceremonial weapons are anything but. - Many miniatures are sculpted with more weapons on them than they are actually designed to use in the game. Malifaux is a big offender here, with many figures wearing multiple revolvers but only having a few attacks to use in the game, none of which involve all, or sometimes any, of them. - Almost everyone in Warhammer 40,000 has one, such as Chaos sorcerer staves, Tau bonding knives... - In Pocket Bomberman, our hero is seen in garb reminiscent of a Roman soldier. He has the sword and everything! He is even seen unsheathing it and holding it up heroically to the sky! But can he use it on any one of the dozens of monsters that are out to maul him? No. - Champions Online allows the player to customize their costume including some weaponry such as daggers on the belt or a sword slung across the back. However, because these are costume items, they merely show up on the player avatar and don't get any particular use (not even if you have the same weapon as what you're carrying). - Crisis Core: - In the arcade beat-em-up D. D. Crew, one of your enemies is a military-type who carries a large machine gun. At no point does he ever fire it, preferring to kick you instead. - Ryu Hayabusa's sword in the Dead or Alive series. Same goes for Hayate's and Kasumi's swords. This was averted in the sixth numbered game. - Any equippable weapon in either Dragon Ball Xenoverse or its sequel falls into this category, as the player will either not use a weapon at all, or the weapon will materialize in their hands when needed, and vanish after use (for example, if the player is using either Shining Slash or Burning Slash, Trunks' sword techniques). - Android 17 also has his pistol, which is unused in the game. Since the player can equip #17s' pants that come with the sidearm (unless the players' top prevents it from appearing), it applies to them too. - In Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors, your partners carry weapons with them but don't actually use them, leaving you to do all of the heavy lifting while they provide assistance with magic. At least you never have to update their gear yourself, they get better stuff as they level up. - Minfilia in Final Fantasy XIV carries a Mythril Dagger that is imbued with materia for enhanced power. However, due to her being more of a political figure than an actual fighter, she never uses the knife at all and she also doesn't use it in the times where she is captured. - In Fire Emblem: Awakening, some classes are guilty of this. Assassins have extra daggers strapped to their wrists and Swordmasters are carrying two extra sheaths, yet they will never use these extra weapons even if all the weapons in their inventory break. - In Freedom Fighters (2003), Christopher Stone gets a knife on his left shoulder, but his only CQC weapon is his wrench. - In his Guest Fighter appearance in Friday Night Funkin', Pico keeps his signature uzi in his hand at all times. But since this is a Rhythm Game, he doesn't actually use it at any point, at least until Week 7. - Marcus Fenix of Gears of War fame carried a knife on his right boot but is never used. \|\|He finally uses it in the third game to kill Queen Myrrah\|\|. - Assassins from Guild Wars are extremely guilty of this. Many armor sets (including the no-armor-equipped underwear, for women) feature several daggers strapped all over their body that are only textured on, not even in model. The assassin hero Anton is even worse: he prominently wears three katanas on his back that he never uses. - Halo: - Halo 3 has an unlockable katana that can be worn on the back. It naturally cannot be used in-game. Also, the CQB armor has a knife on the front of the chest which cannot be used. - Averted in Halo: Reach, where the knife on a character's shoulder can be used for assassinations. However, it's played straight with the Security armor, which has a large kukri on its right shoulder that forever remains unused. - Heroes of the Storm: Anduin wields his father's sword, Shalamayne, but leaves it on his back 99% of the time. Even when he's attacking an enemy in melee, he still shoots holy energy at them. The only animations where he even holds it involve him essentially waving it around like a Magic Wand. This does make some sense though — he's a Priest and not a Warrior, and was pretty bad at using the sword in World of Warcraft. - The Demon Blade sub-class from Kritika carries a broadsword on his back, but actually fights using katana. - No matter what he has equipped, Dagran in The Last Story always carries a small sword at his belt. This is later explained as being the first sword Dagran ever bought, and it is, in fact, meant to be an ornamental weapon—Dagran just wears it for sentimental reasons. - The Legend of Zelda - Aeolus from Mega Man ZX Advent carries a sword with him all the time, but he never uses it in combat. - Although, from the transformation sequence, it appears that the sword is used as the base for his transformed model's swords, hence a reason to carry it around with him. - In Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Raiden has a knife sheathed alongside his HF Blade. You get to stare at it plenty with the game's third-person camera angle but it is never drawn; even when his sword is snapped in two, Raiden attempts to use the remaining stump instead of the knife. - In three of the Mortal Kombat games ( Deadly Alliance, Deception and Armageddon) Raiden wears a saya (katana scabbard) on his alternate costumes, but he never actually uses a sword. - Occasionally happens in Overwatch. Soldier: 76 has a pistol on his belt that he never uses, and Roadhog what appears to be a sawn-off shotgun ( not his Scrap Gun) slung across his back. Genji has a sword that is decorative for 99% of the time, except when he uses his ultimate ability, which begs the question: wouldn't a sword be more effective than shurikens, even without the powered-up dragon that accompanies it in his ultimate? - Ana and Widowmaker likewise have spikes on their arm to stabilize their weapons while sniping, although they never get used in-game (because you can't rest your arm on anything to stabilize). - In Persona 4: Arena, Akihiko has a knife strapped to his hip that he never uses. The shoulder holster is probably holding his Evoker, which isn't really a weapon. - Jack Russell of Radiata Stories is seen carrying around his father's giant sword, the Arbitrator, as a keepsake since he himself can't use it. Unless Jack gets promoted in the Fairy Path, he will never get to use it. - In the first Samurai Warriors game, Shingen Takeda has a katana sheathed on his belt, which he never uses. Looking closely at it reveals that it's actually chained to the scabbard. This was removed from subsequent costumes. In the second and third games, Mitsunari Ishida keeps an unused dagger sheathed hanging out the front of his coat. - Many weapons in Second Life don't actually do anything unless they are specifically scripted. While scripted weapons are available, unless you are in a roleplay or combat sim most swords, guns, hammers et cetera are only for decoration. - In the Soul Series, customizable characters will sometimes get some. In 4, there is a pirate's belt that has a pistol on it, as well as gloves that have a claw on it. The only fighting is done with weapons. - Adray from Star Ocean: Till the End of Time equips and prominently carries around a katana, but most of his attacks are a combination of magic and punches and he never takes it out of its sheath. - Dios, the commander of the Harmonian army in Suikoden III is challenged to a duel at one point, and rather sheepishly admits that his sword is ornamental. - Super Smash Bros.: - Ganondorf's sword, which is only used for a victory pose in Melee and a taunt in Brawl, and is otherwise kept in Hammerspace. Finally used in Smash 4: One of his alternative special attacks is conjuring the sword and stabbing with it, instead of his insanely powerful Warlock Punch. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate also allows him to use his sword for his smash attacks. - Captain Falcon and Snake have guns on their person if you look closely (the former has had his since the N64 original, while the latter has had his since Brawl), but naturally they don't get any use either. Sheik also carries a short sword or long dagger on her person but it likewise isn't used. - Tales Series: - Tales of Destiny: - Philia Felice's Swordian, Clemente, is a BFS, that, despite his size, is blunt (Philia even hugs the blade in one artwork) and very light, making him almost useless as an actual sword. Philia uses him mostly to get access to magic. - Mary Argent always has a shortsword on her, that she keeps as a memento. In fact, her main weapon type is axes, and in the remake, she can't even use any swords. - In Tales of Xillia, Alvin eventually takes a second gun that was a family heirloom but never uses it. Averted in the sequel, where he finally gets to use it in one of his arcane artes. Aside from that, there are various decorations that take the form of weapons to be placed on your characters, which of course cannot be used. - Rokurou in Tales of Berseria is extremely attached to his greatsword Stormhowl, despite using a pair of daggers in combat instead and deflecting whenever Velvet tries to ask why he doesn't use the bigger weapon. \|\|It's actually broken inside the sheath with only a few inches of blade attached to the handle. He carries it for sentimental/motivational reasons. He eventually does get an intact Stormquell that he pulls out for his final Break Soul and level 3 Mystic Arte.\|\| - In Team Fortress 2, Pyro's bandolier has napalm grenades and the Soldier's belt has frag grenades. The former are always useless and the latter are only used in the Soldier's Suicide Attack taunt. Grenades were prominent in Team Fortress Classic but were Dummied Out in TF2. - In Tekken 6, there is a character customization feature that lets you equip your characters with sheathed weapons, only for looks or stats in campaign mode. Occasionally subverted, as there are a few weapons that do allow a character to make an extra attack if they've got the weapon equipped, but the game doesn't tell which they are or how to perform the bonus moves. - Most Fighting Games that focus strictly on hand-to-hand combat do this, usually when there's ninjas. - Speaking of which, ninja Kagemaru in Virtua Fighter can have a sword. Drunken Master Shun Di can have a hermit staff as well. - Strobe from Demon Fist has that huge sword on his back, but fistfights his enemies. Apparently he swore an oath or something not to use it. - NJ from Electric Wonderland always carries a katana despite having no formal training on how to fight with it. - SCP Foundation: SCP-572 is a replica sword in a fantasy style, which, when held, produces a major mind-control effect, whereupon people will become convinced of its superior balance and sharpness, of which it really has neither, being purely a decorative piece. It also compels them to perform insane stunts with it (all while convincing them they can), such as deflecting bullets with the blade, taking on trained swordsmen with real swords, and cutting moving cars in half. Due to the prevalence of unnecessary blades facing in odd directions, the slightest swing will result in injury to the user. Fortunately, upon removing the sword from the holder with tongs, the psychological effects can be instantly redacted by a smack on the head. - Extreme Dinosaurs: Spike and Bullzeye have blasters on their arms and T-Bone has shoulder-mounted cannons. These weapons have no function other than decoration. - G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero: Roughly half the members of G.I. Joe are equipped with some kind of combat webbing or utility belt laden with grenades, sidearms, knives, or other equipment. Out of the entire series, they have actually been used maybe twice. - Older-model rifles that have been replaced as general-issue might be retained for ceremonial use by certain units. - The USMC Silent Drill Platoon carries the WWII-vintage M1 Garand. Three reasons why: tradition, it looks awesome, and it is far more well-balanced than a modern rifle (and thus better for twirling around without accidentally smacking somebody in the face). - The US Army's Tomb Sentinels at Arlington National Cemetery's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier wield M14 rifles, conspicuously missing the magazine—though the Sentinels will often have a concealed pistol locked and loaded. - The Simonov SKS saw only brief frontline service as the Soviet Union's standard rifle before it was supplanted by the AK, but remains a common sight at Russian parades and memorials. - The Lee-Enfield Mk 3/4 bolt action rifle that was the British Army's mainstay for nearly seventy years is retained by some units for neither combat nor ceremonials. Long obsolete for front-line use, this rifle is used as extra weight for recruit soldiers and others detailed to take on assault courses in full kit: simply because the issue front-line rifle is too delicate (and expensive) to withstand continual bashing, battering, immersion in mud and water and frequently being dropped by ham-fisted recruits. Rather an old heavy weapon designed to be exceedingly forgiving to rough treatment, and which will never be fired in action again, takes all the impacts of hard dirty training — and it also weighs heavier than the SA-80. - Swords have been this for a long time and in certain situations (like a formal officers party, perhaps) to this day. - In the 18th century, a well-dressed gentleman was almost required to carry a smallsword on his hip, though carrying a walking stick was an acceptable alternative. - US Marines in full dress uniform carry swords, in respect to the sense of tradition that pervades the entire Corps. These are only for the most formal of formal occasions, however: a Marine in full dress for a party likely won't be carrying the sword. Marines have to buy their swords out of their paycheck, though at a heavy discount. Apparently they are functional though, and many jokes (like this one from Terminal Lance) have been made about actually carrying one into combat. - US Navy officers still sometimes wear swords with their Full Dress Whites and Blues, that is, with medals. Like the Marines, they have to buy them out-of-pocket, although some are handed down to a junior officer from a senior officer. If an occasion calls for commissioned officers to wear swords, Chief Petty Officers will wear cutlasses. Thankfully, they are only required for officers above a certain grade, and training units, like the Naval Academy or Officer Candidate School, will have a number that can be used by the students. - Royal regalia/crown jewels frequently include a sword. This sword is almost always heavily decorated and is rarely used as an actual weapon of war (except perhaps as a bludgeon, since they are almost invariably very heavy). The British Crown Jewels feature not one, not two, but six swords, of which none are likely particularly sharp (none are less than 200 years old, and most date from the 17th century). - Ceremonial maces are a common one in government and academia. The elaborate decoration at the "top" of the mace is actually a descendant of the decorative "button" occasionally included at the bottom of historical maces intended for fighting. Today, they are most commonly found resting in the debating chambers of legislatures, where they symbolize the body's right to assemble and make law for the State; while they are heavy enough to cause mayhem if actually used as weapons, they are generally only ever picked up and swung threateningly (either by the sergeant-at-arms or equivalent, to remind a particularly unruly member that they could be thrown out bodily for being disruptive, or by an unruly member to show that they are particularly passionate about the issue at hand). - The Swiss Guard and their polearms. Yes, they are sharp, and yes, the guy in the ridiculous-looking Renaissance costume with the spear does have a modern automatic weapon tucked into those balloon pants. - In the Ottoman Empire it was expected that a noble be allowed to keep his personal sidearm at all times, even at formal parties. This got a bit dicey when personal weapons shifted from swords to pistols. In the end, it was compromised with highly ornamental pistols, that usually couldn't shoot (although they were heavy enough to be used as a blackjack and many had a blade under the barrel). - Many weapons in the Arms and Armor gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or any other art museum that displays weaponry, were probably ornamental weapons (and some are known to have been ornamental weapons, like an Ottoman sultan's investiture sword). Swords that the average person carried into battle rarely survived to be museum-quality art. - Several American Civil War generals never drew their swords, not even to command their men. One is said to have had his sword rust in the scabbard, while another didn't even bother taking one with him, instead strapping an umbrella to his waist. - Souvenir and decoration swords fall under this by definition. Weapon enthusiasts call these blades SLOs ("Sword-Like Objects"). They're vaguely sword-shaped, are ornamental, and certainly look flashy. But looking cool is all they're good for since they're too weakly built to actually use in combat. SLOs, more often than not, are horribly balanced, made from inferior materials (such as stainless steel, which is prone to shatter when used on anything longer than a kitchen knife and can't keep its edge for a long time), and either over-tempered to be too stiff or not tempered at all. One notorious "feature" common to SLOs is a thin welded-on tang attaching the blade to the handle. A quality sword suited for combat should have a tang that's integral to the blade, and preferably a full tang that extends down the full length of the handle. As a result, this small tang (derisively known as a "rat-tail tang") is very prone to snap off if the blade hits anything. Some SLOs have tangs built so badly that they can break just from swinging it through the air. Using a blade with such construction for anything other than display can be outright dangerous to the person holding it. They are purely wall-hangers and nothing else; anyone who attempts to use an SLO like a real sword would have more luck injuring their opponent if they were using a butter knife. - One of the five major tenets of Sikhism is that adherents must carry a dagger — as this has naturally presented problems as times change, workarounds such as this, daggers that are locked into the sheaths, and even images of daggers have been developed.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrnamentalWeapon
Orphaned Etymology - TV Tropes fantasy characters: "Geez" me: "who the fuck spread christianity there" The inverse of Hold Your Hippogriffs and Oh, My Gods!, it's when someone uses an expression or terminology that breaks from the established setting, time period or world building, due to Speculative Fiction history being at odds with the origin of the etymology itself, making it an instance of Inexplicable Cultural Ties. "Jeez" or variants are the most commonly seen words which invoke this trope. Another form of this trope happens in Historical Fiction and the like, with words and phrases that aren't supposed to have come into use yet. This is most often when a Period Piece uses words which are Newer Than They Think, when people in the year 700 BC refer to the present time as "700 BC" or a fantasy setting using a sports term like "curveball." When played straight, this is often an aspect of the Translation Convention, in that the phrase is uttered for the viewer's benefit, rather than the characters'. Ways to defy this trope include Hold Your Hippogriffs, Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp", Oh, My Gods!, or You Mean "Xmas". In actual translations this may be the result of a Woolseyism, as cultural references may not transfer properly. Depending on how deeply and pedantically you're willing to go, this is pretty much unavoidable whenever you're using modern-human language in a time or setting that isn't modern Earth — every word is ultimately rooted in real-life etymology. Some examples are much more obvious than others, but making a precise distinction between terms too rooted in real history and culture to include in a fictional world and ones generic enough to allow is both difficult and highly subjective. The only way to completely avoid this conundrum is to write your story entirely in a Conlang — but that's obviously a little less than practical. This is sometimes justified by Translation Convention, especially when Direct Line to the Author applies, and by explaining that the odder euphemisms actually represent something more locally appropriate in-universe, which is translated into an equivalent saying to represent the spirit of what was said. In the same vein, any use of given names on the Bob side of the Aerith and Bob scale inevitably runs into orphaned etymologies when used in a fantasy setting. This is because they only became common in the first place due to specific real-world cultural phenomena on Earth, which might not be replicable in the fantasy setting. For example, many common names in the western world originated in or were spread by Christianity; leave out Christianity from your setting, and all these names end up orphaned. In written works, this trope only applies to characters' dialogue, or when the work is written as a character reflecting on the events. As the author is from Earth, they can use the words the characters cannot. Another variant of this trope is used for humor, such as yelling out "Jesus Christ!" in front of the real Jesus, who will usually assume that he is being addressed. Denial of Animality can overlap when an animal calls itself a "man", "woman", or "human". ## Examples: - Asterix has a few of these, being set in 50 B.C. and Anachronism Stew being one of its defining features. Virtually all puns are based on words that were non-existent at the time. - A Dub-Induced Plot Hole occurs in the Spanish version of a comic book: A character sneezes, and Asterix says "Bless you!" — which in this context is translated to Spanish as "¡Jesús!" This raised the question for Spanish readers of how could Asterix say that in the year 50 B.C. - For that matter, Geriatrix is always referring to the battle of Gergovia as "Like in '52!" (from a common French expression, "like in '40!"). That is, 52 B.C. There is even one instance in which a character refers to the current year being 50 B.C., meaning Gergovia was only two years ago. - In Asterix Conquers America, Getafix believes that the land he has arrived in is India. He then inexplicably thinks that the locals would prefer to be called Native Americans, even though the colonisation of the Americas and Amerigo Vespucci's birth didn't happen until over a thousand years later. - In a short story featured in Asterix and Obelix's Birthday: The Golden Book, Obelix is learning how to read with an alphabet book, which uses modern French words to teach letters. Obviously, this could not have happened at the time. The English edition takes this further by using "yak" for the letter Y , even though yaks live in the Himalayas and were not known in ancient Gaul. - Asterix and the Actress used the expression "drunk as a skunk". Though this is rhyming slang as opposed to an actual comparison, skunks are native to the Americas. - The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman) features artificial life forms called the Alephs, who were created millions of years ago by the first sentient species in the universe. It isn't explained how they could be named after the first letter of Earth's Semitic languages, which didn't exist when the Alephs first came around. - Played for laughs in the The Moomins comic strip: in one storyline, the Moomin family travel back in time to Ancient Egypt. When one of them asks what year it is, an Egyptian replies, "4000 BC." - Silex and the City not only has characters using dates in thousands of years B.C., but such Lampshade Hanging as a director of X-rated movies remarking that the letter X hasn't even been invented yet. - In Sonic the Comic, Sonic exclaims "Hallelujah" in one issue. Mobius is an alien planet with no humans and no Hebrew language (it's a transliteration of "הַלְלוּ יָהּ" or "hal'lu Yah", meaning "praise God"). - B.C.: A common gag —modern names for things can just pop up out of nowhere. One comic had a caveman accidentally straighten his hair with a fish skeleton and exclaim that he's "invented the comb." - Apprentice and Pregnant features cats saying "oh my god". Warriors characters are atheistic ancestor worshipers without even a concept of gods. They also use "dumbass", despite no sign that anyone knows what a donkey is, and use "hell" despite most cats not knowing evildoers get a separate afterlife and those who do calling it the Dark Forest or the Place of No Stars. - Among the strongest liberations Dragon Ball Z Abridged uses to deviate from its canon counterpart is referential humor on real-world topics that couldn't possibly exist in the Constructed World that is Dragon Ball, all with varying degrees of justification. The actual Vegeta shouldn't know who or what Moe Howard even is, but the Abridged Vegeta has access to The Three Stooges on Space-Hulu, so he gets to make a joke about Gohan's appearance. - Fallout: Equestria: A recursive example. Fluttershy's pet bunny was named Angel, but it's never explained where that name came from. There is no mention of any angels in culture or mythology. A small tribe that lives under a giant picture of Angel (the building used to be an animal sanctuary) starts calling themselves "angels," and everyone who hears this immediately makes the connection to Fluttershy's pet. - In Let Me Hear, Ruby mentions that Weiss' weapon has a German name. There's no Germany on Remnant. - In Poké Wars: The Files of Dr. Kaminko, amperes and volts are used as units of measurement. However, there is no Alessandro Volta or André-Marie Ampère in the setting. - Warriors Rewrite: The phrase "scotch free" is used, despite the characters being feral forest cats. - Happy Feet and its sequel Happy Feet Two are full of these. Both films are musicals that use many pre-existing songs rather than original songs specifically made to fit the film, so they don't always fit well. A good example is the scene in Happy Feet Two when the elephant seals come to the rescue. They sing "Hell Bent for Leather". There are no cows in Antarctica, and elephant seals obviously don't wear clothes anyway, so they shouldn't know what leather is. The use of the word "Hell" also fits this trope because it is unlikely any of these characters have been exposed to Christianity, or any other human religions. - The Land Before Time: - In The Land Before Time IV: Journey Through the Mists, during the Quarreling Song "Who Needs You?", July is mentioned, millions of years before the Roman calendar was invented. - In the second film, one of the antagonists calls himself a Struthiomimus at one point. While he is in fact a Struthiomimus, he logically shouldn't even know what that word is as he was born (and likely died) long before his own species was named. The word Struthiomimus itself means "ostrich mimic," so it is rather strange that he's mimicking an animal that won't exist for several million years. Made even weirder by the fact that the series usually uses "Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp"". - The characters call themselves "dinosaurs", even though the series usually avoids using scientific names. - Ducky's name, depending on whether it is referring to the waterfowl or not. There are other meanings of the word, but Ducky is known for being drawn to water and being a "duckbill", so the name was most likely intended to refer to the bird that wouldn't exist until millions of years later. - The Lion King: Scar uses a few turns of phrase that should make no sense coming from an animal in the African savanna, such as "shallow end of the gene pool" and "the lights are not on upstairs". The hyenas similarly crack jokes involving things they would have no way of knowing about, such as making a pun about a "cub sandwich" when about to try to eat Simba and Nala. - The Lion King II: Simba's Pride: In her Villain Song, Zira uses the expressions "drums of war" and "our flags will fly", even though she has no knowledge of such human-made objects. - The Little Mermaid (1989): In the song "Daughters of Triton", it is claimed that Ariel's "voice is like a bell", even though mermaids, living underwater and unfamiliar with human civilization, would not know what bells sound like. - At the end of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, upon returning to Equestria from the human world, Twilight Sparkle tells Princess Celestia that she left Sunset Shimmer "in good hands", prompting Rainbow Dash to ask what "hands" are, even though Rainbow herself had used the phrase "On the other hand..." in "The Return of Harmony, Part 2". - In My Little Pony: The Movie the ponified version of The Go-Go's' "We Got The Beat" sung by Rachel Platten during the intro still mentions the Watusi dance, which is named after the Tutsi tribe of the African Great Lakes region. - In The Prince of Egypt, Rameses' Freudian Excuse stems from his father Seti drilling into him the fact that "it takes only one weak link to tear down the chain that is this mighty dynasty", talking about a kind of metallic chain that wont be invented for 1000 years after Ramses and using a saying that won't be invented for another 3000. - In the animated The Return of the King, Samwise's response to Gollum's final attack is a very animated "Gooood help us!" (the setting has an equivalent to God, Eru Ilúvatar, but he received direct worship very rarely). - Flash Gordon: - The movie has the War Rocket Ajax as part of Ming's fleet. Ajax was a famous Greek hero, and Ming has never heard of Earth before the start of the movie. - Ming himself is an alien emperor sharing his name with a famous Chinese imperial dynasty. It's a simple enough name to plausibly be a coincidence if not for the transparent (and a bit racist) resemblance. - Played for laughs (like everything else) in Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I; Comicus says "Jesus" in exasperation during The Last Supper, causing Jesus to answer, "Yes?" assuming that Comicus was addressing him. - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers has a few minor examples: - Soldiers are ordered to loose arrows with the command "Fire!", despite the pre-firearms setting. Note this line is spoken in Elvish, and the error is only in the subtitles—a more accurate translation is "Loose!" (oddly enough the first movie gets this right). - While debating on whether or not to eat Merry and Pippin, the Orc party start killing some divergent numbers, which incites the remark "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" This raised discussion amongst fans about Orc restaurants. Men and Hobbits have inns, which have menus, but the Orcs probably don't. They would however have mess tents for their army and it's possible that the day's food would be declared in advance. - In The Muppet Christmas Carol, "teddy bears" are mentioned. The "teddy" in "teddy bear" refers to Theodore Roosevelt, who wasn't yet born when the film takes place. - In Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, the Sheriff of Nottingham refers to the Celts as "hired thugs." This is taking place two centuries before the Thuggee cult in India even existed. - Star Wars: - Han Solo's ship is called the Millennium Falcon, even though they really shouldn't know what a "falcon" is. Interestingly though, various Earth animals sometimes show up in the canon, so perhaps the ship is genuinely named after what we Earthlings know as a falcon. - Han's "I'll see you in Hell" from The Empire Strikes Back often raises the question "Why does he know that concept?", but the Star Wars setting has afterlife beliefs, and lots of cultures have a conception of the Land of the Dead that is most conveniently put into English as "Hell". note : Hell comes from the Germanic goddess of the dead as well as the realm that she ruled over. Use in a Christian context comes from translating the word "Hades" in the New Testament. - Likewise, The Phantom Menace uses the word "boycott", which comes straight from the shunning campaign against landowner Charles Boycott in 19th-century Ireland. This trope, or Translation Convention? You decide. After all, people have translated the Roman custom of secessio plebis, where the lower class would quit working and leave, shutting down the city to protest mistreatment, as "plebeian boycott". - The same film also subverts this when Anakin asks Padmé if she is an angel. Although the religious origins of that word do not exist in the Star Wars universe, Anakin clarifies that angels are creatures from the moons of the planet Iego renowned throughout the galaxy for their beauty. - In The Force Awakens, Han uses the phrase "mumbo jumbo" when describing his earlier doubts about the Force. The phrase is likely an Anglicized derivative of a word for a ceremonial dancer in the religious ceremonies of the Mandinka people of Africa. - In Lone Wolf Book 4, a demonic enemy is briefly described as "satanic", even though Magnamund is a world unrelated to Earth and Christian tropes. The term is never used again. - It's mentioned in Bravelands that baboons call certain wind storms "dust devils". There's no sign that any of the animals have any concept of devils. - It's not clear whether A Brother's Price takes place in a fictional world, or an alternate/future timeline of our world. If the former, then it's unclear why they have cowboy hats called "Stetsons"; in our world they're named after the man who designed several of the hat styles we associate with cowboys. It could be that this fictional world also had a person named Stetson who invented similar hats, but if so we never find out. - It's one thing for Turkish delight to exist in The Chronicles of Narnia universe, but why would the inhabitants of Narnia call it that when they would never have heard of Turkey? - Brandon Sanderson's The Cosmere mostly averts this: - Mistborn's planet Scadrial has no moon, so no one ever makes any references to "mooning" over someone or anything of the like. (Except once, when a character is referring to a friend's romance, in what by Word of God is a mistake). - The Stormlight Archive: - The planet Roshar has all the soil scoured from the majority of the continent by massive high storms, so no one talks about soil, mud, or even dirt. Highstorms do carry a thick, sludgy substance that gathers on buildings and slowly hardens into stone (implied to be eroded rock and stone carried by the storms). On any other world, it would just be referred to as mud, but here they call it crem because they don't have a word for mud. - Lampshaded with the axehounds, dog-sized lobster-things used as pets and hunting companions. A Dimensional Traveler worldhopper points out that while the people of Roshar are well aware of what an axe is, they don't have any actual hounds, so what do they think the name means? - A subtle aversion is in the Palanaeum, the planet's greatest and most famous library. While the real-world "Athenaeum" was named after Athena the Greek goddess of wisdom, the Palanaeum is named after the Rosharan Herald Pailiah, who is associated with the Divine Attributes of "Learned" and "Giving" in the Vorin faith. \|\|She also visits the Palanaeum incognito in the present day.\|\| - Horneater "lager", unlike the real-world beer, is so much more potent than the distilled Alethi "wines" that many Alethi bars refuse to stock it because it dissolves their cups. - Parodied in Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys, where one of the entries in Alexander the Great's diary reads: 324 B.C., Jan. 6 — Note: Find out what "B.C." stands for. - Applying Fridge Logic to the setting of Dinotopia can result in several cases of this. The original books by James Gurney took place in the 1860s, when very few dinosaurs were known to science. However, the characters routinely mention the names of species that were discovered much later, such as Tyrannosaurus, Deinonychus, and Quetzalcoatlus. The last one in particular is especially notable for being named after an Aztec god, despite the inhabitants of Dinotopia knowing nothing about the Aztecs! - Discworld: - One of the earlier books references gypsies, which is kind of a problem, since there's no Egypt in the universe to derive that name—the equivalent is called Djelibeybi. So, if there are Roma on the Disc, they should probably be nicknamed Jelibeybs or something like that. - PTerry even noticed this, and explained that 'Djelibeybs', which they should be called, wouldn't be understood by the readers, so he had to use a conventional English word instead. (Also, the book that introduced Djelibeybi was written after this.) - Fanon (well, one discussion on afp) has it that Discworld gypsies are descended from itinerant plaster-of-Pseudopolis sellers, hence the name is derived from "gypsum." - In Witches Abroad, there's a reference to a christening, and a woman named Christine in Monstrous Regiment. In Carpe Jugulum and Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, this has been replaced with Naming Ceremony. Then again, 'Christ' is Greek for "anointed", so Jesus doesn't necessarily need to come into it. - Parodied in the Assassins' Guild Diary which uses the orphaned word "byzantine" ... in explaining that the politics of the Komplezian Empire were the origins of the modern Morporkian word "complex". - In the introduction to The Discworld Companion, Pratchett says that a fantasy author may start out trying to avoid references to things like "Toledo steel", but sooner or later will just look up from their keyboard, mutter "what the hell" and give up. - Jingo has Vimes mention a Pavlovian response. A footnote explains that, on the Discworld, this phenomenon was so named after a scientist proved that dogs could be trained to salivate at the thought of meringue. (This is itself an Orphaned Etymology, as the food was named for a person who also didn't exist on Discworld!). The same book also has Vetinari mention that Morporkian is a lingua franca on the continent. - One of the Wizards books has a Ming vase. So called because, if you tap it, it goes Ming! - The French translation of Guards! Guards! has this problem with Carrot's "Dwarfish war yodel", because the French word for yodel is Tyrolienne, referencing a place that doesn't exist on the Discworld. - The yudasgoat in Feet of Clay. Maybe there was coincidentally some guy named Yudas on the Disc who was just a real untrustworthy slimeball. - Despite having an eight-day week, the Disc has the word "fortnight", because "sixtnight" just looks awkward. - A jarringly-obvious example which Pterry really should have picked up on was in Going Postal when Moist von Lipwig commented "Wow, El Dorado or what?" while first examining himself and his new golden suit in the mirror. - In our world, the word "atlas" comes from the Titan who holds up the sky in Classical Mythology. Who or what The Compleat Discworld Atlas is named after is unknown. - Discworlders refer to "fizzy wine" in several books, presumably because there is no "Champagne region" in Quirm. Then Unseen Academicals reveals that "fizzy wine" is the cheap stuff, for people who don't want to spend money on actual champagne. - Ankh-Morpork has a thriving industry of kosher butchery that is brought up multiple times in the Watch books alone. Given the non-existence of Judaism on the Disc, it's not clear who these butchers are supplying or where the term "kosher" even comes from in the absence of Jewish dietary law; the only people who actually seem to patronise these butchers are vampires. - Several books, especially in the Night Watch series, make mention of an ancient Morporkian general Tacticus (a reference to the real Roman historian Tacitus). His incredibly successful military career is said to be the origin of the word "tactics". - In Jingo, "Morporkified" curry is defined by containing swedes. This is the British English note : Technically English English, in Scots they're called yellow turnips word for rutabagas, and is, as it sounds, derived from Sweden. - In the Dragonriders of Pern series, Pernese still say "jays" and "by all that's holy" despite having Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions. Mildly justified in that they might just be holdover expressions from the original Terran colonists. - In The Elenium, Sir Bevier's weapon of choice is consistently called a Lochaber axe, despite the Scottish town of Lochaber being unknown to the Elenians. - In The First Law novel Red Country, one character makes a joke/pun on the heroine's name when she introduces herself as Shy, which shouldn't really work since the characters are supposed to be speaking some kind of fictional Common Tongue. Also, while not confirmed, given that another female character in the series is named Shylo, Shy may actually be a nickname for that. Also, at least one character has paraphrased William Shakespeare quotes, although it's plausible that these come from some in-universe equivalent author. - Discussed in The Flight Engineer when the protagonists use the phrase "cut us some slack" through Translator Microbes in reference to their unfamiliarity with Fibian social niceties. The Fibians are mightily confused by this expression, wondering how one "cuts looseness". The human characters don't know either and explain it as an idiom that has long since outlived its source. - Also by K.J. Parker, The Folding Knife has a scene where a character jokes that some obnoxious people should be lined up against the wall and shot. Problem is, there are no guns in the setting, and thus no firing squads that would give rise to that phrase. Possibly they use bows. - In His Dark Materials, Lyra refers to uranium mines, but a later chapter refers to "the other five planets", indicating that Uranus hasn't been discovered in her world. In our world, uranium was named after Uranus because they were discovered around the same time. It's possible, however, that in Lyra's world, Uranium was named after the Greek god instead of the planet. - In an interview, Christopher Paolini, author of the Inheritance Cycle, mentioned this problem, specifically citing "backpedaled" as a word he couldn't use. He used it anyway. - The Kingkiller Chronicle plays with this in some weird ways. There are several fictional dead and in-use languages in its world, so a Translation Convention is assumed. Then you get things like the word 'vintage'. In our world, it comes from Latin by way of French, referring to wine (vin, vino, vinum, etc...), but it's not any more out of place than any other English word in fantasy. However, in the Four Corners, there is no Orphaned Etymology, because the word vintage is derived from the country of Vintas, which happens to produce fine wine. - Legends & Lattes: In this story about the first coffee shop in a fantasy city, the word "latte" came from its inventor, a gnome named Latte Diameter. The etymology of "coffee" itself (which is of Arabic origin in real life) and other coffee-shop terminology, like the spices and chocolate that go into the pastries, go unexplained. Avoided in the case of biscotti, which is invented outright by the baker Thimble and, like the latte, named "thimblets" after its creator. - Avoided in The Lies of Locke Lamora. A character is described as having "a drooping mustache," instead of a "Fu Manchu mustache." - The Lord of the Rings: Although Tolkien worked hard to remove words that did not have a European root, he did let some things slide, such as 'potato', which comes from the Taino word batata. Tolkien explained this and other language complications as him translating the original language into English. The actual new world plant being present apparently didn't bother him. - Mostly, he refers to them as the presumably more English/Hobbit-sounding 'taters'. - Inverted in The Hobbit where the original refers to Bilbo having tomatoes, the subsequent edition is set in the world of The Lord of the Rings and substitutes pickles instead. - Tolkien indicates in The Hobbit that hobbits play golf, which he atributes to Bilbo's ancestor Bandobras "Bullroarer" Took knocking off the head of the Goblin-king Golfimbul with a club and sending it flying until it landed in a rabbit hole during the Battle of Greenfields. - The Lost Fleet has a discussed example. The characters in the spacefuture use the expression "The witch sings" to mean, "something ends", but the origin of the expression is unknown. To the modern reader, it's very clearly a synthesis of "The witch is dead" (a reference to a song in The Wizard of Oz) and "The fat lady sings" (referencing the ending of Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung, which ends with Brünnhilde, the character normally stereotyped as a huge woman in a copper bra and winged helmet, singing a long aria). - A Memoir By Lady Trent: The expedition falls afoul of some Komodo dragons — specifically named as such in the narration — at one point during Voyage of the Basilisk, despite the series taking place in a world where the Indonesian island of Komodo does not exist. - The Ringworld Throne: - A native of Ringworld refers to how the irritable chieftain of the Grass Giants might "go off like a volcano" if he finds out about something, which is puzzling because Ringworld has no volcanic activity. - Or the Roman god Vulcan, for that matter. - Early in K. J. Parker's Sharps, one character quotes the Dorothy Parker quip (here attributed to an ancient philosopher) that "You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think." Later in the novel, it is implied that the language of the main characters' country is more or less Latin and that of The Empire from which they became independent is more or less Greek. This creates problems with the joke, in that whore isn't a word of Latin or Greek origin, and the Greek and Latin words for the profession wouldn't allow for a pun on horticulture (there's also an issue that the proverb that Dorothy Parker was spoofing — "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink"- has an Old English origin, not a Classical one). There's also a bit of this in the fact that the novel revolves around a disputed territory between feuding nations, that is generally referred to as a DMZ- definitely a modern term. - A Song of Ice and Fire: George R.R. Martin also slips once in a while, and uses words like "damask" in a world with no city named Damascus, "turkey" (the fowl) where there is no country of the same name, or "chequy" when the setting doesn't have an apparent direct analog to chess (and the closest game is called cyvasse). The Straight Edge Evil character Roose Bolton likes to drink the medicinal beverage Hippocras, the name of which ultimately derives from the Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates. When Theon contemplates paying \|\|Ramsay Snow, who has just returned with an army as he promised to do in return for being given a girl to rape\|\| "his pound of flesh" towards the end of A Clash of Kings, he's quoting William Shakespeare in a world where the latter never lived. The "gunwale" of a ship is referred to 12 times, while no cannon is used by any of the cultures shown so far; in a modern context a gunwale is an upper edge of a ship's side, but originally was a reinforcement specifically to accommodate cannons. - In the "chequy" case, it's not that bad, since they do have the word "check"; take into account that it's not the game that named the move but the move which named the game, since in the end, it comes from the word āh (king) in the sentence that players said at the end of the game that roughly translates as "the king is dead"; if cyvasse has a king piece and Westeron is equaled to English and the verb "to check" exists, there's reason for the end of that game to be called "checkmate" or for danger to the king piece to be "put into check" (we would be translating a word of foreign origin into its English equivalent). - In the first Spellsinger book, the town of Lynchbany is named for the hanging of Tilo Bany by an angry mob. The word "lynch" meaning an extralegal execution derives from Charles Lynch, an eighteenth-century Virginian known for the practice. How lynching came to be called that in the Warmlands is not explained. - The novelization of Star Wars: A New Hope includes a small dialogue in which Obi-Wan Kenobi is musing about training Luke. Ben: Even a duck has to be taught to swim. Luke: What's a duck? - Lampshaded repeatedly in Void Dogs, including a self-deprecating reference to an "early 21st-century writer" who was notorious for her insistence on lampshading Orphaned Etymology. - Andrzej Sapkowski, best known for creating The Witcher short stories and novels, eventually answered occasional criticisms of the Witcher world being "anachronistic" (such as the mention of a woman's panties) by pointing out the ubiquity of this trope. By that logic, he noted, no fantasy novel published in Polish should ever include a king, as the word for "king" (in the Polish language) is derived from Charlemagne's name. A wholly imaginary world, he notes, has just as much reason to include modern women's underwear note : Which becomes Hilarious in Hindsight after examples of very modern-looking bras and panties were discovered dating to the 15th century as it has to use modern words or ones that reference the real world. In another novel of his, with fantasy elements but set in medieval Europe, a character uses the word "cholera", a common and rather modern-sounding curse word in Polish. A footnote notes that the name of the sickness dates back to antiquity and the well-educated character who uses it would know the word and, furthermore, cursing by invoking the names of illnesses and maladies has a very long history. The footnote ends with "while there is no evidence that this particular word was used for cursing in medieval times, there is also no evidence that it wasn't", in what is possibly a Take That! against such criticism. - Battlestar Galactica has a few examples of terms that should be exclusive to Earth history, despite existing in a fictional universe where Earth is just a myth \|\|and modern history as we know it has not happened yet\|\|. Ships are named after Earth animals (viper, raptor) and Roslin once quotes The Merchant of Venice, among other things. Word of God explains that at least some of these were intentional, implying a cosmic connection between their history and ours ("All of this has happened before"). The one they probably can't get away with is Tigh's exclamation of "Jesus!" Even if there was such a figure in Colonial history, they are almost exclusively polytheistic and there are no other hints of anything resembling Abrahamic religions. - Averted in the original series: when the Galacticans encounter humans in deep space, one of the Not-Nazi soldiers says that their spacecraft will take down the Galactica, like "a pack of wolves takes down a bear." Adama responds that he has never heard of a wolf or a bear. - In the British wartime sitcom Chickens, the characters refer to the war as World War I. In real life, it was called the Great War at that time. Some more cynical writers of the era doubted that it could truly be "the war to end all wars" and reasoned that if there's already one World War, there might as well be another. - Dinosaurs uses the B.C. timeline. Lampshaded in the first episode when Robbie asks why the dates go backward. "I mean, what are we counting down for? What are we waiting for?" - Game of Thrones: The consistent use of the term "pillow-biter" to refer to gay men (usually contemptuously). This is a real term in modern British slang meaning just what it's used to mean in the show, but it dates from the 1979 trial of former Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe who was charged with incitement to/conspiracy to commit murder of a former homosexual partner (specifically deriving from his accuser Norman Scott's testimony that he "bit the pillow" when Thorpe penetrated him). Needless to say, neither Jeremy Thorpe nor his trial existed or occurred in Westeros. - Although earlier seasons have characters correctly say "loose" when commanding archers to shoot, later seasons slip in having the command be to "fire". This stems from firearms, which obviously do not exist in a medieval setting like Westeros. - History Bites also uses this trope in the episode focusing on Ancient Rome. Also lampshaded as the news anchors repeatedly say "whatever B.C. means." - Despite being an alien witch older than humanity itself, Rita Repulsa from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers still manages to be named after an Earth flower (Rita is short for Margarita, which is spanish for daisy) and show people how repulsive she is. In the reboot movie, it's implied that Rita (pronounced Ree-Tah) is an alien name that coincidentally sounds human. - The BBC series Robin Hood at one point features the Sheriff threatening some innocent party with a time-limited offer, which he punctuates with "tick-tock". The mechanical clock didn't arrive in Europe until at least the following century. - In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Bajoran characters say "My God" once or twice, despite believing in the Prophets, not gods. Could be justified as influence from human contact however. - That Mitchell and Webb Look: - Dungeons & Daddies: In Episode 2, a dragon is confronted with what they want to do when they grow up, and out of a lack of answers they respond with 'Jesus'. The players immediately point this out, and in character as the dragon the DM hastily saves by explaining it was the name of an ancient dragon constantly beseiged with questions (spelled Chyzzu's), whose name their race invokes in perplexing times. - Magic: The Gathering: - It has, as of June 2020, 22 different cards with some reference to crusades or crusading (some of which have been deemed offensive due to the historically fraught nature of the real Crusades, but most of which haven't). The term "crusade" derives from "crux", "cross", which is somewhat curious given that Magic worlds never have Christianity in them; the weirdest ones are Akroan Crusader (Akros is on Theros, which has a pantheon heavily inspired by Classical Greek mythology and thus probably has no cross symbols) and the couple of cards using the word from Innistrad (which has a Crystal Dragon Jesus religion, but its symbol is a collar, so a more likely word would be "torquade"). - Innistrad's "cathars" draw their name from a Christian sect whose name is derived from a Greek word. Innistrad has no Christianity, with a Crystal Dragon Jesus religion instead, and no particularly notable Greek influences - the local culture draws from more Germanic influences. - Some cards predate Magic really having lore and reference real-world cultural elements, some of which have since had retcons applied to bring them into line: the Lord of Atlantis actually hails from a city called Etlan Shiis and "Atlantis" was an in-universe mishearing, Wrath of God now has actual gods on several different planes it could refer to (with at least one printing referencing Heliod, Theros's Zeus-analogue), and Armageddon presumably references Megheddon Defile, the site of a battle that saw the deployment of a Fantastic Nuke. - Pathfinder also has the Crusades against the demons of the Worldwound, although the closest thing you'll see to a cross among the crusaders is the sword emblem of Iomedae. - In Warhammer 40,000, the Imperium of Mankind borrows a lot of terminology (and general aesthetics) from Christianity (especially Roman Catholicism), despite the Imperium following a different religion of Emperor-worship. While this is probably Rule of Cool, it's also somewhat justified as 1) Warhammer 40k works under Translation Convention and they are probably using different words in the actual setting, and 2) the Warhammer 40k universe is supposed to be the real world one just absurdly far in the future, and thus Christianity existed in the ( very) distant past of the universe. There's also an all-purpose "out" in the form of the Emperor, who was around for most of human history and thus presumably brought a lot of old language with him (although why a man whose empire mercilessly stamped out religion would feel the need to cover said empire in Roman Catholic stylings and vocabulary is a mystery for the ages). - "Crusade" is used as a general term for a very large military campaign, even though it comes from "crux/cross". - "Militant-Apostolic" is a title that certain church officials hold, although any mention of Jesus's apostles (much less any concept of apostilic succession) is absent. - Words like "Cherub/Cherubim" (servitors with the bodies of babies) and "Seraph/Seraphim" (Sisters of Battle who specialize in close-quarter combat) are thrown around, while those are Hebrew words for classes of angels. - The word "Templar" is often used, such as in the cases of the Black Templars and the Frateris Templar. The original, real Knights Templar were named after the Temple of King Solomon - something it's doubtful even the residents of its old location on Planet Terra even know existed. - Eberron: - Eberron is cut off from the rest of the D&D multiverse, meaning that spells like Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion, Tasha's hideous laughter or any of the Bigby's hand spells don't make much sense since those characters are more associated with other settings. Suggestions from various sources, including Keith Baker, have included having multiversal travellers like Mordenkainen manage to find a way through Eberron's separation, having in-setting characters who coincidentally have the same or very similar names (including the possibility that Mordenkainen refers to Mordain the Fleshweaver), and just dropping the names entirely and calling the spells magnificent mansion and hideous laughter. - Discussed in this blog post by setting creator Keith Baker, in reference to the Variant Chess game Conqueror. Baker argues that while it may be somewhat unsatisfying if this fictional world has coincidentally happened to develop terms like "checkmate" for their game, coming up with a unique vocabulary runs into the problem that your players won't know that vocabulary, so having a character drop references to it won't resonate the way "checkmate" will. - BIONICLE: The story's first eight years took place in the Matoran Universe, an artificial world where certain concepts like romance or biological reproduction were unknown. - "Brother" and "sister" are common designations when characters address their companions, and Makuta claims to be the spirit-brother of Mata Nui, despite that they have no concept of familial relations. Officially, brother and sister are just synonyms for fellows who have close bonds or have a similar status, such as the Brotherhood of Makuta (the Makuta also used to serve Mata Nui, making them figurative brothers), gendered for the sake of the audience. - At times, characters chastise others for acting like a child and the Bahrag call their Bohrok swarms their children, even though they don't mature physically and are created as "adults". The expression "a face only a mother Manas could love" also exists. These are generally dismissed as Translation Convention. The Morbuzakh king root at least has a case for calling its saplings its children, since they spawned from its seeds. - In the novelization of Mask of Light, Jaller exclaims "Geez!" The movie omits this. - In Legends of Metru Nui, Matau flirts with his "sister" Nokama, envisioning taking her on a "romantic" drive, when they don't know what romantic love is — at least according to the primary writer. Other authors who worked on the franchise had different ideas, hence the occasional nods to romances that were later stated to be non-canon. - The Bahrag threaten Lewa that their powers can make his blood run cold. Kongu at one point debated killing an illusory enemy in "ice-cold blood". Yet, characters don't seem to have blood — at least, with this being a kid-friendly LEGO franchise, it could never be shown and their bodies were mostly mechanical anyway. The Barraki have an excuse for knowing about blood, as they eat full organic blood snails from The Outside World and Kalmah "bleeds" ink when his organic tentacle is cut in one of the animations. - The expression "making one sweat" is also used by characters, although they have no skin or glands. This is another case of Translation Convention. - Hatchimals has a few. Though as it says that the Giggling Tree has a door to Real Life and that may make sense given the weird terms used in the lore as it might be where the Hatchimals get them from, but other than that this is still a case of this trope. - Hatchimals use the term "hatch" when referring to a fellow Hatchimal being brought into the world as they come out of eggs, their equivalent to a birth. But despite not ever saying that a Hatchimal is "born", the past tense of the word "birth", they still use the term "birthday" when a Hatchimal completes a year since the day of their hatching (it doesn't help that it's also called a hatchy birthday, as it's simply a Pun for the word "happy" and not referring to the day of the hatch). It's the only exception to the egg-themed Flintstone Theming this toyline has to offer. Would've made sense if they use "hatchday", as a Hatchimal wouldn't know what a birth is. - The only use of the word "born" is in the official collector's guide, though it does not refer to a hatching and there are no instances where the Hatchimals themselves actually use that word. - According to the official app, baby Hatchimals play a game called "king of the bouncy castle", despite Hatchtopia not even having a king or monarch in general (Royal Hatchimals exist, though they do not make up a family or dynasty and are assumed to have that status purely for looks). - Christmas is also mentioned in the app, despite there being no Christianity (or any of the real-world pagan faiths the holiday actually stems from) to derive it from. It's likely a Santa Clausmas according to holiday-themed merchandise, however. - Rainbocorns: - In Melody the Monkeycorn's bio, it says that she considers artists Camila Cabello and Ariana Grande as her inspirations when it comes to singing. How would the Rainbocorns of Rainboville, which is located far up in the sky, somehow know about Real Life human artists? - Ace Combat: - In both * Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War* and Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, when you're shooting an enemy plane, they'll often say "my plane's being swiss cheesed" even though Switzerland does not exist in Strangereal, the setting of the games. Likewise, a plane in one mission of The Unsung War is also said to be "dutch rolling", and another has a character make mention of Burmese. - Likewise in Zero, since England and its history never existed in Strangereal, where did all the Arthurian references come from? It may possibly be courtesy of Emmeria, given the country's geography, architecture, and legend of a Golden King that is not unlike Arthurian myth, but Emmeria appears to be the Fantasy Counterpart Culture to the United Kingdom, Canada, and Italy. - Ace Combat Infinity fell prey to a meta-instance when it started introducing fictional planes from the earlier games; most tried to Hand Wave their presence by being intentionally vague about their origins or stating that said origins are still classified, but several of the Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere craft like the Night Raven and Delphinus simply attribute their design to the megacorps that built them in Electrosphere, without any care that there's no reason for those corporations to exist in Infinity's timeline. - Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown: The descriptions for some aircraft make references to their actual countries of origin, even though, yet again, those countries don't exist in Strangereal. AWACS Long Caster also makes mention of an Italian bistro he knows if the player performs well enough in Mission 11. - Asheron's Call had a type of high level fire elemental called a "hellfire", even though none of the in-universe religions that we learn about have a hell. The "inferno" (another powerful fire elemental) technically counts as this as well, since inferno was originally just the Italian word for "hell" before it received its more common meaning of "big fire." - Bloodborne has Molotov Cocktails, a character mentioning the Hippocratic Oath, and another character using "spartans" seemingly as a generic term for honorable and heroic warriors. Vyacheslav Molotov, Hippocrates, and Sparta all presumably do not exist in Bloodborne's universe. - Chrono Trigger: Dates use B.C. and A.D., even though Jesus Christ does not appear to exist in the game's universe. This system is apparently based on the founding of the kingdom of Guardia, but that doesn't explain the usage of those terms. Making this even stranger is that Japan doesn't normally use B.C. and A.D., having instead terms that translate to "before common era" and "Western calendar" as equivalents, yet the Japanese version of the game still used B.C. and A.D. in the dates. The game also refers to 600 A.D as the "Middle Ages" without saying what its the middle of, although this could be Hand Waved as saying they mean midway between 1 A.D and 1000 A.D (the "present-day" in the game's timeline) or something along those lines. - Dark Souls: - The Lucerne is a polearm named after the city of Lucerne, Switzerland, where it was popularly used during the 15th to 17th centuries. Presumably, neither Lucerne nor Switzerland exist in the setting's constructed Dark Fantasy universe, yet the weapon is in all three games and then later in Elden Ring with its name unchanged. Interestingly, the series' predecessor Demon's Souls actually did change the name to "Mirdan Hammer", with Flavor Text saying it originated from the in-universe land of Mird. - In Dark Souls III you can find several religious tomes written in braille for the benefit of Blind Seers, even though braille was named after the man who invented it, who also presumably never existed in the Dark Souls universe. This was absent in the original Japanese, where it was simply called "dot-writing". - In Demon's Souls the Filthy Woman in the Valley of Defilement complains about Maiden Astraea, claiming that "All the men worship her like she's the Virgin Mary." Demon's Souls is not set on Earth and the primary religion is clearly not Christianity. - Dragon Age: - Dragon Age: Inquisition: Cassandra's actions are referred to as "crusading," despite the Andrastian holy wars being called "Exalted Marches." Moreover, the main symbols of Andrastianism are a flame and a sword, not a cross, from which the word "crusade" is derived. - Varric, at one point, exclaims, "Jeez!" in party banter. "Jeez" is a shortened form of the "Jesus Christ!" blaspheme, even though in this world, Jesus has been replaced by Andraste. - There are numerous references to days of the week such as Sunday, Friday, and Tuesday, not just in Inquisition but throughout the series. Those days of the week come from the Germanic calendar, and are named after mythological figures from Norse mythology (for the example, Thursday is named after Thor, i.e. "Thor's day"). Obviously, these figures do not exist in Dragon Age's High Fantasy setting. - One item you can find is a Blood-Soaked Teddy Bear. While bears do exist in Thedas, Teddy Bears were named after "Teddy" Roosevelt. - Human characters generally have real-world names, even those of Christian religious figures, as opposed to having the names of important figures in Andrastianism (e.g. Cathaire, Havard, or Hessarian). - One item you gather in Dragon Age II is " sela petrae", slightly altered Latin for "Peter's salt" - i.e., saltpeter or potassium nitrate, which it is. While the language is presumably the in-universe Tevinter, the reference to a Peter doesn't fit because it's just a corruption of the original "nitre" from the Latin " nitrum". - Dragon Quest: This is used a lot. It is even lampshaded in Dragon Quest V, where the phrase "proud as Punch" is used and the Hero's daughter wonders what Punch was proud about. - The Elder Scrolls: - The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: One can find three scrolls which massively buff your Acrobatics skill, allowing you to jump incredible distances. However, as the NPC who invented the scrolls quickly discovered, they wear off after only a few seconds during the jump, meaning you no longer have the power to land safely. They are quite fittingly called "Scrolls of Icarian Flight", however, there is no Greek myth of Icarus in Tamriellic history for that name to come from. Online includes an Easter Egg of a dead elf named "Icarian", who met his end via similar means and is presumably the in-universe origin of the name. - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Your companion tells you at the end of the intro that the town of Helgen is the "end of the line," despite Tamriel not having trains. - The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard has a part where Clavicus Vile, the Daedric Prince of Deals with the Devil, asks the hero if he had a "classical education" while giving him a Knights and Knaves riddle. Tamriel has no Classical Antiquity to study. - EverQuest: In addition to having the same "Gypsies but no Egypt" problem as Discworld, the game has Kodiak bears even though it takes place on Norrath where there is no Kodiak. There's also an interesting aversion where a Venus flytrap like a monster is called an "Erollisi Mantrap" (Erollisi being the goddess of love in the setting, and thus equivalent to Venus). - Final Fantasy: - An example that applies to the series as a whole are the Gysahl Greens. They first appeared in Final Fantasy III where they can be found in Gysahl Village. They appear in future installments without any mention of the village. - Final Fantasy VI: In the original western translation (known as Final Fantasy III), Shadow is described as someone who would "slit his momma's throat for a nickel." Indeed, it's quite the feat in a world where nickels don't exist and gold is the Global Currency. Later translations changed to the more sensible, if admittedly less fearsome, claim that he would kill his best friend for the right price. - Final Fantasy VII: Tifa's bar has a neon sign with the word TEXAS written prominently on it. There's also a diner in Sector 6 that serves a "Korean BBQ Plate" (although note that the equivalent Japanese term is simply "grilled meat"). And when Bugenhagen looks at some Ancient writing in the Forgotten City, he says "it's all greek to me." Even though there's no "Greece" in the game's setting. Or a Turkey, for that matter, so why the "Turks" unit of Shinra operatives has that title is anyone's guess. - Final Fantasy VIII: Early in the game, Zell will ask Squall if he could see his Gunblade. If the player declines, he'll call Squall "Scrooge" in response. This would insinuate that not only does A Christmas Carol exist in this fantasy world, but so does Christmas and Christianity. - Final Fantasy X-2: The Gullwings participate in a sphere broadcast hosted by Shelinda in Luca in an optional event. When Shelinda addresses Yuna as the leader of the Gullwings, Brother steps in to shout "I'm the leader, me!" and Buddy comments "Whoa! This thing on?" Shinra, resident kid snarker, then steps in to comment "It's taping two morons right now." Not only is there no evidence that cassette tape has ever existed as a means of recording in Spira, but the game makes it very clear that spheres have been used for recording for over a thousand years. - In Final Fantasy XIV, the Last Stand serves huge, decadent hamburgers known as "Archon Burgers". But Germany, much less Hamburg, doesn't exist in the fantasy setting, leaving the origin of the dish's name a mystery. - Dissidia Final Fantasy: Kefka Palazzo mocks Garland by calling him a "battle-obsessed nimrod." The word "nimrod" comes from the name of a biblical hunter and Kefka is evidently using the word's modern meaning ("stubborn buffoon" instead of "great hunter"), which is often attributed to Looney Tunes. note : Bugs and Daffy called Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam "Nimrod" ironically to mock their poor hunting prowess, the same way one might call a stupid person "Einstein". This went over the heads of a generation of children, who have now firmly been instilled with the belief that the word means "moron". Neither should exist in Kefka's world. - Fire Emblem: - Some games in the series have a sword called the Wo Dao (essentially a katana). Wo Dao is Chinese for "Japanese Sword," which is a problem since neither Japan nor China are locations in the games. The closest equivalents to date are the clearly Eastern-inspired Chon'sin and Hoshido (and Izumo)... and the Wo Dao doesn't even appear in those entries. Interestingly, this was not a case of Woolseyism as the original Japanese text reads "Wato", an archaic spelling of "Japanese Sword". Why Intelligent Systems didn't just outright call the Wo Dao a katana is anyone's guess. - An interesting subversion comes from the joint Archanea-Valentia-Jugdral continuity. The Starsphere, later known as Azure, is one of five gemstones required to fully awaken the power of the Fire Emblem/Shield of Seals/Binding Shield in Mystery of the Emblem and Awakening. As Wendell states in New Mystery while explaining the Starsphere's own Dismantled MacGuffin status, the orb has "twelve constellations etched on its surface." Instead of resorting to a Fictional Zodiac, the twelve shards of the Starsphere as they appear in both Mystery proper and two DLC episodes in Shadows of Valentia are named for the Western Zodiac as well as depict these constellations. The implication is that, at the very least, these real-life constellations are also recognized in the Archanean-Valentian sky. The same may apply for Polaris note : a class associated with Marth that was first introduced in Awakening is known as Lodestar, a name commonly attributed to the North Star, though its more general meaning (a person or thing that serves as guide) also fits Marth and the Eastern Zodiac note : the Deadlords are named for the Latin equivalent of one of the signs of the Chinese Zodiac in English localizations; in the original Japanese, however, their Theme Naming is simply the German words for the numbers 1-12. - Fullmetal Alchemist and the Broken Angel has Edward Elric shout, "You calling me the Guinness Book of World Records kind of shorty?!" The series takes place in an Alternate History version of 1914, while the Guinness Book of Records, as it was originally called, was first published in 1955. The Guinness brand itself dates back to 1759, though, so it's possible they started their world record-keeping a bit earlier in the Fullmetal Alchemist 'verse. - Halo: There are some Covenant units called Jackals. While they do look like humanoid jackals (and use stealthy tactics), there's still the obvious question of why an alien empire would name one of their units after an Earth animal, as the Jackals existed before they even discovered Earth. You can't even Hand Wave it as just being a codename the humans call them (since they, like the other species, do have a suitably alien "official" name), as in the later games you spend part of the time playing as the Arbiter (a Covenant alien) or otherwise hearing alien conversations in English, and all of the aliens call them Jackals as well. We're likely meant to assume that this is just Translation Convention at work to call the aliens by names that players are more likely to recognize (since those official names are only mentioned in outside material like the novels), much less ones the actors could actually speak (especially given Bungie already had an established track record with unpronounceable alien names). - League of Legends: - One character is named Cassiopeia, a name taken from Greek mythology. Greece doesn't appear anywhere on the map of Runeterra, unless it physically manifested within ten feet of Pantheon. note : A guy whose cultivated Spartan aesthetic was similarly Greek and similarly out of place until his Retool got rid of it. - The in-universe logic behind Jericho Swain's first name is also a little bit obscure, given that Jericho is a real place in Palestine that is mostly notable in Western culture for its role in some parts of the Old Testament, none of which exist in Runeterra. Out-of-universe, the logic is clearly that it sounds badass. - Urgot's title is "the Dreadnought". The term 'dreadnought' for a large and powerful machine derives from a specific ship, which was launched in 1906. - The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning: Sparx says, "Spyro, we're Not in Kansas Anymore," in response to the pair's first glimpse of the ruins around the Dragon Temple, despite this being an original fantasy setting with no such thing as Kansas in it. - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Lenzo will call you a "penniless ragamuffin" if you don't fork over the money for his Legendary Pictographs. Said money is Rupees; there are no pennies in Hyrule. - Mega Man Battle Network: A conversation in the third game between Lan and Mega Man has the former asking if the word "pronto" is English, and the latter saying that it's possibly derivied from the Spanish language. Both England and Spain do not exist in this world. - Pokémon: - The English localization of Sengoku Basara 3 ( Samurai Heroes), which is set in the Sengoku Era of Japan (14671573), has a foot soldier of Date Masamune's army periodically claim, "This is something the boss would refer to as 'cool'!" Strictly speaking, this is not by any means this series' most grievous example of something being out of chronological order. - In Adam Cadre's Shrapnel, a character fighting in the Civil War calls another "Einstein" — \|\|which is an in-universe slip-up on his part, as he's a time traveler.\|\| - In Skies of Arcadia, the only kind of pirate in the 'verse is explicitly called a "sky" pirate, despite the lack of need for differentiation. - StarCraft: - The Xel'naga called their first creation the Protoss, which has the same pronunciation as the ancient Greek word meaning "first," even though the Xel'naga could not have known ancient Greek. - On a similar note, one of the Protoss characters from the first game is called Fenix, and Starcraft II introduces a new Protoss unit, the Phoenix. All of this without them ever having any contact with greek mythology. - Star Fox: - Falco, rather infamously, sarcastically calls Fox McCloud "Einstein" if you shoot him in Star Fox 64. When a reader of Nintendo Power magazine sent in a letter questioning how a being from another galaxy could possibly know about Albert Einstein, the editors' response was "Because the game's creators are from this galaxy, Einstein." (Some fans will also propose, jokingly or not, that there is/was an Einstein in the Lylat system, just not the one players would be familiar with.) Falco says not only "Einstein," but also "Jeez Laweez, what's that?", "jeez" being a minced oath for "Jesus." He really loves this trope. "Einstein" was removed in the 3DS remake of 64, with Falco now saying "genius" instead. - One ending of Star Fox Command had the Anglars using "Puny Earthlings" as an insult to Slippy and Amanda, who are from a planet nowhere near Earth. - In Tales of Symphonia, during the formal dance where everyone is dressed up, Genis tells Lloyd that Sheena laughed at his outfit and said he looked like he was dressed up for Easter Sunday. Easter doesn't exist in the story's world since it's a Christian holiday. However, it's partially lampshaded as Lloyd asks what Easter Sunday is; Genis responds that it's apparently a holiday in Mizuho. - In Tales of Vesperia, the party can cook a Scottish Egg or Japanese Stew, despite Terca Lumereis containing neither Scotland nor Japan. In the Definitive Edition, one of Patty's win quotes is "All's well that ends Welsh Corgi!" despite there not being a Wales. Likewise, in Tales of Berseria, one of the ingredients to make salad is Worcestershire Sauce, Worcestershire is a county in England and not a place in Midgand. - Terraria has Molotov Cocktails as a craftable weapon, the Uzi as a random drop and Pad Thai can be purchased from the traveling merchant. Vyacheslav Molotov, Thailand and Israel presumably do not exist in the world of Terraria. - In Them's Fightin' Herds, we have Arizona the calf, and her family are all similarily named after US states... despite the game taking place in a world where the United States doesn't exist. - World of Warcraft: - Two of the cheeses available for purchase are "Alterac Swiss" and "Fine Aged Cheddar" — both of which are named after geographic locations on Earth. - Goblins have zeppelins, despite Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin not existing in the Warcraft universe. - In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Reyn occasionally refers to Riki as a "stupid furry volleyball" in post-battle chatter, calling back to when Shulk, Melia and Reyn served Riki as the ball when they first met him. This despite volleyball being an American sport with no clear analogue on Bionis. - In Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Eunie insults Lanz by calling him a "muppet" twice over the course of the game. While "muppet" is a common British insult in our world (meaning "idiot"), it's still derived from the puppets, and worth noting because most other cases of explicit language in the English dub (like "spark," "snuff," and "mudder") carefully avert this trope by referring only to things that exist in Kevesi/Agnian society * : even to the exclusion of common real-world swears like "fuck" or "damn" because most Kevesi and Agnians are born from People Jars and have no concept of sex, family, or religion. \|\|And while Aionios does have a connection to our Earth (through Alrest), any cultural connection to The Muppets has probably been destroyed several times over by now.\|\| - Battle for Dream Island takes place in a world full of Animate Inanimate Objects that only vaguely resembles our own. With that in mind, the world "geez" is said at several occasions. Since the word "geez" comes from a shortening of Jesus Christ, the use of the word can carry some implications. - RWBY: Ruby has crosses on her clothes to go with her Perky Goth aesthetic, and her uncle Qrow wears a tilted cross for a necklace, but there's no sign of Christianity in the series' universe. In fact, every religion we've seen so far on Remnant has been polytheistic, \|\|including the true one.\|\| - One of the characters is named Neopolitan, and her appearance is based on Neapolitan ice cream. The world of Remnant does not have a Naples. The word itself derives from the Greek words "neos" (new) and "polis" (city). Neopolitan herself is often just referred to as Neo for short because \|\|it is the new name she gave to herself after abandoning her birth name Trivia Vanille\|\|. - In one episode of Critical Role: Season 2, Beau asks Nott if she knows what Stockholm Syndrome is. Matt riffs on this by suggesting that the phrase exists in the same context in Exandria as it does in real life, due to an incident involving a man named Gerald Stockholm. - In the LoadingReadyRun "Krog" series of sketches much of the humor comes from from averting this and making up bizarre and punny explanations for cavemen to use extremely modern phrases like "problematic post" and "best way to catch backdoor hacker is with honeypot," which here means a person hacking open a cave's back door with an axe and getting hit by a pot of honey placed over it. - Around the World with Willy Fog: In the second episode, Tico complains that hiding in Rigodon's bag "makes him feel like a pair of socks." However, every character in the series is a Barefoot Cartoon Animal, so Tico shouldn't have the word "socks" in his vocabulary. - Dinosaur Train: Hadrosaurs are called "duck-billed dinosaurs" like they are in real life, despite the fact that ducks don't exist yet. - Disenchantment takes place in a fantasy world very loosely based on medieval Europe, that also features a few out-of-place references: - King Zog casually mentions "this isn't my first rodeo" before being confused about what "rodeo" means. - A female demon named Stacianne LeBlatt says that her surname is French; and Hansel and Gretel call themselves Germans, in spite of France or Germany not even being known to exist in this setting. - There are repeated references to The Crusades, even though the local equivalent to Christianity features no crosses (which the name is derived from), but rather a spiral symbol. - Several The Disney Afternoon series such as DuckTales (1987), TaleSpin, and Darkwing Duck are set in worlds occupied only by anthropomorphic animals with no humans note : on Earth, at least, yet characters still use words like "man", "woman", "men", and "humanity" and "anthropology" as often we do in our world. (Given how their worlds contain multiple sapient species, they would need one word to refer to all sapient life that doesn't refer to any one species.) - The Flintstones apparently live in the United States and celebrate Christmas despite being cavepeople. Flintstone Theming, in general, can yield quite a lot of this trope. - Kaeloo has several characters referring to real people such as Marie Antoinette and Britney Spears and mentioning places such as America and Europe... while living on Smileyland, which is a planet. One episode even has them mention having gone on vacation to Australia before! - The Legend of Korra takes place in a fantasy world, which makes for some uses of this trope: - Varrick mentions that "Lyme disease is a serious killer", despite there being no Lyme for the disease to be named after. - Likewise, Morse code is mentioned, even though there was no Samuel Morse to invent it. - There's also the use of the term "Jeep" to refer to off-road vehicles, which came from slurring the initials GP (General Purpose) even though the Avatar world doesn't use the Latin alphabet. - Both averted and played straight in a later episode: upon being shown a gun for the first time, a character can't think of any word to describe it except "a thing" (owing to the setting's Fantasy Gun Control). However, later in the same episode, they call it "a cannon". This one could be justified if we remember that cannons do exist in the setting, they are just completely different from our own note : Said cannons are actually just giant tubes that firebenders use to attack from longer distances. - In the second season, Tenzin refers to the Avatar State as not being a "booster rocket". There's really no way the phrase could make sense in the setting. - Real life locations, such as Florida and Rancho Cucamonga, have been mentioned in Mixels, despite the fact it takes place on a different planet than Earth. Gox also sarcastically refers to Snoof as "Einstein", even though there are no human traces in their planet. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: - Ponies say "oh my gosh" and "OMG!", without an "oh my god" for these phrases to derive from. In the same sense, "for Pete's sake!" is used once in a while, even though St. Peter is also a Christian figure. - The use of "Gesundheit" instead "Bless you" avoids a reference to religions, but introduces a German-equivalent to the setting. - Rainbow Dash is fond of calling Twilight Sparkle an egghead. In real life, "egghead" was originally a pejorative used to refer to snobbish intellectuals, who by virtue of being typically older men were usually bald (and thus had heads that looked like eggs). Since the show's characters are horses and aren't generally bald (the few with "bald spots" in their manes still have a full covering of fur underneath), it doesn't make much sense for this term to be used here. - In the first episode, after Spike acts all enamored toward Rarity, Twilight tells him "Focus, Casanova." "Casanova" derives from Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, an infamous womanizer from the 18th century. - "Boast Busters": - Spike mentions a Fu Manchu mustache. How exactly does a world of magical talking ponies know about a human-created Yellow Peril villain? - Later, Twilight calls Spike "Romeo". Perhaps there was some pony version of William Shakespeare? - In "Look Before You Sleep", Applejack jumps on the bed while yelling "GERONIMO!" This exclamation derives from the name of an Apache leader whom Applejack would have had no way of ever hearing of. - In "Suited for Success", when Rarity is designing dresses for the other ponies, Fluttershy specifically requests French Haute Couture, despite being in a universe where France (presumably) doesn't exist. In addition, in "The Cutie Pox", one of Apple Bloom's symptoms is a talent for speaking in French (and she even identifies it as "Français" in her dialogue). Applejack simply refers to it as "speaking Fancy". - When Twilight is giving Rarity details on how to sew the constellations on her dress during the reprise of "Art of the Dress", she mentions the real-world constellations Orion and Canis Major. - In "Call of the Cutie", one thing Rainbow Dash checks for talents is karate. Two-for-one here: why would ponies use a word derived from the Okinawan word for "hand"? - "Hearth's Warming Eve" uses the term "helping hand", even though no character up until that point had hands (except Spike, but the term "claws" would be more appropriate). - In "Magical Mystery Cure", Applejack sings the line "Can y'all give me a hand here?" during the song "What My Cutie Mark is Telling Me". - In "Pinkie Pride", Cheese Sandwich mentions Hawai'ian shirts in one of his songs. - In "Three's a Crowd", Discord asks for Swiss cheese and Abyssinian pastries (though admittedly, this isn't really out of character for him). The issue with Abyssinia is resolved later on in the movie prequel comics, where it turns out that Abyssinia is, in fact, a country inhabited by Cat Folk known as Abyssinians. Switzerland receives no such mention. - Lampshaded in "Slice of Life", when Doctor Whooves asks what is this "man" is that the bowling alley ponies keep referring to. - In "Hearthbreakers", Maud Pie mentions Mohs Scale of Hardness. Mohs was the surname of the German person who invented it. - In "Once Upon a Zeppelin", "zeppelin" is used to refer to airships, despite coming from German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Notably, it seems to be a catch-all term for balloon-based aircraft not propelled by hot air, unlike its very specific meaning in real life. - The comic books establish that a significant number of Equestria's inventions are taken from ancient excursions into parallel worlds, which may handwave both this trope and Equestria's Schizo Tech. - Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero: In "Brainzburgerz" Sashi uses the phrase Five-Finger Discount even though the show's characters have Four-Fingered Hands. - Puppy in My Pocket: Adventures in Pocketville has several: - A few of the breeds named after real-world countries and notable figures, such as the Siberian Husky and Saint Bernard, are mentioned by Pocketville denizens who arent Magic. Respectively, the bear chef who owns the bamboo cafe on Puppy Key and Eva. - The phrases "goody-two-shoes" and "be in one's shoes" are used by the Pocketville characters despite having no use for shoes let alone the existence of shoes in the Pocket Kingdom. - The words "gosh" and "goodness" are occasionally uttered by some Pocket Kingdom residents, though there isn't an "Oh my God" to derive that phrase from. - Doctor Copper explains what the Latin name for the medicine she gave to Zull and Gort is though how would the denizens of Pocketville know what Ancient Rome is? - The Pocketville Olympics is mentioned in both "New Friends" when the Royal Guards talk about Robbie's games and in "Believe in Yourself!" when they talk about pawball, their equivalent to soccer/European football. How would they know about the term "Olympics" if they never heard of Olympia, let alone Greece? - In the prototype English dub, Claudia/Clelia talks about a speculation on the Friendship Heart's origin which was come up with by a professor by the name of "Franklin D. Puppy". That's referencing this president right here. - In "Nearly!", Magic comments that Daniel's performance wasn't exactly Oscar material. Now it would've made sense if he acquired the term "Oscar award" from TV but as he might have limited knowledge on the culture of Kate's world, including that of terms coming from television, it may not be so. - William uses the saying "I bet a pound to a penny" when he suspects Eva must be behind the scheme of giving Jenny the itches in "A Bad Fall", referring to British currency: the pound sterling. Yet they actually have golden coins as a currency in the Pocket Kingdom which are not pounds. - In "Finally Free!", the Tibetan Bridge is one of the trials of Steel Wool's Royal Guard training, with the kingdom having no Tibet to name the bridge after. - Mela calls Pocketville's gift shop the "Christmas Shop" in the episode "A Gift for Ava", with the shop containing items such festive trees and gifts, implying that they might do a Santa Clausmas. - Inverted in "A Big Responsibility" when William asks "Italy?" after Kate mentions a girl named Martina used to live there. - Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM): Multiple: - Star Wars: The Clone Wars has the phrase "dime a dozen" used. The main currency of the galaxy is credits, and they've been shown in various forms, so it's possible there is some kind of equivalent to a dime. - Steven Universe: - The show takes place in an Alternate History and in a fictional U.S. state known as Delmarva, due to being set on the Delmarva Peninsula. This is despite said peninsula's name being a clipped compound of the three real states that actually occupy it: Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. It is still possible they previously existed as some sort of political bodies, such as colonies, which had the common land merged to make a state. - The show essentially ignores any language barrier between humans and Gems, which can make some Gem names rather strange to think about, given that Gems are ancient aliens with very limited knowledge of Earth. Holly Blue Agate is named for a type of agate (though the real thing is spelled "Holl ey blue agate") which itself is named for the town in Oregon where it's found on Earth — a town said character is much older than. Sugilite and Larimar are both known types of Gems, even though their names come from specific individuals. There are even characters named Watermelon Tourmaline and Bluebird Azurite, even though most Gems don't know what bluebirds or watermelons are. - Because of their machine-based reproduction, families and relatives are a foreign concept to most Gems. However, when a rutile gemstone grows forking apart and created two individuals sharing part of their bodies, they're still called "Rutile Twins". Apparently the geological use of the word "twin" is the only one most Gems know. - Transformers: - A visual edition occurs in Transformers: Prime. The 'bots in Prime categorically lack noses. (Some of them kind of have a nose suggested by the extension of a forehead decoration, but it's still on their forehead). Yet, somehow, they end up using the same Autobot logo as the rest of the franchise, which does indeed feature a stylized nose where noses actually go. Illustrated here. - Other characters in the franchise end up with names that don't make a huge amount of sense in the context of robots, sometimes millions of years old, who come from another planet and have maybe been active on Earth for a few years, tops. Arcee's name is just two English letters nailed together, Mach from Transformers Victory is indirectly named after a 19th-century human, and if we list all the Cybertronians, like Bumblebee, who are named after Earth animals that Cybertron doesn't seem to have we'll be here all day note : especially baffling for minor Decepticon "Snapdragon", who's named after an Earth flower. - As noted in the Reality Is Unrealistic page, some people like to claim that things set in the Soviet era where the characters exclaim "My God!" or the like are an example of this trope since a common stereotype for the Soviet Union is complete atheism. Even ignoring the fact that such terms would still linger as holdovers for a long time to come (and the fact that atheists are perfectly capable of using religious swears, even if they don't believe in them), there's also the fact that the USSR never became completely irreligious. Despite attempts at its inception to enforce atheism, the sheer cultural and political influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, in general, made it impossible to ever completely implement. Then Stalin reduced the anti-religious regulation to get the Russian Orthodox Church on his side in World War II. And though Khrushchev tried to re-implement said regulations, from the Brezhnev era onward they were again relaxed. In 1964 a kids cartoon taking place in Soviet times has an old lady blessing the protagonist with a cross sign, and no one seems to have had any problems with it. - Also, words can sometimes change their meaning over time, but remain unchanged in their form, appearing absurd and anachronistic in old texts. "Paging" was once the act of sending a page to fetch someone in a crowded room, for example, centuries before the invention of the internet. In post-feudal eras, the term "paging" continued to be used to call for someone who may or may not be present in a room. The same use of the term to summon someone over an intercom has lasted from before pagers were invented to long after they've become obsolete. - In the Brazilian gaming community, completing a game is colloquially known as "Zerar o Jogo" (something like "Zeroing the Game"). This comes from the Atari 2600 era and its several endless games (such as River Raid). Since those games lacked an official ending, many players considered that a game "ended" when their score reached the maximum reading and the game reverted it all back to zero, similar to an odometer rollover. Even after scores and endlessness fell out of fashion in game design, this expression persisted on and is still used in Brazil.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanedEtymology
Or Was It a Dream? - TV Tropes it was just a dream... notices bed is covered in Pogs and Pog Memorabilia* ..or WAS it?* Sometimes, at the end of a Dream Sequence, Dream Episode, or an All Just a Dream episode, after the character in question has woken up and demonstrated any Aesop that the dream might have been communicating, there's some small hint that it wasn't a dream after all, even though it quite obviously was... right? That hint is often a Fantasy Keepsake, some kind of small object from the "dream world" that was given to the character there, innocently sitting on the bedside table. This kind of ending is quite often used by young children to create a Twist Ending, and as such it's fairly hard to execute well as a more mature writer, since it's considered a bit of a cliché by some, and some detractors even consider it a Dead Horse Trope. Still, Tropes Are Not Bad, and when done well such an ending can be used very effectively. May be an example of The Ending Changes Everything, though those are usually even more of a Mind Screw. Schrödinger's Butterfly may apply to what was, is, and will be the dream, and which one is real. Related to Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane, in that the mundane explanation has to be dreaming, yet it is not a subtrope, since not every Or Was it a Dream? scenario touches on the supernatural. Not to be confused with That Was Not a Dream, which is when a character talks about a dream they just had and is then told that they weren't dreaming. If the dream was a nightmare, and it's subverted by having it turn out to be a dream after all, see Shock-and-Switch Ending. Compare Real After All, Here We Go Again!, and The End... Or Is It? As with all Ending Tropes, beware of spoilers. ## Examples: - A California Raisins ad features The California Raisins performing in the style of Michael Jackson, in an empty fruit bowl on Michael Jackson's table. Michael Jackson wakes up, sees the bowl on his table is full of fruit, and rests his head, realizing it was All Just a Dream. Then, the fruit sparkles with fireworks as music comes from the bowl. - The Coke version of the 2005 commercial for Universal's Halloween Horror Nights has a man about to be killed by "The Storyteller", only for him to wake up in a Catapult Nightmare and realize it was just a dream. Soon after, while he drinks Coca-Cola with his girlfriend, The Storyteller's reflection appears in a mirror... - "American Honda Presents DC Comics Supergirl": While Linda Danvers is driving them down the road, Jack, Sally and their dog fall asleep, finding themselves suddenly in a weird, driving-obsessed mega-city called Motorville. After living an adventure along with Supergirl, both kids and Barko wake up simultaneously and comment they have had a weird dream. Strangely, they have had the same dream, even the dog. As they are comparing notes, Linda -who seems to hint she knows what their dream was about- drives by an advertising board displaying scenes of Motorville. - Possibly spoofed in one Hetalia: Axis Powers strip where after Greece takes it on himself to teach Japan how to enjoy sex more, Japan is seen bolting wide awake in bed, yelling "Is this an 'it was all a dream' ending?! I'm SO GLAD it was that kind of ending!" While naked. And with an equally naked Greece sleeping next to him. Sure it was, Japan. - Shows up in a bunch of Doraemon movies. - Doraemon: Nobita's Great Adventure into the Underworld have Doraemon and Nobita finding statues of themselves who suddenly appeared in their house during a dark and stormy night, and wondered if they both had the same bad dream. \|\|It turns out later in the story that those statues are their future selves, trying to escape Demon Lord Demaon's minions via Time Machine by escaping to the past, only to suffer a Taken for Granite fate.\|\| - Doraemon: Nobita and the Animal Planet have Nobita sleepwalking into the titular planet, via a portal of gas which inexplicably opened up in his bedroom. Nobita saw the residents of the other world, all of them andromorphic animals, picks up a flower, and makes his way back through the portal into his house before falling asleep outside the toilet. He dismisses the whole thing as a dream, but later Nobita sees the same flower he collected in a bottle. - Doraemon: Nobita and the Tin Labyrinth had Nobita's father, Nobisuke, making reservations with the Hotel Burinkin while dozing off one night, and thinking he dreamt the whole thing up after looking through a number of travel guides and realizing there's no such hotel on earth. But later on the mysterious briefcase from Hotel Burinkin arrives at the Nobi's household, which Nobita found before his father did, at which point it turns out Hotel Burinkin is a facility on another planet. - Doraemon: Great Adventure in the Antarctic Kachi Kochi have Nobita collecting Carla's enchanted bracelet after a short Antarctic adventure, before seeing Carla, then a stranger, beckoning him in his dreams, where Nobita's inexplicably in the Antarctic in his pyjamas. He managed to convince Doraemon and friends to travel to the South Pole to investigate, but then they found the ruins of an ancient city with Carla in it. - In the ending of the Eureka Seven movie, its debatable on whether Renton and Eureka survived and their whereabouts. Is it really their homeland Warsaw? or in Renton's dream world? or even an afterlife world? You decide. - Get Backers manga. It's left up to the reader to decide whether Ginji rejected reality & went back into a virtual reality coma powered by science & magic, or if he was knocked unconscious and dreamed of a parallel universe. - The climactic scene in Haruhi Suzumiya wasn't a dream, but the title character is convinced it was one. To the extent that she rewrote the universe into one where the scene was a dream. 'Snow Mountain Syndrome' ends with Haruhi convinced all the weirdness was essentially a waking dream. The possibility of this is explored (and dismissed) as a potential ending for the student movie. - Maken-ki!: The 89.5 omake chapter has Usui dream of getting Aki drunk enough to play Twister with Love Espada. Then takes advantage of the situation by having them strip naked, though he covers Aki's nipples and nether region with heart shaped pasties. It lasts long enough for Usui to feel both of them up note : Espada was sober and said she was perfectly willing until he finally passes out from his nosebleed. When he awakes in the school infirmary and sees Aki is fully clothed, he laments that he had only dreamt it. But, after he leaves, one of the pasties is seen in the trashbin and Aki is visibly disturbed, suggesting the incident might've actually happened. - The very end of Monster features a scene in which Johan, supposedly comatose, appears to sit up in his bed and reveal to Tenma the true source of his frustration and madness. Then Tenma appears to wake up as if from a dream. Then Johan \|\|appears to be gone from the hospital bed\|\|. - Napping Princess: It's left a bit ambiguous. Early on, having the motorcycle fly in Kokone's dreams appears to be how they reached Osaka, before Morio realizes that the vehicle has self-driving technology. At the same time, Morio and Kokone definitely shared the dream, which is unusual on its own (although only people aware of the stories are ever implied to have actually joined the dream, so it may just be a coincidence due to them knowing the details). - The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Ginji's Rescue Team manga ended with Ginji, who had been turned into a Torchic, waking up as a human again. He thinks it was a dream but he soon finds the badge that he received in the Pokémon world. The one problem with this idea is that the beginning of the story shows Ginji searching for his hidden birthday present, which he never found... the present may be the badge, making the adventure All Just a Dream after all. - The first scene of Puella Magi Madoka Magica is dismissed by Madoka as just a "weird dream," until she meets the real version of the dream-Homura. This makes it appear to have been a prophetic dream. \|\|It's actually an inversion of that trope—it happened in the past, a previous timeline that Madoka only remembers subconsciously.\|\| - The Galaxy Police Mihoshi's Space Adventure special has Mihoshi tell Tenchi and the other girls about a particularly wild case with her partner Kiyone involving the robbery of a special type of energy for a mad scientist's super weapon (said mad scientist being portrayed by Washu), the odd Love Triangle between a Space Pirate, a member of the Galaxy Police and his fiance from Jurai (represented by Ryoko, Tenchi and Ayeka respectively) and a mysterious magician who, unknown to them, was their newest recruit (represented by Sasami in her first appearance as Pretty Sammy). At the end, everyone is knocked out like a light and the only other one not passed out, Ryo-Ohki, even looks like she's dismissed it... until the end, where we find Kiyone, stranded on the remains of the mad scientist's base, screaming to the heavens that she's going to kill Mihoshi. - Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons episode 1 ends with Mr. Slowy realizing the characters undergoing Rapid Aging due to an alien's ship going out of control and causing planet Earth to spin much faster than usual was a dream. Then after the episode ends, we see Wolffy asking for help, implying he really did rapidly age. - Batman Legends of the Dark Knight: - The story "Masks" features Batman apparently in an insane asylum, having imagined all his adventures after years of homelessness when his parents' debts left him penniless. It turns out that it was all a gaslight by a psychologist who blamed Bats for his criminal father killing his mom in a murder/suicide. The second to last page throws The DCU into doubt. - "Legends of the Dark Mite", has a drug-runner being interrogated by Batman trying to blame the death of his confederates on Bat-Mite, which Batman dismisses as the man's drug-addled mind hallucinating. A later story, Mite-Fall, a parody of Knightfall has Bat-Mite show up again to recruit the drug-addled man in stopping Bane-Mite. The man stops the monster, but falls victim to the creature's drug "Toxik", sniffs it and his head explodes. While the ending suggests that it was probably a Dying Dream due to the man getting high on drugs and throwing himself off the top of a church, killing him, the last page shows Bat-Mite and other Mite-type heroes mourning him with a statue, which casts into question if the previous events really were real. - Inverted in the "Quantum Quest" story arc in Captain Atom: there is plenty of evidence in the text to support the supposition that Cap's experience of creating, misgoverning, and ultimately destroying his own universe were just a fever dream brought on by Shadowstorm's attack, but that idea is never considered in the story itself. - Disney Ducks Comic Universe: In Don Rosa's "The Duck Who Never Was", Donald Duck has such bad luck on his birthday that he wishes he were never born after running into a Genie in a Bottle. After seeing that virtually everyone is worse off without him and that Duckburg has become a hellhole, he corrects his mistake by wishing everything back. He wakes up and assumes it was all a dream, but after he leaves the museum the genie shows up one last time. - The last issue of Darkhorse's Godzilla Comic Book series involves Godzilla returning to the time of the Dinosaurs after being swallowed up by an Earthquake. Upon exploring his new location, he is attacked by a Giant Dragon Monster simply known as " The Stranger". Godzilla and the Stranger fight just as the meteor that killed the Dinosaurs impacts Earth, forcing the Stranger to flee, but not without Godzilla tearing off a piece of his tail as Godzilla plunges into another crevasse. At the comic's end, Godzilla wakes up to see that it was all a dream... Until he notices a piece of the Stranger's tail in his claw. - In Marvel Comics Presents, Spider-Man is woken up by another Spider-Man ("Spider-Mech") who recruits him into the Galactic Alliance of Spider-Men, a sort of neurotic parody of the Captain Britain Corps. When he is thrown back through the portal by a "Doctopoid" and lands back in bed, he naturally assumes it was all a dream, unaware that Spider-Mech's Subspace Spider Signal is still under the bed. - Mazeworld: Adam is hanged for the murder of his own brother, but suddenly finds himself waking up in a fantasy world made of mazes, where he has to fight an evil tyrant. After finding the courage to face his fears and emerging victorious, he wakes up back at the scaffold where his executioners cut him down when he's still struggling after hanging by the noose for 10 minutes, his experiences apparently nothing more than a Dying Dream. It turns out that he's still clutching the amulet that someone in the Mazeworld gave him. - Hector Vector in Oink! once had an adventure which resulted in him being made to walk the plank off the moon... whereupon he fell out of bed. But was that moon dust in his pocket? It was just a dream... wasn't it? \|\|Of course it was a dream! How would Hector know what moon dust looks like? It's probably just a bit of pocket fluff. (As a caption below the last frame helpfully pointed out).\|\| - While Dream from The Sandman (1989) isn't exactly the warmest and kindliest guy out there, one of the most cruel punishments he ever doled out was to give somebody who had wronged him the gift of eternal waking. That is to say, the man will have a ghastly nightmare, then as the most horrible part plays out, will startle awake and sigh in relief... only to realize he's in a worse nightmare. And suddenly wake up, etc... forever. As fates worse than death go, this is pretty bad. A few years later, however, when that iteration of Dream dies, the guy wakes up. For real. Presumably as a result of some belated mercy, he is not a completely psychotic broken shell of a man — instead he eventually simply forgets his dream(s). - Wolverine tracks down the studios set up by the Weapon X program to stage his Fake Memories, but one key period, when he shared a cabin with Silver Fox, does not have a corresponding set, giving him hope that his happy recollections of that time actually happened. When he encounters Silver Fox again, she shows no recollection of the cabin, but after her death, Logan is told the location of the real cabin and allowed to bury her there. - Wonder Woman Vol 1: After Wondy, Steve Trevor and Etta Candy fall down a hole in a large tree and end up having adventures in "Shamrock Land" while chasing the Nazi Rudolph Hessenpfeffer at the end of the issue, when they're back in the human world with a captured Hessenpfeffer they seem to think they dreamed it all when they hit their heads, especially since they don't remember it all clearly. As some of the leprechauns and the fairy queen show up again later in Sensation Comics it evidently really did happen. - Más Allá del Horizonte (Beyond the Horizon), by Leo Duranona (writer/artist) and Cary Bates (writer), published in Spanish magazine 1984 in 1978, is the story of Jesse and Allison, two young handsome amnesiacs striving to survive in a post-Apocalyptic world against monsters and the last savage humans. They eventually find that aliens had sent a gas-based weapon, the Great Cloud, to exterminate humankind, and are now surprised to see any survivor at all. When the heroes try to destroy the aliens' mothership, cut to: Leo, a comic-book artist drawing the plot. He's visited by his wife's friends, who are the spitting image of Jesse and Allison - and then, a weird giant cloud suddenly covers the skies. Leo is speechless. End. - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992): In his dream, Link falls asleep on Zelda's lap, complaining about his misshapen arm. When Link wakes up, he finds that someone has bandaged his arm, and he is actually standing in front of the Tower of Hera. - Candorville leans pretty hard towards the "wasn't" side. The night Susan takes home a stray dog, she has an apparent nightmare in which the dog speaks to her, hypnotizes her, and tries to get information out of her. In the morning, of course, it's perfectly normal—but the dog's addressing her as "whore" fits neatly with some of Lemont's crazy theories, and provides the first outside indication that his scenes are more objective than they seem. - In one FoxTrot arc, Paige writes a story for a school assignment. The story is about Jason entering a haunted house and getting attacked by monsters. At the end, Story!Jason wakes up in bed...and his head removable. Not surprisingly, Paige got an appointment with the school counselor along with her grade. - In this strip, Garfield was about to kick Odie off the table when Odie suddenly spoke and told him not to even think about that. That case of The Dog Bites Back turned out to be a dream. When Garfield tried to kick real Odie, he turned around like Dream!Odie. - ''An Alternate Ending to Matrix Revolutions'' has the events of The Matrix turn out to be a dream... of Ted Logan's. However, the two endings suggest something more \|\|since the first one features an appearance of Smith, and the other has Trinity\|\|. - The driving question of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic Asylum (Daemon of Decay) is whether Twilight hallucinated her past life or if she's currently stuck in a Lotus-Eater Machine. - Dwarf Fortress fanfic The Captain's Log actually starts with this trope; the protagonist receives a vision from a minor weather god, who presents him with an amulet as proof that he is The Chosen One and must lead his people on a quest to build The Ark before a great flood causes the end of the world. note : Unlike the Biblical original, this was less to do with sin and wickedness and more to do with massive incompetence on the part of said weather gods. Then he wakes up... "Just a dream Kubluk, just a dream," he reassured himself. He rolled out of bed, and slipped on his sandals. Standing up, he heard a clink, and looked down. At his feet lay a small golden object. His hands shaking in trepidation, he scooped it up, and sighed as he recognised the golden ship, given to him by Moist. "Bugger." - Citadel of the Heart has Chapter 16B of Digimon Re: Tamers reveal that \|\|most of the catastrophic events of Chapter 16 were all a simulation performed on Grandis by Jiang-yu, making everything from Chapter 16 at first appear to have just been an overglorified dream from Grandis while being mind probed. However, in the light of the results, the reasoning as for how Grandis wound up in Hypnos' building mirror the ending of Chapter 16, and even then, about the only difference between Chapter 16 and Chapter 16B onward is that Brondramon, and the subsequent collateral damage it caused, are mysteriously absent entirely. In addition, considering Enigma's Your Mind Makes It Real powers being the cause of the warped reality observed in Chapter 16B, it also apparently caused Henry, Ruki, and Takato's Partner Digimon to suddenly go rogue, and even then, Hirokazu notes his own Partner Digimon is sleeping during the day despite being of a species that would've been wide awake now. Ryo had also vanished, but that was mercifully revealed to be under rather mundane circumstances fairly quickly. However, even then, Millenniumon is still unaccounted for, as only Ryo was directly addressed. And if one recalls Grandis being The Omnipresent, and that a Reality-Breaking Paradox would occur upon his death, one could merely assume the entire universe itself had experienced a glitch in which it outright went under a reboot to solve the problem, but was only able to correct certain "mistakes" and causes numerous other glitches to appear in their places, such as the aforementioned Partner Digimon behaving out of character all of a sudden\|\|. - The Phineas and Ferb fanfic Lovey-Dovey ends with the revelation that the whole thing was just Perry's dream. Then Monogram tells Perry that Doofenshmirtz has made a Lovey-Dovey-inator, and whether or not the dream comes true is up to interpretation. - The Rainbow Blade, a Nickelodeon fanon show was revealed to \|\|be a dream by the main character.\|\| However, Web uses his Rainbow Blade in several other series he appears in. - The Star Trek: New Voyages episode "To Serve All My Days", which involves Chekov undergoing Rapid Aging to the point where he may have died, \|\|has a final scene at the end of the closing credits that may suggest that most of the episode was All Just a Dream\|\|. - In the Invader Zim fic Asylum of Doom, Gaz falls down some stairs and hits her head while helping Dib investigate a supposedly haunted abandoned asylum. Upon seemingly waking up back in time, being treated as a patient in the asylum, she quickly deduces that it's some kind of nightmare brought about by guilt regarding an argument she had with Dib (over his beliefs making people think he's crazy), which appears to be confirmed when she wakes up from the ordeal back in the present. However, just before she and Dib leave the asylum, she thinks she sees the ghost of another patient she befriended during the "nightmare"; combined with an earlier comment by Dib about the asylum's ghosts giving people hallucinations, it's unclear just how much paranormal activity was at play here. - A long-ago fan artist did a very well-drawn Doonesbury saga in which Zonker falls asleep while watching Star Trek: The Original Series and dreams he's in one of their adventures. On a planet with beautiful hallucinogenic plants, he is entrusted with a flower from said world. When he wakes, he's disappointed — until he realizes he's holding the flower. Cue his happy Aside Glance to us. - The Spy X Family NSFW doujin "Whether Asleep or Awake" tells how Loid has been having erotic dreams involving Yor for the past several days, and is starting to wonder if he's falling in love with her. After accomplishing a mission with Frankie and parting ways after sharing a celebratory drink at a bar, Loid walks home and thinks of hiring a prostitute to "blow off some steam," but decides against it and goes home where he's grateful to have a family welcoming him back. After they put Anya to bed, Loid and Yor go to their respective bedrooms to sleep, and sometime later, Loid wakes up to find Yor naked and asking him to have sex. Thinking he's having a lucid dream Loid gets overly frisky to the point Yor gets nervous and knocks him to the ground by kicking him in the face, and after she apologizes for hurting him, they climb back onto the bed and have sex, falling asleep when they finish. The following morning, Loid wakes up and concludes the dreams mean that he is in love with Yor and decides to confess his feelings for her, but before he can say anything, Yor serves him a cup of tea. When Loid notices the tea tastes different, he asks Yor about it and she responds that a coworker went abroad for vacation and gave her the tea as a souvenir. When Loid sees the packaging, it's advertised to boost sex drive and after they finish their drinks, Yor strips down and comes on to him again, making him wonder if he's still asleep. - At the end of The Polar Express, the Hero Boy gets off the train, walks back into his house, and goes to bed. When he wakes up in the morning, he accidentally rips the pocket of his bedrobe the exact same way he did when he was woken up by the arrival of the train at the beginning of the film, implying that he dreamed the whole thing. Then his sister finds the sleigh bell he got from Santa at the North Pole under the Christmas tree... - This is what happens at the end of Barbie: A Fairy Secret. Once the main plot is finished, Barbie, Ken and Raquel are welcome to come back to Gloss Angeles whenever they want, but since Raquelle proves not to be a good secret keeper, Graciella tells them their memories of the whole adventure will be erased, and sends them home. They wake up, thinking it was all a dream, but Barbie and Raquel are now friends. In the last scene, Carrie and Taylor grow their fairy wings out of their sight before leaving. - In Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, a couple times Nemo wakes up in his bed, thinking that the whole adventure was a dream; only to find the Royal Scepter from his dream under the covers of his bed. - Peter Pan follows this trope when parents George and Mary return home from their party on the same night, to find Wendy asleep at the window. Nana licks her to wake her and she yawns before immediately telling her parents about what had happened (John and Michael, meanwhile, are still asleep and Nana and Mrs. Darling simply readjust their duvets). A pirate ship made of clouds sails across the moon shortly thereafter, only for the wind to break it into clouds itself. In the end it's left ambiguous whether Wendy and her brothers really did fly to Neverland or whether Wendy just dreamed it — although George, watching the ship, says he knows he's seen it before. - In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy hits her head before transporting to Oz, making the viewer think that Oz is a dream. However, Oz is a real place. - The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T: After Bart wakes up, both he and Mr. Zabladowski still have their thumbs bandaged from the Blood Oath they made in the dream-world. Mr. Zabladowski, not "remembering" the dream, doesn't know how it got there. - Jan Svankjamer's Alice has Alice wake up from her nightmare and find that the White Rabbit is missing from his case, leaving it ambiguous as to whether the events were real or if she's still dreaming. - Used in An American Carol, where the protagonist wakes up after being visited by the long-dead President JFK and thinks (desperately hopes) it was all a dream. - In Black Knight (2001), Jamal falls into a moat at a Medieval theme park and finds himself in the Middle Ages. He ends up saving the land from an usurper, finds a Love Interest, and is knighted by the Queen. Just then, the Queen shouts "clear!", and Jamal is shocked with defibrillator paddles by a paramedic who looks like the Queen. He assumes it was all a dream, but the experience turns his life around (he goes from a slacker out for easy money to a hard-working man with dreams who is taking night classes as the local community college). Six months later, he forgets the "dream" and meets a woman who looks remarkably like Victoria, his Love Interest from the "dream", whom he called Vicky. Unlike Vicky, Nicky speaks with an (over-the-top) American accent. He appears to recognize her from somewhere but can't remember where (he assumes he must've seen her at the community college where she works). He then notes a scar on her neck in the same place where Sir Percival drew Victoria's blood in the "dream". Nicky can't remember where she got the scar, only that it was a long time ago. He ends up chasing after her, falling into the same moat... and getting up in Ancient Grome being chased by lions in the Colosseum. - In Click, Adam Sandler falls onto a bed in Bed, Bath & Beyond, falling asleep for a couple of seconds, before going back to the loading dock and meeting Mort, who gives him the "Universal Remote." After fast-forwarding through (and missing) most of the important parts of his adult life, and finding his wife married to another man whom his daughter calls her 'second father', he dies of a heart attack, twenty-something years in the future. Later, he wakes up, back on the same bed in BB&B and makes his way home thinking it was all a dream. When he arrives home, he finds the same remote, with a note from Mort saying everyone deserves a second chance and that Mort knows he'll do the right thing, this time. Sandler's character promptly throws it into the trash, where it finally stays. - In Contact Eleanor Arroway is led to believe that the climax of the film was all just a dream brought on an anomalous effect of the Machine, and not an actual 18-hour trip to the Vega Star system, but a fall of several seconds. However, an investigator notes that, while the electro-magnetic interference could have caused her video camera to record static during the fall, it recorded 18 hours of it, meaning that something outside the normal laws of physics occurred when Elly dropped through the machine, it just wasn't recorded. - Dead End (2003), the ending of which is peppered with a mixture of references to things encountered in the 'dream' (A sign reading 'Marcott' in the dream, a doctor of the same name in the real world), characters dying in ways relevant to a pretty bad car accident and various other things, which seem to suggest pretty clearly that the film has been entirely dreamed up by the survivor from crash to hospital... until someone cleaning up from the accident locates something her father wrote during the 'dream'. - Dementia (1955) is a Mind Screw movie in which a woman kills a man, cuts his hand off (the man was clutching her necklace and she couldn't pry his fingers open), then eventually wakes up in a Catapult Nightmare. The narrator, who had actually said "All just a dream", then says "Or was it?", as the camera zooms in to a necklace hanging out of the woman's drawer. The woman then walks over and opens it and there's the severed hand—which closes around the necklace. - Dreamscape had a sequence like this. Where the hero and the girl, on getting on a train in real life, encounter a train conductor they had encountered in a dream sequence earlier in the movie. - Edward Scissorhands also does something similar. The Framing Device is a girl being told a story by her grandmother. The grandmother is in fact \|\|Edward's Love Interest, who states that before Edward's adventures, it never snowed. And it now does with regularity. It is in fact Edward carving snow sculptures in her memory, the ice flakes blowing over the town\|\|. What makes it ambiguous is that it could be a coincidence or she could be making that detail up. - The Golden Child. Sardo Numspa appears in Chandler Jarrell's dream, leaving a long burn on Jarrell's arm. When Chandler wakes up, the burn is real. - In Gozu, the protagonist has a strange dream where he is being licked by a man in underwear wearing a cow head. Then he wakes up via Catapult Nightmare and finds the leather pouch in his lap that he was given by the man in his dream. - A Haunting at Silver Falls: Jordan's ghost dreams begin to bleed into the real world. She wakes up from one with her finger covered in ghost saliva and her feet dirty from walking in the forest, and in another instance, the ghost begins to drown her in the bathtub; Anne and Kevin come in after hearing her scream to find her on the floor of the dry bathroom, soaking wet and unconscious. - Inception is built around this trope. Specifically, the characters go through various layers of dream-state as the film progresses, and the ending has them "waking up" from the dream state. But it's more ambiguous than that, because the main character, Dom, has a talisman that continues spinning indefinitely if he's in a dream, but eventually stops spinning if he's in real life. So, naturally, the last scene of the film shows the talisman spinning. And ends before we find out whether it stops. - Interstate 60 has an early scene with Neal getting hit on the head. After his brain injury, he has all sorts of crazy experiences on the mythical Interstate 60, including meeting (and consummating a relationship with!) his dream girl, Lynn. At the end of the movie, he meets Lynn in real life, but she has no memory of him. However, the painting he made during their romance is on display at the art competition that Lynn is running! - The ending of Krampus, after a night of horrible Christmas-themed monsters try to kidnap and send to hell an entire family, \|\|everything resets and the kid protagonist awakes in the normal Christmas morning and non of his relatives seem to remember anything unusual\|\|. Until he opens one of his presents (the one used to summon Krampus) and all the family gets quiet as the memory of what had happened suddenly comes back. - In The Mask, Stanley wakes up with the titular artifact in his pillow, and thinks the bizarre incidents caused by masking himself were just a dream. Then a policeman comes to his door, telling him a masked individual attacked the landlady and jumped out the window. - At the end of Masters of the Universe, everything seems to be returned to normal, until the female protagonist \|\|sees that her dead parents are still alive. She prevents the path that lead to their deaths in the old timeline, then she and her boyfriend joyfully look at the artifact the Sorceress gave them to remember Eternia\|\|. - Straight example in MirrorMask, when Valentine's real-world equivalent is introduced after the whole adventure, subverting And You Were There. - The Night Flier: At one point, Richard Dees has a nightmare about the vampire hovering over him as Richard is sleeping in his motel room. He wakes up and it turns out to be a dream... except immediately afterwards he finds out that the vamp left a warning written in blood on his window. - Invoked early on to establish the conflict in every single A Nightmare on Elm Street movie. - In the horror movie Nightwish, a scientist and his graduate students investigate lucid nightmares through sensory deprivation. The movie opens with someone being pursued in a dark alley by cannibals before waking up in a water tank. Most of the film then takes place in an Old, Dark House where they investigate paranormal occurrences, start hallucinating, and discover alien parasites that burrow in people's chests. \|\|At the end the female lead wakes up back in the laboratory after experiencing her own death. All seems normal until she tries to leave and finds herself back in the alien cave again. Like Schrödinger's Butterfly, she doesn't know if she's still dreaming or lost her sanity completely.\|\| - The 'fantasy' world in Pan's Labyrinth may or may not have been real. The ending presented a hint that it was not real, but Word of God said that it was. - The movie also presented a hint that it WAS real: \|\|namely Ophelia getting out of a locked second floor room. The camera shows the chalk 'door' she drew and used to get out according to Word of God\|\|. - The ending would be impossible if it wasn't for the magic. The Labyrinth must open to Ophelia for her to get away from Captain Vidal that quickly, leaving him confused at the dead end. - In The President's Analyst, the pressures of the job turn the title character paranoid to where he sees spies tailing him everywhere - he wakes up from a nightmare that his girlfriend is a spy. Shaken, he calls her on the phone, and as she soothingly talks to him she opens a drawer in her nightstand and switches on a tape recorder... - Prince of Darkness and its mirror ending, even though it does not technically show you the other side of the mirror, nor the anti-god, still leaves the possibility of the entire movie being (or not being) a dream open for debate. - The coda for Return to Oz has the scene where Dorothy touches her new bedroom's mirror, only to have a vision of Ozma and Billina manifest itself. - The Science of Sleep doesn't use this an ending trope. Stéphane has lots of dreams and it becomes difficult to know what is and isn't real... also due to the fact he isn't sure either. - Also in Scrooge, near the beginning. When ghost Marley takes Scrooge flying and a terrifying ghost flies toward them, Scrooge covers his face. He then looks around, sees that he's in his bedroom, and says aloud, "It was a dream." Then Marley announces his presence nearby. - This trope is a key part of Terry Gilliam's "Dreamer Trilogy", for self-evident reasons, as they are built specifically around Gilliam's belief in the power of imagination. - Time Bandits is the story of a young dreamer. At the end, Kevin is rescued from his burning room by firefighters, and is thus convinced that the entire weirdness was just a dream — and indeed the entire movie was filled with clues that everything was a dream inspired by the toys and decorations of his bedroom. Then he finds in his pocket the Polaroids he took of the events in the dream. Just before his parents are destroyed by a fragment of Evil in a broiler oven. The Father Figure he met in his dream gives him a wink as the camera pulls away. - The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is the story of an old dreamer, and it takes the trope to new levels. Throughout the movie, the city has been besieged, with cannon-fire falling like rain and a sense of doom in the air. Its titular Baron finishes his ridiculous yet hilarious and moving yarn by stating that though he died, Death Is Cheap to him and "everyone who had a talent for it lived Happily Ever After." He then \|\|mounts his horse and rides out of the city, which is as it had never been attacked. The townspeople are in awe, but his most devoted listener, Sally, states in wonder that, "It wasn't just a story, was it?". The Baron waves to them as he vanishes as if he was never there\|\|. - In Toothless, the ending shows Rogers in the mortal world as a crossing guard, and Bobby and Thomas both remember Katherine from her time as a tooth fairy. - The original Total Recall (1990) plays with this extensively. The protagonist Quaid goes to a place called Rekall, which can implant fake memories for people looking for an adventure but unable to actually have one. He wants a spy story, and he gets one — he wakes up in the same place, but now he's apparently accessed suppressed memories of actually being a spy and is being chased by other spies. He later encounters someone who claims to be from Rekall telling him that he's still in a virtual reality experience, but it's gone wrong and if he doesn't snap out of it he'll have to be lobotomized. And the films ends with \|\|a fade to white, in which he wakes up in his chair and asked if he enjoyed his vacation\|\|. So was it all a fake memory, or wasn't it? There's a lot of evidence in the film either way: - A lot of questions are raised by Quaid waking up screaming that the Rekall people blew his cover, the only time we see Quaid's "Hauser" persona outside of Quaid looking at a screen. Is this real or not? But if it's not real, where does it fit into the whole Rekall experience? - The escapade to Mars is part of Quaid's scenario if you look closely, and the specific title, \|\|"Blue Skies on Mars"\|\|, foreshadows how Quaid \|\|restores the Martian atmosphere and turns the sky blue\|\|. - Most of the characters whom Quaid meets on Mars appear in the movie sequences before the Rekall experience — even Quaid's Love Interest, who greatly resembles a news reporter Quaid spots on Earth. But not all of the characters do. The main doctor may or may not also be foreshadowing when he mentions "crooked taxi drivers". - Quaid is asked to describe a Love Interest for his fake memories when he first goes to Rekall. The woman he creates, "model 41", bears a near-perfect resemblance to the one we see on Mars. As for his actual wife, she seems oddly preoccupied with flushing the idea of a trip to Mars out of Quaid's head, as if she knows about Quaid's psychological issues — which makes a lot more sense if she's actually \|\|in league with the spies chasing Quaid\|\| in the "dream". - The lobotomy threat adds an extra layer on it — was he lobotomized or not? Even if it was a dream, did it really go wrong and end with his lobotomy, or was that all part of the dream, too? - In Wayne's World 2, the story gets kicked off by Wayne having a dream where a "weird, naked Indian" walks him through the desert to a meeting with Jim Morrison. Jim tells Wayne that he should put on an outdoor concert in Aurora, IL, and that he should go to London to seek out Del Preston, King of the Roadies, to ask him for his help. Also that Garth's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and Football Phone got lost in the mail and that Garth will be be receiving both shortly. When Wayne wakes up in the morning, Garth shows up with the phone and swimsuit issue. Later, when they find Del, he tells them he had the same dream Wayne did. note : This bit was adapted from Saturday Night Live, where more than once Wayne and Garth would emerge from a Flex-O-Tron vision to discover that one aspect of it had crept into real life. - The Wizard of Oz: - Early storyboards have the Ruby Slippers appear under the bed at the end. And even without this, there's the similarity of all the characters to people she really knows. - The 2011 Andrew Lloyd Webber-produced Screen-to-Stage Adaptation references this by having a gust of wind blow open a cabinet in the bedroom, revealing — if only to the audience — the Ruby Slippers. - In The Wolfman (2010), did Gwen really visit Lawrence in the Asylum or was she just a hallucination? - In Young Harry Houdini, Eric/Harry dreams that he escaped during a stunt. At the end of the film, he wakes up and is told that he had failed to escape and was knocked unconscious. He then reveals that he still has a crystal given to him during the dream. - The Astral Dawn series by Adam R. Brown. Caspian wakes up from his first surreal dream wondering if it truly was all a dream or if there was more to it than that. At some points during his first adventure, he's told "This is more than just your dream". Caspian later gets confirmation when he discovers his grandfather really had passed away. - Bruce Coville's Book of... Nightmares: The end of Halloween Party, as Michael awakens to find the broken stem of a punch glass from the titular party in his pocket. - There's a weird scene at the end of the Discworld novel Soul Music which has the feel of this ending (with Death of Rats and Albert popping up in the background), even though there's been no suggestion it might have been a dream. At the end of the novel, \|\|Death states that the events of the novel had happened, but also not happened. The guy who was the center of it all had been a rock star, and at the same time worked at a fish-and-chip takeaway\|\|. A small line in The Truth confirms that the Music With Rocks In incidents had happened, but the ultimate fate of the guy who initiated it was never known. - The Famous Five: Dick certainly wonders this in Five on a Hike Together, when he is sleeping in a barn, and a mysterious person outside calls him by his name, and gives him a message that he does not understand. When telling the others about it, they are convinced that it was a dream, until Dick remembers that he was given a piece of paper as well, which he then finds. - Near the end of Farther Up and Farther In, the hero wakes up in hospital thinking that all the weird stuff that happened before was a near-death hallucination. Until he opens his computer and finds it holds the story he wrote in Asgard at the start of Part 3... - In Ellen Raskin's Figgs and Phantoms Mona Lisa Figg realizes that she was briefly in her late uncle's version of heaven and not a dream or hallucination because said uncle's business partner didn't have a bald spot on the very top of his head. Mona herself had seen it many times while standing on her uncle's shoulders, but her uncle, being a midget, never even knew it was there. - Subverted in the Fly Guy book "Fly Guy and the Frankenfly", where it seems like a normal evening until Fly Guy claims he's too busy to go to bed and appears to create a giant zombie fly, but then Buzz wakes up and it's a dream. He then sees Fly Guy on his desk, but it turns out he was just drawing, so yes, it was a dream. - Gaunt's Ghosts: - Larkin's encounter with the angel in Ghostmaker. He explicitly describes his mental problems to her, and that he's not taking the drugs for them, but at the end, he sees the piece of white cloth she had given him to wrap about his gun, still there. - Inverted in Straight Silver. Gaunt and Beltayn meet a woman in the woods and borrow a car. When they go to return it, they find that not only the car but its keys have vanished. \|\|Gaunt later learns that her name was that of a woman who had served Saint Sabbat and had died centuries ago.\|\| - Ghosts I Have Been, a young adult novel, has the protagonist comfort a little boy who died on the Titanic. When she comes back from her "vision" in the school's office, she is clutching a Titanic blanket and is soaked in seawater. - In In The Night Kitchen, it seems as though Mickey dreamt the whole thing, but the last line says, "And now, thanks to Mickey, we have cake every morning." - Pretty much the point of Terry Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell Trilogy, especially the last book ( Johnny and the Bomb). To quote from the Word of God: There are natural explanations for a lot of the things that happen in the books, if you are desperate to find them (and people will sometimes go through some serious mental gymnastics to avoid changing their preconceived ideas about the universe). But I like to be equivocal about what is "real" and what isn't — to Johnny it's all real, and that's what counts. So: is what happens in the books real? Yes. Does it all happen in Johnny's head? Yes. Are the Dead a metaphor? Yes. Are they real? Yes. Not just waving, but particalling. - In Robert E. Howard's "The Shadow Kingdom", Kull teeters on the verge of believing this in the final scene, except when he sees Brule, which prevents him. - Mary Poppins: The title character constantly denies taking the Banks children on mystical adventures, but they often find signs that the adventures really happened. (One such sign also appears in Disney's second film adaptation of these books, Mary Poppins Returns.) - Played with all through The Midnight Folk. All the supernatural events end with Kay waking up, but the "mundane" adventure story (where he's definitely awake) only makes sense if the things he learns on these expeditions are true. - Nightmare Hour: "Nightmare Inn" features the protagonist Jillain having a run-in with Priscilla and James who are revealed to be two werewolves and fight over the right to eat her. After escaping with her life, she wakes up to find it was another nightmare. \|\|Then she sees a werewolf claw mark on Priscilla's cheek.\|\| - "Okuyyuki": The ending. Did Reilly \|\|die, become a kami and meet Audrey's spirit, or did he just die, period, hallucinating that in his last moments\|\|? - Otherland opens with a soldier engaged in trench warfare during World War I. Knocked unconscious, he experiences Jack and the Beanstalk, and wakes up in the trench, with a glowing feather as a reminder it was not a dream. - Out of the Silent Planet plays with this. Ransom falls ill after his return to Earth from Mars, and afterwards considers the possibility that his entire adventure on Mars was actually a fever dream. The argument isn't enough to convince him, but it's enough to make him realize that no one will believe his story, so he decides to keep it all to himself. Then a colleague finds a reference to Oyarsa (who Ransom spoke with on Mars) in a 12th century manuscript, and this convinces Ransom to tell his story. - Paprika is about a machine that lets you invade people's dreams, which glitches \|\|(later revealed to have been sabotaged)\|\| and brings reality and dreams together. Whether or not something is Up the Real Rabbit Hole is a more pressing question than Schrödinger's Butterfly. - In Pet Sematary, Louis dreams that the ghost of one of his dead patients shows up in his bedroom and takes him to the eponymous cemetery in order to give him a warning. When he wakes up, his feet are covered in mud. - Reality Check by David Brin manages an "or was it a story?" variation. Apparently eternal life is so boring that the immortal protagonist has voluntarily entered a Lotus-Eater Machine, and someone's trying to bring them out of it. The thing is, it's written in the second person — the protagonist is quite literally you, and the story is your wakeup call, the tone growing increasingly urgent as you fail to respond. Yes, it is as damaging to your sanity as it sounds. - The Saint story The Darker Drink plays with this on multiple levels. A man named Big Bill Holbrook claims to serve as the dream avatar of Andrew Faulk of Glendale, California. He encounters the Saint in the High Sierras. Holbrook claims that the personages from a recurring dream Faulk had have started to manifest in the waking world. Templar takes a jewel off of Holbrook. When thugs searching for Holbrook open fire on Templar, he loses consciousness. When he awakens later, he has no injuries, but still feels the jewel he took from Holbrook in his pocket. When he searches for Andrew Faulk in Glendale, he discovers that Faulk died after slipping into a coma. Templar intends to show Faulk's widow the jewel from Holbrook, but it has disappeared from his pocket. - Gregory Benford's short story "Sleepstory" features a space pilot fighting a war on Ganymede who gets a little compressed downtime with a dream-guiding narrative system, telling a story about an engineer in Los Angeles trying to fix breaches in the dams that keep the Global Warming-afflicted seas from flooding the city ...or possibly the other way round. - In the Sweet Valley High version of A Christmas Carol, Jessica wakes up on Christmas morning after dreaming that the ghosts visited her in the night, only she can't find her left slipper (which fell off while she was with the Ghost of Christmas Present) and her ankles are covered in scratches (she walked barefoot through a forest while with the Ghost of Christmas Future). - In Tempted, Zoey comes to this conclusion when it turns out the locations Kalona has been choosing as the back-drop of their dreams together reveal his actual location. - The Thomas & Friends book, "Thomas and the Beanstalk" parodies the story of Jack and the Beanstalk by having Thomas climb up a beanstalk that grew from the beans in his trucks after Diesel 10 knocked them off the rails. In the Giant's castle, Thomas meets a golden engine who is being held prisoner by the Giant and a giant Diesel 10 (big enough for the Giant to ride inside) and tries to rescue her. At the end of the book, the events appear to have all been a dream from Thomas, but then Thomas' driver finds a piece of golden coal from the golden engine in his bunker. - In Time Cat, after traveling all throughout time and history via the powers of his talking, magical cat, the protagonist wakes up at home from a nap to find that his cat doesn't talk at all. \|\|But he still has an ankh that he kept from when the two were in ancient Egypt.\|\| - Philip K. Dick's Ubik has a variation that may well have inspired several other examples on this page. Characters after death can go into a state called "half-life", which is in many ways comparable to a dream state; in particular, half-life is subject to a number of Reality Warping possibilities that don't seem to be possible in the setting's real world. The story kicks off with the characters' Benevolent Boss, Glen Runciter, apparently being killed in an "accident" (though it's implied that it was likely engineered by one of his rivals). However, as the story progresses, it becomes apparent that the main characters are actually the ones in half-life, as aspects of their reality keep shifting (one Chekhov's Gun is that they start seeing Runciter's face on their currency). Furthermore, Runciter eventually contacts them from the real world. So naturally, the safe assumption is that the characters were actually the ones killed and that Runciter is all right, no? Well, not so fast. The last chapter, from Runciter's perspective, have him noticing that the face on his currency has changed: the book's protagonist, Joe Chip, is now on his currency. So who's actually in half-life? Runciter? The rest of the cast? Everyone? No one? Good luck figuring it out. - The book What's a Gonzo? based on Muppet Babies (1984) focuses on Gonzo apparently going into an alternate universe behind the mirror where everybody looks like him and their names rhyme with his name but not even they know their own species and even a supposedly all-knowing robot gives names when asked "what am I?" rather than species. Gonzo, however, is satisfied with not knowing his species and they drink milkshakes. It ends with Fozzie shaking Gonzo awake, indicating it was a dream, but then Gonzo states that he is not hungry because he's just had the milkshake. - Walker, Texas Ranger: The dream episode near the end of Season 9's "Blood Diamonds" ends with this possibility with Alex waking up from a nightmare she has about Trivette, later \|\|Walker\|\| being killed by the villains, but the moment Alex sits down to breakfast, \|\|she finds that Walker is actually on the case from her dream. One can pretty much call this a Groundhog Day moment for Alex\|\|. - 7 Days (1998): The end of the Run Lola Run-inspired episode "Deja Vu All Over Again" has a Cuckoo Nest variant. Did the events of the series take place, or is Frank Parker still locked up in the ward? - "The Red Hat of Patferrick", one of the "Gelliant Gutfright Presents..." The Twilight Zone (1959) spoofs in A Bit of Fry and Laurie, is about a publisher who receives a mysterious phone call about the Red Hat of Patferrick, which inspires his secretary to commit suicide, and then another call that his wife has been killed by the hat itself. Then he wakes up and it was all a dream. And then he does receive a call about the Red Hat of Patferrick, so he throws himself out the window. And then his caller turns out to be Gelliant Gutfright himself, trying to sell The Red Hat of Patferrick, a story about a publisher who has a strange dream... - An episode of Bonanza had Little Joe come across a small prairie town where the townsfolk make him their sheriff and put him in charge of driving out a mob of bandits that have been terrorizing the town. Little Joe has quite the time convincing the townfolk they have to help him. In the battle to come, Little Joe is knocked off his horse. When he comes to, he's laying in the desert with his family nearby saying they'd been looking for him for days. When Little Joe tells them what happened, his father tells him the town is a ghost town that no one has lived for years. He takes his family back to the town to prove it's real, only to find abandoned buildings. Joe's brothers are convinced he had heat stroke and hallucinated it all. Ben says it doesn't matter; they're all back together and going home. Joe saddles up, ready to go, and realizes he still has his sheriff's badge. - The Boy Meets World episode "And Then There Was Shawn" turned out to be an extended dream Shawn was having of some maniac in a skull mask killing everyone in detention to make sure Corey and Topanga stayed together. The killer was revealed to be Shawn... by Shawn. After he wakes up and everyone leaves Mr. Feeny's classroom... the killer emerges from behind the computer stand and departs the room. - Since the last thing we see in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Normal Again" is \|\|the insane asylum where Buffy had spent much of the episode "hallucinating" that she was a patient, accompanied by a doctor pronouncing that she's lapsed back into catatonia\|\|, it's left to the viewer whether the previous six seasons were real, or a psychotic hallucination. Word of God (Joss Whedon) is that he personally believes that the events are real. - Very creepily done in an episode of Carnivàle that involved the protagonist getting drugged by a creepy mask maker who wants to make a mask out of his face, then waking up with the guy claiming he had fallen asleep and must have had a bad dream. Ben is suspicious, but he never finds out the truth. The guy's occupation was making death masks, which are done by pouring plaster on the corpse's face, and it's implied that after retiring he became a serial killer who killed dozens of children by drowning them in plaster, as he made the masks out of them. - Cheers: At the end of one episode, Sam reveals to Diane that his blue-collar party-guy image is just to fool his friends. In private, he's cultured, refined, wears a smoking jacket, smokes a pipe, and composes classical music. Diane loves it — until she wakes up in Sam's office. Then, on his desk she sees a pipe... but it's a subversion: it's a bubble pipe. - One episode of The Colbert Report opened with Steve Carell (Stephen's Sitcom Arch-Nemesis on The Daily Show) having his own show- "The Carell Corral". Stephen bursts in, demanding an explanation. Steve tells him that Stephen had left to make movies and other shows (essentially switching out their respective careers) and pointing out that Stephen has a hoof for a hand. After a Big "NO!", Stephen wakes up, relieved to find himself on his own set with everything back to normal... except that he still has a hoof for a hand. - At the end of the Community episode "Epidemiology", Troy receives a hint that more happened than just being roofied for no reason in the form of a voice mail sent during the night by Chang, \|\|claiming he and Shirley did it in the bathroom\|\|. Troy doesn't understand the relevance only wondering why Chang would tell him about it despite \|\|the sounds of the zombies attacking at the end\|\|. - One particularly odd episode of CSI: Miami has Calleigh critically injured during a case. She finds herself a walking spirit interacting with the ghost of the victim while her physical body fights for its life in a hospital. In this state, she finds a critical clue just as she is brought back to consciousness. She wakes up thinking of a hint that leads to the clue, but no memory of how she got it. Horatio Caine figures that she saw it before she was injured, and her subconscious brought it to the forefront while she was in a coma. And that would be the accepted explanation... If the victim's ghost hadn't appeared one more time (unseen by anyone) at the end of the episode... - Doctor Who: The 2014 Christmas special "Last Christmas" is full of shared dreams and dreams within dreams. Throughout, the big clue that the protagonists are dreaming is the presence of Santa Claus. The closing shot of the episode is a tangerine note : The tradition of leaving tangerines in the bottom of Christmas stockings had already been brought up multiple times on Clara's windowsill. Are they still dreaming? Or is Santa real? - The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: - In a Halloween themed episode Will Smith wakes up from his nightmare (where he was "hexed" into causing horrible luck to everyone around him causing him to thrown out of the house) and goes to breakfast. At the breakfast table, every character repeats the exact same lines they said in the first scene of that episode with Will realizing this and trying to convince them to say other things and finally culminating in a Big "NO!". It's a very Groundhog Day moment for Will. - In another episode Will breaks Jazz's concentration during a poker game by telling him a story about having witnessed a murder forcing him to go into Witness Protection in Alabama. He admits the lie to Jazz and makes off with his money...only for the killer to later suddenly show up in front of Will. Will runs...and it turns out to be Jazz in disguise (somehow looking EXACTLY like the killer Will imagined). - Two episodes of Growing Pains have done this. - In "This Was Your Life", Ben dreads the idea of having his tonsils removed - leading Ben to state that he doesn't "want to be a Seaver". After a cab driver brings him home, he discovers that his life was replaced with that of another boy. After waking up from his surgery, he sees the boy who replaced him on a gurney. - In "Meet The Seavers", Ben is upset that his parents don't remove his punishment - even after hugging them, and saying that he loves them. As a result, he wishes that he could be in a TV show. He then finds himself on the set of Meet the Seavers - which is very similar to, well, Growing Pains. After he wakes up, he's relieved to be home. However, after turning on the television set, Mike/Kirk begs Ben to let him out. - Though not quite a dream, one episode of Hustle hinted that the fake story they sold to a newspaper wasn't so fake after all. - The Late Late Show ended its final episode with Ferguson waking up in bed next to Drew Carey, apparently dreaming that he had been a late-night show host with a robot and a fake horse for the past few years. After discussing the dream for a bit, the two go back to sleep, only for the camera to zoom in on the snow-globe on Ferguson's nightstand. It features himself, Geoff, and Secretariat inside. - The BBC show Life on Mars (2006), and its sequel Ashes to Ashes (2008) have this trope as one of their central themes. Whether Sam Tyler (and later Alex Drake) has truly gone to the past, or is simply having a coma hallucination is played with throughout the series. (\|\|It's neither, but closer to the second one.\|\|) - Lost: - Subverted with Claire's dream in the episode "Raised By Another". Claire dreams about a crib full of blood, which she gets all over her hands. Then when she wakes up screaming, her hands are covered in blood! But after the commercial we find out she just dug her fingernails into her palms because of the terror of the dream. - Not to mention her claims that she was approached by a man in the night, which everyone shrugs off as a dream until she gets kidnapped... - Also the flashback of Hurley at the mental institution involving Libby in season 2. Whether this was real or imaginary has yet to be resolved. - MacGyver: - The title character once got knocked in the head pushing a guy out of the way of a falling flower pot which led to a Wizard of Oz-style dream adventure where he went to Arthurian England, encountered Merlin, gave him his pocket knife and at one point possibly inspired the invention of scissors. At the end he is revived, and all is back to normal... except a paramedic who looks just like Merlin is there, the bride of the guy he saved also looks like a woman from the dream and the paramedic has scissors and a pocket knife just like Mac's. He then reaches for his pocket (presumably for the knife) and an object from the dream is inexplicably there. Hmmm... This was a bit of a self-parody, since the show was already notorious for reusing actors of minor characters in very obvious ways, for no other reason than cheapness. - A similar plot happens earlier, when he dreams of being in the Old West, and then wakes up and finds the bullet-holed Swiss army knife that saved his life in the dream. This may have been a reference to the Bugs Bunny Looney Tunes ep. listed below in the Western Animation section, which involved Merlin the wizard being changed into a horse. - One of the last episodes of Married... with Children had Al Bundy selling his soul to Lucifer. After Al and his whole family end up in Hell, they spend three centuries being tortured with ironic punishments before they finally ask if there's a way to escape. The Devil gives Al, among other things, a box of Red Hot candies, and challenges him to a football game for the family's freedom. Al then wakes up and realizes it was all a dream...but then he reaches into his pocket and discovers a box of Red Hots... - In the first three seasons of Pretty Little Liars, Posthumous Character Alison would occasionally appear to her friends under circumstances where the friend would think they were dreaming or hallucinating, but always either left something behind that indicated she was really there or did something that, regardless of the ambiguous circumstances, someone obviously did (e.g., rescuing Emily from suffocation). In the fourth season, the girls are sufficiently unsure if Alison's actually dead or alive that they're determined to figure out which it is. \|\|She's alive, and all her appearances (except one that was an obvious figment of Hanna's imagination) were real.\|\| - Round the Twist tends to do this as the ending for any episode that turned out to be All Just a Dream. What usually happens, is the dreamer discovers that he or she still has an item that they gained during the dream, and the episode ends there and then. - A Saturday Night Live "Wayne's World" sketch has Wayne dreaming a "Summer of '42" fantasy with Garth's hot mom (Candice Bergen). Garth angrily enters the fantasy and "shoots" Wayne (leveling a shotgun and shouting 'Ka-BOOOM!'). Wayne wakes up and declares "It was just a dream...[sees the grocery bags from the fantasy on the floor]...OR WAS IT? WOOOOAAAHHHH!" - Star Trek: Enterprise: The episode "Carbon Creek" is framed as a story T'Pol tells Archer and Trip about her ancestor T'Mir. It's a bit of a tall tale involving Vulcans meeting humans well before historical First Contact; Archer likens it to hearing that Neil Armstrong wasn't really the first man on the moon. They end up suspecting T'Pol made the whole thing up, and her vague answers seem to confirm this. But then we see her in her quarters contemplating T'Mir's handbag. T'Pol also claims in the episode that her ancestor "invented" Velcro by selling a Vulcan pouch with the fastener to a businessman. - Treadstone: Doug McKenna, who unknown to himself is a Treadstone Manchurian Agent, has a nightmare of being chained up underwater, and fighting another man in similar straits for the key to release his chains before he drowns. He wakes up and examines a faint circular cuff scar around his ankle. - The Twilight Zone (1959): - In the episode "Where Is Everybody?", a man finds himself trapped in a deserted town. The Twist Ending is that the man is an Air Force pilot training for astronaut duty in an isolation booth, and he hallucinated the entire experience. When Rod Serling adapted "Where Is Everybody?" for a book of short stories based on his Twilight Zone scripts, he changed the ending slightly: after the pilot leaves the isolation booth, he inexplicably finds a ticket from a movie theater in the empty town in his pocket. - In "King Nine Will Not Return", a former pilot hallucinates that he's in the North African desert at the site where his WW2 bomber crashed (he didn't go on the bombing mission because he was ill). When he's brought to a hospital, the doctors find desert sand in his shoes. - The "horror special" episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps involves the main characters sneaking into their soon-to-be-closed local pub and invoking a curse which will cause them to be killed by the things they love most. At the end of the episode, one of the characters, Janet, wakes to find that it was All Just a Dream. However, this is followed by a shot of her biscuit-loving husband, Jonny (subsequently Killed Off for Real), whose head has been replaced by a giant Jammy Dodger. - Victoria Wood's Midlife Christmas is dedicated to the real "Barrys and Fredas", and occasionally cuts to a typical Barry and Freda watching the show. For the final skit, Victoria explains that she wanted a huge extravaganza, but they didn't have the budget, so she's just going to play her Signature Song, "The Ballad of Barry and Freda" at the piano, and invite the audience to imagine that there's a set and dancers and so on. Then an elaborate set appears around her and Barry and Freda step into the show, reveal they're wearing sparkling leotards under their dressing gowns, and lead a dance line of Barrys and Fredas. Once the song is over, Victoria is back on a bare stage, and Barry and Freda are back on their couch ... and then Freda's dressing gown falls open to show she's still wearing the leotard. - The Wheel of Time (2021): Rand, Mat, Egwene, and Perrin have dreams in which a cloud of bats are killed, only to wake up and find it true. Moiraine warns that dreams can be more dangerous than they know. - The Wild Wild West episode "The Night of the Man-Eating House". Near the beginning, the characters discover and approach the title house. After a series of terrifying events, at the end the characters wake up and discover that the horrific events in the house were all just a nightmare. In the last scene, they find themselves approaching the house again. - In the Wonder Showzen skit "Aunt Flo", it seems as though a girl of about twelve has gotten her first period and thinks she's dying but then an anthropomorphic Aunt Flo takes her to another dimension to inform her about periods and it's full of people like the "Crampies" (who make cramps) and the "Hormone Brothers" (who cause PMS). Then, she nearly drowns and a Crampy saves her, kisses her, and "Aunt Flo" melts and she wakes up having actually gotten her first period. This seems like the kind of dream a girl might have after she had a sex ed class, but then a mysterious voice (that sounds nothing like Aunt Flo's) says, "You're a woman now." - The Young Ones: - One episode ended with Neil about to get beaten up, then waking up and saying to camera "Oh. It was all just a dream." The credits roll over shots of him getting out of bed, but when they end he wakes up again, about to get his face smashed in. He only dreamed about it being only a dream. - In 'Summer Holiday', he daydreams about undergoing a Hulk transformation and getting revenge on his flatmates — he is awoken from it by Vyvyan asking what's happened to his clothes... - Aaron Carter's kiddie-pop hit "How I Beat Shaq", about his dream where he played the basketball player and won: But if it was a dream, and it wasn't real, How'd I get a jersey with the name O'Neal? - "#9 Dream" by John Lennon contains the line: Was it just a dream? - The end of Supertramp's "Even in the quietest moments" also contains the line Was it just a dream? - D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's "Nightmare On My Street," a musical tribute to the "Nightmare On Elm Street" series, ends this way. He jumped on my bed, went through the covers with his claws Tried to get me, but my alarm went off And then silence... It was a whole new day I thought, "Huh, I wasn't scared of him anyway!" Until I noticed those rips in my sheets And that was proof that there had been a nightmare on my street - - While it's a suitable ending on its own, the extended version actually continues to \|\|a spoken-word scene of the rapper trying to call Jeff and warn him, only for Jeff to shrug him off and go back to sleep until Freddy audibly appears and violently kills him before declaring that he's the DJ now\|\|. - "We Damn The Night" by Helloween — Blood on my pillow. Blood on my skin. Am I going mad Or was this a dream? - Electric Light Orchestra's concept album "Time"- it tells the story of a man being transported from 1981 to 2095 it is never specified whether he traveled into the future or if it was a dream. - The video for the Nelson song "After the Rain" has a young man being screamed at by his abusive Fantasy-Forbidding Father — he's a worthless dreamer who will never amount to anything, blah blah. Putting on his headphones, he has an intense dream-vision of the Nelsons pulling him into an alternative dimension. He's counseled by a Native American holy man, who gives him a feather and sends him to a brightly lit cavern where the Nelsons play to an enthusiastic crowd. (We've seen he has a guitar, so he may have had some kind of setback in his career and the lyrics are encouraging him to continue.) At song's end he wakes up and finds the feather. - Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video. A young woman, after walking out of a horror movie only to be pursued by dancing zombies, wakes up screaming. Michael comforts her and offers to take her home. As they leave, he turns around to reveal his evil eyes accompanied by Vincent Price's signature Evil Laugh as the video ends. - The music video for Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" depicts its heroine going through what seems to be a very strange dream that has something to do with a boarding school... and then its final scene has her greeting what appears to be a graduating class, normal as anything — until one of their number's eyes suddenly starts glowing like the ones in her dream, to her and another witness' visible surprise. "Mullet with headlights? Over-surprised guy!..." - Lindsey Stirling's video, "Hold My Heart", features a genderbent Alice falling down a rabbit hole, chasing a rabbit, picking up a stopwatch, and watching a tea party. In the end of the video, Alex wakes up from that dream, but realizes that the stopwatch is still in his jacket. - In The Magnus Archives the narrator of "Alone" isn't sure her experience wasn't merely in her imagination... except for a carved fragment of stone that she retrieved. - The Calderon play La vida es sueño ("Life is a Dream") has protagonist Segismundo spending most of the play wondering what parts of his life have been reality and which dreams (of course, this is primarily to do with his father messing with him). He comes to the conclusion: Segismundo: Que toda la vida es sueño, y los sueños, sueños son. ("For all of life is a dream, and dreams themselves are merely the dreams of dreams.") - Many versions of The Nutcracker end with Clara waking up in her living room or bedroom, indicating that her adventures were All Just a Dream, but some editions have her discovering a trinket that was given to her at some point—a ring, a crown, etc., resulting in this trope. Some other stagings of the final scene also have her meet Drosselmeyer's nephew, who looks just like the Nutcracker Prince from her dream. - Used at the end of The Musical Starmites, where a mother reassures her daughter that she just had a crazy dream, not a musical adventure set in a sci-fi comic, prompting the daughter to sing a song titled "It Wasn't a Dream." And to drive the point home, as mother and daughter share a hug, the Big Bad pops up from behind the girl's bed just as the show ends. - At the end of the game of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom awakens in the schoolhouse to find three feathers from Injun Joe. - Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble begins with Bugs sleeping and having a dream where Yosemite Sam, as a mad scientist, has invented a serum that makes carrots gigantic as part of his plan to capture him. At the end of the game, Bugs awakens from his dream and finds the giant carrot in his bed. - This is the ending of Chrono Cross if you end the final boss battle correctly. A very confused Serge will wake up next to his girlfriend on the same beach where the plot kicked off, with her telling him that he fell asleep for a few minutes and never left her side. - Deltarune: At the end of the first chapter, Kris and Susie manage to get to the Eastern Fountain that will send them back home from the Dark World into their world. After closing off the fountain, Kris and Susie end up in an unused class room with a chess board, playing cards, and some toys that look like the characters they encountered. Both clearly experienced the same thing, met the same people, and fought against countless enemies, yet it is still ambiguous whether it was a dream or not both to the player and the characters. - In Digital Devil Saga, this is used for the fight with the ultimate opponent. If one returns to an early-game dungeon's basement filled with toxic gas at the end of a second playthrough, a certain room will cause the protagonists to pass out. Immediately after, the game cuts to a battle with \|\|the Demi-fiend from Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne\|\|. If you manage to win, the game cuts to the party waking up, thinking they hallucinated. It's at that point where they see a dying message on the floor that wouldn't look out of place in \|\|Nocturne\|\|. - The Flash room escape game Game in Game in Game is about a room escape fan who wakes to find he's really locked in his bedroom. At the end of the game, this turns out to be All Just a Dream, but when he runs through one of the puzzles he solved, he gets the same clue. - Giana Sisters DS: After beating the Final Boss, Giana wakes up in her bed. It looks like Giana dreamed the whole adventure up, but the big red diamond -which she did not own previously- found in her treasure box suggests otherwise. - Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. \|\|Roxas is with Organization XIII for 358 days. However, he wakes up (in the simulated Twilight town) and considers the events a dream. The evening he goes to sleep and the morning he wakes up is over 2 days.)\|\| Note that he doesn't consider the events a dream. He can't even remember what happened when he was in the Organization. - The Legend of Zelda: - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening: The game's setting is a dream of the Wind Fish, and Link has to wake it up from inside in order to leave. If you beat the game without dying, at the end of the credits you see the character Marin flying around. The implication in this case is not that it wasn't a dream, but that one person from the dream became real (having wished during the game to become a seagull and travel the world). The DX version changes this to a picture of Marin that fades into a seagull, which flies off. - The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass ends with \|\|Link waking up aboard the pirate ship he began the game in, the shipmates oblivious to the events of the entire game and insisting that only a few moments have passed, but when Link peers to the horizon, he sees the ship of his ally in the game sailing away. Oh, and he still has the titular (now empty) hourglass\|\|. - A couple of Mickey Mouse games pull off this trope in the endings of certain games: - In Land of Illusion, Mickey falls asleep while reading a book of fairy tales, and has a dream where he winds up in the world from its stories, which is being ruled by an evil sorcerer called the Phantom. At the end of the game, after defeating the Phantom and recovering the magical crystal he stole, Mickey is rewarded with a kiss from the Good Princess Minnie. After the game's closing credits sequence, Mickey wakes up with lipstick marks on his cheek. - In Mickey's Ultimate Challenge, a similar thing happens as in the above example, except he fell asleep while in bed, and is magically transported to the Kingdom of Beanwick to help solve the earthquake crisis. After finding out that the earthquakes are caused by a snoring giant, he awakens the giant with an alarm clock and befriends him. When Mickey wakes up back in bed, he took a gander at his book to see how it ended, and to his surprise it ended exactly how it did prior, leaving Mickey confused. - In Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse, a ghost from a parallel universe lures an astral projection of Mickey while he's asleep in bed to his own world, trapping Mickey within the mirror world while the ghost shatters the mirror and sends its pieces flying across the mansion. After collecting all of the shards, the ghost apologizes for his actions and Mickey invites him to come along back to his room. When Mickey returns to his sleeping body and wakes up the next morning, he dismisses the events as only a dream and left the room, but did not notice the ghost hanging around the ceiling fan. - Monster Party: After beating the final boss, Mark wakes up from the disturbingly horrible nightmare that was his "reward", implying it was all a dream... at least until he's leaving home for school and finds \|\|Bert, who is waiting outside holding Mark's baseball bat and tells him "Let's go again!"\|\| - Mr. Saitou: The majority of the game is presented as a dream Mr. Saitou has while recovering in the hospital. At the end of the game when he's ready to leave, \|\|the doctor hands him a get well soon card made by Brandon featuring a llamaworm with a cake tie, a sky bud, and a bunch of characters they met on their journey\|\|. - In Nightmare Ned, everything supernatural is obviously a Dream Sequence, and the same seems to go for the game at first. \|\|After a fashion, it was a dream of some sort, but the "shadow creatures" in it were very much real. In the good ending when Ned conquers his fears they're stranded outside his head, still alive but uncertain what to do next.\|\| - Whether you complete Night Of The Blood Moon or get a game over, it is revealed that the Tormented Girl is real. \|\|Dying in the dream has her ghost kill you in real life.\|\| - In the intro to Phantasmagoria, the protagonist Adrienne wakes up from a nightmare to find that it was All Just a Dream. After a few seconds of relief, a Hannibal mask is wrapped around her face. It wasn't a dream! Oh wait, yes it was. Seconds later, she wakes up again. - In Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, if you get a special item, you are granted access to an abandoned inn, where your trainer falls asleep. In your dream, you go to New Moon Island and fight/capture Darkrai. When you wake up, he's still in your PC box/party... - Scratches has two dream sequences, the first one shows the location of a secret door along with the tool that must be used to open it. - In the fifth episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Strong Bad awakens at the end, apparently having dreamed almost the entire episode... \|\|until he sees that Trogdor is still rampaging around.\|\| - Super Mario Bros. 2, considering many of the enemies (and characters) reappeared in actual Mario games in the non-dream Mushroom World, and considering the intro has Mario and co. enter a cave which matches the land from Mario's dream during a picnic. The psuedo-sequel BS Super Mario USA torpedoes the whole question by confirming that the entire game was real. - Touhou Project fangame Concealed the Conclusion plays with this: \|\|while the series' events are played as a Dream Sequence and the game ends with a Dream Apocalypse, in the Extra and Phantasm stages Gensokyo is restored (at least partially), and the heroines return there\|\|. - In Tsukihime along several paths Shiki wonders if he's a killer as he sees himself murdering people in dreams who turn up dead the next day. \|\|Except in Kohaku's route, he was just watching someone else do it. But at least this time he gets to have a nice friendly chat with SHIKI about society, his eyes and coffee after they try killing each other.\|\| - Marcus Kane (Roadkill)'s ending in Twisted Metal 2 shows him waking up in a hospital being greeted by his family, the titular competition having all just been Adventures in Comaland. The other competitors are in the same hospital room, shown to be in comas of their own, except they haven't woken up. Everything points to this being reality, except for the laughter of Calypso, host of the tournament, at the end. - In A Witch's Tale, the second playthrough ends with Liddell waking up from a dream, but she still has Anne's necklace. - One of the endings to Yo-Jin-Bo has Sayori waking up in bed, assuming the entire adventure to have been a dream... and then discovering the princess's diary in the ruins the next day (don't ask how the ink survived 150 years under a lake...), making her realize it wasn't just a dream after all. - Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers: - The short film "Abyssal" by Bogleech pulls a particularly cruel example of this trope, when the protagonist, trapped in a deep sea nightmare of fish monsters swims desperately to a portal to his bedroom while a monster slowly closes in on him. He arrives in his bed, then relaxes and lies down to fall back asleep... blissfully unaware that it's all an illusion and he's being digested alive in the monster's stomach. - Episode 7 of the webtoon Deep Fried Live has Chef Tako being kidnapped by aliens and forced to cook steak. At the end of the episode, he wakes up back in his kitchen on Earth, seemingly discovering it was All Just a Dream; however, it turns out shortly after that that was just a hallucination (possibly brought on by head trauma), and he really is still on the alien ship. - This Dorkly animation has Mario wake up and feel glad that his franchise isn't owned by Sega... only for Luigi to inform him that they're owned by Ubisoft instead. Cue Big "NO!". - Used in the finale of The Land Before Time YouTube Poop Rock Falls, Everyone Dies (no relation to the trope); \|\|at the fifth alternative ending Pterano, after touching the cold fire stone, becomes an Evangelion style angel\|\|. Littlefoot wakes up; take 3 guesses of what happens next. - In Black Adventures, everything that happened in the first two chapters was just a dream...but a wandering Mushama turned it into reality. Now we have Hitler running around in the present. - General Protection Fault had several arcs that were obviously dreams, and one that had a scene like this. At the end of the Secret Agent Geek arc, Nick and Ki are running to escape the bomb, when suddenly Nick wakes up. Strangely, Ki had a similar dream. When they mention it to Fooker, he scoffs at the story as being inherently ridiculous. After they leave, he speaks into his communicator/underwear: "Good news, Amadeus. They don't remember a thing." - In Gunnerkrigg Court, Antimony's confrontation with the Ghost with the Sword looks for all the world like a dream, but Annie speaks about it afterwards as if it really happened. And the cut on her cheek that Annie received from the Ghost briefly reappeared, visible to a girl who sees things that shouldn't be there. It eventually turned out that \|\|the spirits who escort the dead arranged for Annie to receive the blinker stone so that she could help free the ghost to pass on\|\|. - Housepets! hung a lampshade on this, yet the character was still surprised to find a huge gigantic griffon feather in the couch. - Just Another Escape, Solina's encounter with the dragon Abraxas ends with her waking up and looking out her window, and the metal flower from the dream is clearly seen. - The Petri Dish has a series of strips concerning some sentient potatoes called the Tubernati. It appears to be Thaddeus Euphemism's dream, but then a living potato is actually seen. However, sentient food is common in The Petri Dish because of Thaddeus's crazy experiments, so it would make sense even if it was only a dream. - In Rhapsodies, while Kevin seems to know hes dreaming during the annual Christmas Story there is just enough circumstantial evidence to make him wonder things like waking up in a different country. - In Tales of the Questor, Quentyn assumes that his dream about a glowing white stag licking his forehead and telling him "Be what God made you to be" was just his subconscious psyching him up. But as his forelock starts to turn white, it becomes increasingly clear that it was real. - Don't Hug Me I'm Scared: - In the final shot of "Time", the entire sequence is revealed to be the TV show that Red Guy was waiting to watch... although you can still see the Duck Guy's rotting eyeball in the corner of the room. - Happens again in "Love", after Yellow Guy wakes up from his terrible nightmare about a cult trying to persuade him to join and find his "special one", his friends offer him an egg which hatches into a bloody worm-like creature that yells "Father!", before being smashed by Duck Guy. - Parodied in The Misadventures of Skooks. After Fred wakes up from a dream involving Skooks giving Shaggy a handjob, Shaggy requests Skooks for one in real life, much to Fred's shock. - The online Murdoch Mysteries Spin-Off The Murdoch Effect features Murdoch jumping from 1899 to 2012 whenever he suffers a blow to the head, solving the same crime in both time periods. At the end, he's back in the 19th century and is almost convinced it was a dream, when a strange buzzing comes from his pocket. He pulls out a cellphone, with a picture of himself and the 21st century versions of George and Julia. - In the online video Sesame Street presents the 80s, the pastiche of "Take On Me" ("Bake Cookies"), complete with rotoscoped trapped-in-a-comic-book gimmick, is presented as a dream Cookie Monster has ... except that as he's explaining this, the Muppet version of Bunty Bailey is shown in the background trying to work out why she's suddenly holding a cookie. - Alfred J. Kwak: - Alfred's adventure with the Chess pieces were all just dreams... or so it seems, until the White Queen talks to him after she's put back on the board at the end. - After Alfred's experience with a witch trying to marry him turns out to be a nightmare, he takes Winnie out for an evening walk. He almost gets a Heroic BSoD (he snaps out of it pretty quickly) when he briefly spots the witch flying on her broom. - Used on Arthur in the story "D.W.'s Name Game." D.W. has a nightmare in which she learns you couldn't meet people names and meets a dinosaur called Thesaurus. (It's one word!) She then wakes up and tells her family that she had this dream and about all the people were in it. She then says "and you were in it too" and Thesaurus appears at the window and says "Aw, sheesh!" - The Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Shadow of the Bat!". After being bitten by the vampire Dala, vampire!Batman turns almost all the members of the Justice League into vampires. The Martian Manhunter moves their base close enough to the Sun to incinerate them. However the scene cuts to black and then to Batman waking up, back to normal. He looks at Jason Bard and Martian Manhunter, saying that it was nothing but a hallucination caused by Dalas bite. It's unknown if Batmans experience as a vampire was just a dream or real. - Played with while Beavis and Butt-Head are watching the video for "Nightmares" by Violent Femmes near the end of the episode "Cow Tipping". During the video, Beavis mentions having had a nightmare where "everything sucked" and that it was "real scary". Butt-Head responds, "But Beavis, everything does suck!" causing Beavis to scream in horror, complete with Scare Chord, and ever since then does this every time something is mentioned as sucking, either by Butt-Head or Beavis himself. - In one episode of The Boondocks, Huey is followed by someone who claims to be a secret agent hired by the government to tail him (later named "The White Shadow" by Huey). Since no one else can see him and he seems to disappear inexplicably, it suggests that Huey is fantasizing about it all, although the show intentionally leaves it ambiguous. - In the Classic Disney Short "Duck Pimples", Donald Duck has a crazy fantasy sequence where he's threatened by characters from a mystery novel who accuse him of stealing a pearl necklace. The short ends with Donald trying to brush off the whole thing as his imagination, while a string of pearls appears around his neck. - Codename: Kids Next Door, "Operation: NUGGET": The whole ep is a parody of the 1849 Gold Rush, except with chicken nuggets instead of gold. Numbuh 4 wakes up in the stream he fell into at the start of the ep (where he had discovered a chicken nugget) and continues on his way. Pan to a rock with a chicken nugget on it. - Darkwing Duck: In "Dead Duck", after dying and spending the rest of the episode as a ghost, Darkwing wakes up in his bed at the end. Then Lucifer shows up in the real world in a pre-credits gag, and later on even has an entire episode dedicated to him. - Dennis the Menace: - In "The Wizzer of Odd", after Alice reads Dennis the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dennis has a dream that parodies the story, with his friends in the roles of the story's characters. When Dennis first arrives in the land of Odd, he meets the Munchies (the equivalent of the Munchkins). The episode ends with Dennis awakening from his dream and telling his parents about it, and after they leave, the Munchies can be seen eating cookies in Dennis' toy box. - In "3D and Me", Dennis, Joey, and Tommy go to the movie theater to see Submarine of the Future, a movie they've seen 15 times before. On their way to see the beginning of the film, they cut in line in front of a man several times. During the movie, Dennis falls asleep and has a dream where he becomes the captain of the naval submarine, which a spy tries to destroy with explosives. Dennis recognizes the spy as the man he cut in front of in line, and is awarded a medal for saving the sub. When Dennis awakens from his dream, he discovers that his feet are wet, which he assumes is from having spilled his soda, but then he discovers that he still has his medal with him. The man Dennis cut in front of in line then discovers that his feet are wet as well. - Played with on Futurama, "The Sting": After Fry's death, Leela wakes up from a dream about him with the jacket he was buried in, but when she tries to use it to convince the Planet Express crew that Fry is alive, she sees that it's her own jacket. As it turns out, \|\|for most of the episode it was All Just a Dream; Fry isn't really dead and Leela is in a fevered coma\|\|. - In a Garfield and Friends episode parodying The Twilight Zone (1959), Garfield gets Trapped in TV Land. Some time later, he wakes up along with Odie, considering it to be a dream. Then he notices he's wearing a scarf he got on a shopping channel... and on the floor is a broken remote which Odie destroyed trying to free the cat... - Kaeloo: In Episode 98, the scene where Stumpy fought a bunch of alien sheep to prevent himself and his friends from being hypnotized was shown to be a dream, but a few minutes after that, Kaeloo finds Stumpy having been hypnotized by them for real. - Looney Tunes cartoons - "Water, Water Every Hare". At the end of the cartoon, Bugs Bunny wakes up in his bed and thinks the events of the cartoon were all just a dream. Then Gossamer, who Bugs had made small earlier, comes in on a boat his size and says, "Oh yeah? That's what you think!" - "Knight-Mare Hare", in which during the dream portion Bugs had turned the wizard Merlin into a horse. When Bugs comes out of it, he sees a farmer calling his very similar-looking horse "Merlin". - "Scrap Happy Daffy": Daffy thinks his encounter with a submarine full of Nazi saboteurs was just a dream. Then he hears the Nazis call out from atop a pile of junk "Next time you dream, include us out!" - "The Aristo-Cat": the cat wakes up in his bed and says "What a terrible dream." Then the mice and dog appear in bed with him. - "Rocket Bye Baby": A Panicky Expectant Father has a crazy dream about accidentally bringing home a Martian baby, where he and his wife eventually receive an ultimatum from the Martians that they will return his human son (which they've taken to calling "Yob") in exchange for the Martian tyke. Unfortunately, the Martian baby has built his own little flying saucer, and returns to the Martian mothership on his own. Dad, trying to catch him, falls from a high window, yelling for them to return his human baby. He then awakens from the nightmare to find himself back in the waiting room and seeing the nurses wheel his perfectly normal son in. The cartoon ends with a close-up of the baby wearing a bracelet that says "YOB". - "The Wearing O' The Grin": Porky has a nightmare in which two leprechauns accuse him of planning to steal their pot of gold and sentence him to "the wearing o' the green shoes". This inspires Porky to hastily leave the castle where he'd been planning to stay the night... upon which the caretaker reveals he really is the two leprechauns in a long coat, who congratulate each other on scaring off a trespasser. - "The Mouse That Jack Built" is a parody depicting Jack Benny and the cast of his show as mice. (Voiced by themselves — including Mel Blanc). At the end, a live-action Jack Benny wakes up from dreaming the entire short. He directly addresses the audience how silly the dream was — only for his animated mouse counterpart to suddenly pop up. - One The Loud House short involves Lincoln and Clyde falling asleep while watching their favorite show Muscular Fish and having a Shared Dream wherein they bump into Muscular Fish himself at Flip's and try get him un-banned from the store, eventually leading to a fight with Muscular Fish's arch-enemy. Lincoln and Clyde wake up afterward and realize it was All Just a Dream...only for Muscular Fish on the TV to turn toward the screen and seemingly say to the boys: "Thanks again for your help, boys!", much to their confusion. - This is the ending of "Madeline in the Magic Carpet" from Madeline, in which Madeline is told that the adventure she had of riding on a magic carpet and rescuing a genie with Pepito and Pancho was just a dream. That evening, she finds under her bed the magic lamp that had been thrown in Pepito's garbage. - Ned's Newt: The episode "Jurassic Joyride" turns out to be All Just a Dream, but right then Newton realizes W-ZIP TV is informing about it. The host even calls him a "big blue doofus", much to his anger before he turns back into a newt. He then watches dream!Ned and dream!Newton end up at Gilligan's Island. - In Over the Garden Wall, \|\|near the end it is suggested that the journey into The Unknown was a dream Wirt had after falling into a river, but some signs suggest he and Greg did go there - including a blink-and-you'll-miss-it image of the frog's stomach glowing, a Call-Back to the eighth episode. Many theorists have come to the conclusion that The Unknown is in between life and death, a limbo\|\|. - The Cars Toons series of Pixar Shorts actually all end this way. Here are all the examples: - "Rescue Squad Mater": \|\|Nurse GTO visits Radiator Springs\|\|. - "Mater the Greater": \|\|Lug and Nutty (Mater's assistant pitties) can be seen cleaning up the mess Mater made at the very beginning of the short\|\|. - "El Materdor": \|\|The bulldozers notice Lightning McQueen and start chasing him. The two ladies appear behind Mater as well\|\|. - "Tokyo Mater": \|\|DJ can be seen attending the dance party at the end of the short (there was a car shaped like him that appeared in the background several times)\|\|. Also, \|\|several cars from this short, such as Kabuto, the short's villain,\|\| actually make cameo appearances in Cars 2. However for some reason, \|\|Kabuto\|\| somehow got all of his modifications back even though he lost them (as a result of him losing to Mater) at the end of this short. - "UFM: Unidentified Flying Mater": \|\|Mater flies away as if he was a UFO\|\|. - "Heavy Metal Mater": \|\|The inflatable Mater from the concert at the end of the short flies past Radiator Springs.\|\| - "Monster Truck Mater": \|\|Tormentor's biggest fan visits Radiator Springs\|\|. - "Moon Mater": \|\|Captain Roger the Space Shuttle flies away with Mater\|\|. - "Mater: Private Eye": \|\|A colorized Carmen (the waitress at the nightclub Mater visited in the short) visits Radiator Springs\|\|. - "Air Mater": \|\|The Falcon Hawks fly Mater away\|\|. - In the Recess Halloween Special, the final segment involved the kids climbing down one of the Diggers' holes in the middle of the night and encountering the zombies of Mrs. Finster's ancestors. The next morning, they find no evidence of the experience, with the Diggers stating they didn't see any zombies. Gretchen surmises that the group imagined the whole thing due to the scary situation. However, it then pans to the cafeteria, where the audience is shown one of the zombies' glasses which had been knocked off in the ordeal. - Punky Brewster does this in "Return to Chaundoon." The gateway to Glomer's home reopens, so he brings Punky and her pals to visit. While there, Brandon (Punky's dog) gets a bone to chew on. After the adventure climaxes, it appears Punky and Glomer dreamt it...until they see Brandon with the bone. - Rugrats: - At the end of an episode where Tommy and his friends experience an Alien Abduction, Tommy wakes up to find himself in his crib, indicating that it was just a dream...until it cuts to Angelica still on the desert planet she was teleported to. - In "Chuckie's Wonderful Life", Chuckie's guardian angel appears to show him what life would be like without him but Chuckie wakes up... only to see a similar-looking boy on a motorcycle. - The Simpsons: - In the episode "Thank God It's Doomsday", Homer wonders if visiting the afterlife was all a dream. When Homer sees that God had granted him his wish to see Moe's Tavern restored (whereas earlier in the episode it had been converted into a sushi bar), he takes what happened as fact. - In ''Treehouse of Horror II", Homer wakes up from a horrible dream where Mr Burns's head was grafted to his body only to find Mr Burns's head is still there. - Parodied in "Tennis the Menace." Homer has a nightmare that Bart has murdered him and married Marge. After waking up, Homer sees a picture of Bart and fearfully says, "That's the guy from my dream." - The season one finale of Sheep in the Big City, "To Sheep, Perchance to Dream", dealt with many bizarre events (such as General Specific suddenly turning into a sheep as well as Sheep and Swanky getting married) as actually being dreams the characters were having. The narrator Ben Plotz isn't happy about this and eventually finds out that Sheep is the real villain, was actually able to talk, and intended to use Ben in a narrator-powered ray gun. In the end, Ben wakes up and concludes that it was just a dream, but looks down to see that he really is in a narrator-powered ray gun. This twist wasn't acknowledged at all in the second season. - Dreamy Smurf in The Smurfs (1981) dreams that he has been taken to the land of the Pookies, who have been waiting for his return to deliver them from the tyrannical Norf Nags. The end of the episode, however, may suggest otherwise, as Dreamy trips over a crystal similar to the ones seen in his dream. - In the South Park episode "World War Zimmerman," Cartman wakes up in class to discover he was dreaming about the movie version of World War Z. After a series of events inspired by the movie, involving several deaths, Cartman wakes up in class again. Instead of the events being dismissed as all just a dream, his fellow students remind him that the events did happen, and that he is a murderer. - The TaleSpin episode "The Old Man and the Seaduck" features this ending. Baloo has returned to the old flying school that helped him recover from amnesia to get help for the instructor, one Joe McGee. When he gets back, the school is in ruins, and Joe is nowhere to be found. The doctor explains that the flying school had been closed for years since the head instructor—Joe McGee—died. Baloo then looks around the old awards, pictures, and medals...and spots a photograph, which he takes. The photo shows him and Joe standing together to pose for the camera. - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): "Pizza Face" seems to end with the tired old All Just a Dream ending, with Mikey waking up in bed and everyone unharmed. However, as he goes back to sleep, Pizza Face (or what's left of him) pops out of a pizza box near the bed, confirming it was not. - The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat had an episode called "The Milky Way" where Felix encountered a dairy godmother and wished to be sent to a land where he could get all the dairy products he wants. Felix eventually gets tired of gaining weight from subsisting only on dairy products and begs the dairy godmother to send him home. She does so in a curt manner and causes Felix to plummet to his doom. Felix then wakes up only to be scared off by a milkman offering him bottles of milk, who turns out to be the dairy godmother in disguise. - Zig & Sharko: The episode "Coral Reef Cowboys". At the end, Bernie soaks Zig with a bucket of water to snap him out. However, the latter notices Sharko, Marina and a couple of fish play blindfolds, and then takes out a starfish from the dream.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrWasItADream
Orwellian Retcon - TV Tropes "Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia." When a Retcon is performed by going back and changing the original work, so that subsequent printings of "the same" work are actually different. This may happen as the result of deciding after that fact that something had Unfortunate Implications, was Dude, Not Funny!, or needed to be Distanced from Current Events, but could also be caused by Flip-Flop of God, Science Marches On, or being Screwed by the Lawyers. Like many tropes, this can be for good or for evil. This one is a prime source of Adaptation Displacement for more recent fans. It may lead to a Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition, Updated Re-release, George Lucas Altered Version, Broken Base, and Creator Backlash, especially if the original version is taken off the shelves. If an entire work is subjected to this rather than a portion, then it belongs to Bury Your Art. Named after George Orwell: in his novel 1984, the main character's job at the Ministry of Truth is to rewrite old newspaper articles to hide the government's flip-flopping on political issues. Contrast Death of the Author, Canon Discontinuity. Related to Early-Bird Cameo, where an adaptation or remake of a work puts in extra early Foreshadowing for later plot developments. Compare Flashback with the Other Darrin. See Written by the Winners and its subtrope Internal Retcon for In-Universe examples. ## Examples: ## By Studio: - Funimation: - When Funimation reissued Dragon Ball Z in "remastered" DVD season sets in 2007, they re-recorded parts of their own dub. Since the first 67 episodes weren't recorded with their in-house cast until 2005, the remaining episodes (recorded from 1999-2003) had some inconsistencies, especially in the Ginyu/Frieza episodes, where over half of the characters had redubbed dialogue. Some characters (Vegeta, Krillin, Frieza) had the same actors giving much improved performances (including in the existing in-house dub episodes), while others (Ginyu, Burter, Tien) had been recast, and were now being redubbed by their replacement actors for consistency. Most of this redubbing stopped by the Android saga, though notably Maron, Spice, and Mustard were redubbed in the Garlic Jr. episodes by new actors. To hear this dub as it originally sounded, you'd need to track down the original DVD singles. - They did something similar when YuYu Hakusho was released to Blu-ray, though it was only small changes, and far less noticeable ones. - Similarly, Funimation has made little effort to release their original dub of the show from 1995, commonly referred to as the "Ocean dub" or "Pioneer dub" due to the production studios involved. This is the one where the Rock the Dragon OP and the Over 9000 meme come from, but it's only been released twice: the original Pioneer VHS tapes from the 90s, and the Rock the Dragon DVD set from 2013. Meanwhile, Funimation's more prolific in-house dub has been released at least four times and is the one readily available on streaming services. - Funimation did this again when they released the DVD of the original Dragon Ball movie, Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies. This was one of their very first dubs, and it got lambasted so badly on DVD reviews that they recorded an entirely new dub with their modern Dragon Ball Z Kai cast. The original dub was not provided as an option, resulting in this trope. ## By Series: - In the anime adaptation of Art of Fighting, Yuri Sakazaki was originally voiced by a young, not-yet-famous Ayumi Hamasaki, who also appeared in a series of live-action promos for Art of Fighting 2 in Japan. When the anime was re-released on DVD in Japan, all of Ayumi's dialogue were dubbed over by Kaori Horie, Yuri's actual voice actress in the games, since Hamasaki (who had become a huge J-Pop star in the intervening years) wanted a great share of the royalties for the use of her voice. - Ayakashi Triangle usually just makes cosmetic alterations to the volume version, but actually changes plot-relevant dialogue for chapters 112 and 113, where Reo fights Donpa, whose gourd sucks in anyone who responds to their name. In the digital magazine version, she ends the first chapter responding to her name, which is resolved anticlimactically by Donpa either forgetting or refusing to use his gourd (even though Reo wanted to be Captured on Purpose). In the volume version, Donpa simply never states her name. - Chapter 83 of Berserk was serialized in magazine format, but never included in any re-releases (and its events were cut from all adaptations) at the author's own request. He felt it revealed too much about the setting too soon and limited his ability to expand upon it later after \|\|introducing the literal god of the universe\|\|. - The early print run of Cyborg 009 in Weekly Shōnen King had the lead hero's name first given as "Joe Muramatsu", which later changed to "Joe Shimamura". Ishinomori would revise the earlier chapters when they were reprinted, to correct that continuity error. He also corrected a few instances where 003's surname was used in light of her given name, or where he'd used the wrong katakana for 003's given name and called her "Francois" instead of "Francoise". - The chapter "The Aurora Strategy" originally had a character named "Dr.Dolphin" and his daughter "Iruka". In some reprintings, Iruka's name was modified to "Cynthia", which the 2001 anime used. - In Death Note, Near was introduced as a serious character, but had some childish expressions in certain early chapters. When these chapters were collected into the tankōbon editions, Takeshi Obata redrew the panels so Near's face would be less expressive. - Another example involved \|\|the death of Light's father\|\|. In the original Jump serialization, Ryuk speculates that since \|\|Soichiro never used a Death Note, he would go to Heaven\|\|. As the final chapter of the manga ultimately revealed that \|\|there is NO Heaven or Hell (at least, Ryuk doesn't think so), Ohba altered the line in the tankōbon release to prevent any further misunderstandings, with Ryuk now speculating that Mr. Yagami would have died peacefully\|\|. - Dragon Ball: - When Son Gohan debuted in Chapter 196 in Weekly Shōnen Jump, he gave his age as three years old, hence why he holds up three fingers. Gohan is said to be four years old on the title page of the very next chapter, and his dialogue is altered in collected re-releases to change his age to four (him holding up the wrong number of fingers can easily be explained by his young age). - In the original version of Chapter 213, when Krillin meets up with Gohan to fight Nappa and Vegeta, their dialogue implies they are meeting for the first time. By the time the tankōbon came out, Akira Toriyama apparently remembered that they had met at Kame House a year earlier, and their dialogue was rewritten accordingly. - When Goku first attained the Super Saiyan transformation in the Namek Arc, it was stated that his power was increased 10x. This was the same amount that Goku had used for Kaio-ken earlier in the arc and thus wasn't that impressive, so in the tankōbon release, it was revised to 50x. - In Chapter 389, Cell originally announced that the Cell Games would take place on "M 17th". "M" cannot stand for May, as it's been several days since the Androids arrived on May 12th and the Cell Games are supposed to take place nine days after the announcement. The kanzenban and full-color editions changed this to the more reasonable May 26th. - The kanzenban release also added new pages of material that expanded the end of the manga. What's unusual is that , as of 2022, the only place you can find this ending are the Full Colours and the kanzenban itself in Japan. It has never been translated into English, with most publications (including Toei themselves) content on reprinting the existing tankōbon versions instead. - The Japanese home video release of the 1986 Fist of the North Star theatrical movie changed the ending of the final battle so that Kenshiro's final battle with Raoh ends in a stalemate rather than losing like in the original theatrical version. Even though the theatrical ending was used for all the international releases, it didn't get to be featured in any of the Japanese home video releases until the DVD release in 2008 and even then it was only available as a bonus feature in first-print editions of the DVD. - JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: - When Stone Ocean was still running in Shonen Jump, \|\|the final evolution of Pucci\|\|'s Stand was called \|\|Stairway to Heaven\|\|. When it was collected in tankōbon, it was renamed \|\|Made in Heaven\|\|, possibly because the lyrics fit the motives of its user better. Fan translations are more likely to call it the latter. - In the same part, a stand with the name Earth, Wind & Fire had its name changed to Planet Waves for the tankōbon release, due to the fact that Part 4 already had a stand using the same name, maybe. - In Part 1 - Phantom Blood, Will. A.Zeppeli mentions not having any children, and calling Jonathan the equivalent of a son to him. This gets contradicted with the existence of Mario and Caesar in Battle Tendency, so later releases of Phantom Blood's manga changed the line, as well as having an apology by Hirohiko Araki. - In Part 8 - JoJolion, Kei Nijimura's stand was initially named Going Underground, but it got changed to Born This Way in later releases of the manga. What makes this odd is she still has the initials G.U. in her outfit, despite her stand's name getting changed. - Lucky Star has a minor example: Konata was originally portrayed as a cool Gamer Chick, but was soon changed into an down-to-earth, sort-of-pervy Otaku Surrogate. When the yonkoma were collected into volumes, Yoshimizu changed Konata's lines in some very early strips to make her image consistent. Because this change was very early on in the series and Yoshimizu discussed that in the omake, it is not as displeasing. Parodied in a later omake, which consists of several "What if"-strips. One of them is "What if episode 1 was drawn today", which is simply a reprint of the strip just as it was published in the first volume. - One Piece: - Pokémon: - Pokémon Adventures gets a lot of changes and revisions when its chapters get collected into tankōbon form. Makes sense, as the manga gets serialized in three different magazines and out of order to boot, not to mention the mangaka often adds new details to incorporate whatever new features that had since been released from the new games. - While the original design for the Pokémon Jynx has been a subject of controversy for years (see Video Games section below), The Pokémon Company International has taken action by pulling three episodes that feature Jynx in her original design in the same manner that The Pokémon Company in Japan pulled "Cyber Soldier Porygon", i.e. they pretend that these episodes never existed. What makes this worse in Jynx's case is that one of the episodes just features her in a small cameo, and that one of the pulled episodes was remastered in Japan so that Jynx would appear in her current design. - A necessary one happens in Queen's Blade Rebellion between the web version of the Illustrated Stories and the paperback version: In the net-based one, Mirim kills one of the Tomoe's fellow shrine maidens (later revealed to be named Tokiwa) when trying to help Annelotte escape from Gainos. Since that scene is out of character for her, in the paperback version, Tokiwa was killed by random guards instead, while Mirim is chasing Annelotte instead. This was omitted in the animated version, as the aforementioned scene never happens and the events are developed in a different direction. Also, the manga version has \|\|Leina using her "Maria" persona\|\| rescuing Annelotte instead, rather than Tokiwa, and Mirim does not appear until some chapters later. - Along with more standard panel redraws, a few instances occur in the 2003 Updated Re-release of the Sailor Moon manga, (published stateside by Kodansha in 2011), some of which carry over to Sailor Moon Crystal. - During Act 2's Crystal Seminar story (which introduced Ami), an instance of a floppy disk from the original 1992 version was replaced by a CD-ROM in the re-released version. Also, to be consistent with the tokusatsu version that was airing at the time, the "sailor senshi" are referred to as "guardians". - An unnamed fog attack in the manga (referred to as "Sabao Spray" in the first anime) was changed to be called "Mercury Aqua Mist", to tie in with the live-action version. Sailor Moon's first sceptre was also redrawn to have a crystalline top. - Sailor Jupiter had a flower-themed belt added to her first uniform in redrawn panels, a detail that Takeuchi had originally wanted to include on her but had never gotten the chance to. - The 2011 English-language editions from Kodansha USA underwent some minor revisions in reprints to correct some mistakes, including an instance of mistranslating Jupiter's "Sparkling Wide Pressure" as "Spark Ring Wide Pressure," and Queen Beryl referring to herself as " Princess Beryl." - Yu-Gi-Oh!: - The original dubbed airing of the Dungeon Dice Monsters mini-arc of the anime used the original designs for the Dice Crests. For no adequately explained reason note : but possibly for the same reason that the card images are altered for the dub, all subsequent airings used CG dice with a completely changed set of Crest markings. Fortunately, the American board game version and its Game Boy Advance adaptation used mostly the original designs, with only the Magic Crest changed to a circle with a lightning bolt in the center. - The original Weekly Shonen Jump printing of a chapter in the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga, of Yugi's duel with Bakura, had Bakura's trump card monster called "Dark Necrophilia". This was then changed to "Dark Necrofear" for the following chapter and the graphic novel reprints, to avoid the Unfortunate Implications of the original name. - One of these happened in YuruYuri; early in the manga, Akane was originally Akari's (unnamed) older brother. He was converted into a girl for the anime, and this change persisted into later chapters. - Earlier seasons of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf show Wolffy capturing the goats by tying rope around them. Later seasons have him tying them up using glowing bands instead, and later versions of the earlier episodes are changed so that they feature the glowing bands instead of the ropes. ## In General: - This trope is par for the course in fanfiction, with many authors revising early chapters of their fics, either to improve the writing quality or to fix inconsistencies. ## By Work: - A Chance Meeting of Two Moons: In the fall of 2017, Evilhumour and Anon e Mouse Jr. went back and revised the earlier chapters, primarily to fix spelling and grammar, but also making a few other modifications. Among them included adding an earlier mention of the Doors to the Realms In Between (one had already existed later in the story), and changing one of Elusive's lines into a Big "YES!". - A Changed World originally had Eleya \|\|order a shipload of Klingons be killed simply because they were Klingons\|\|. After a reader pointed out the Broken Aesop, the author went back and rewrote it so that Eleya has a Heel Realization \|\|before ordering the ship's destruction\|\|. - Nimbus Llewelyn occasionally does in Child of the Storm. The changes are usually minor, and made after someone points out a mistake. This is not always the case, however - once he added over 4,000 words to a chapter in the form of an extra scene or two. - Danganronpa Class Switch: Hope's Peak Academy: In the original version of the first trial's post-trial sequence, Shuichi barely reacted to the revelation of who had murdered \|\|Kirumi\|\|. This was altered to him going completely berserk and having to be physically restrained from attacking the culprit. - Davion & Davion (Deceased) originally had the family of Commodore Grec escape the Amaris Coup as they were invited to New Avalon. The author later wrote Grec as bereaved by the Coup, amending the previous reference to indicate that he declined to invite his family as it was a privilege other soldiers couldn't share, something that more than justified his later emotional distress. - In Futari Wa Pretty Cure Blue Moon, some characters had brown or black hair, but the author decided there was too many brown and black haired characters, so their hair colors were changed to more wild ones, the most notable being the now green haired Emiru. - A Gem in the Rough: - After Rebecca Sugar stated that Garnet never asks questions, period, the author went back and rewrote all of Garnet's dialogue to remove any instance of her asking a question. - The names of the video games in Steven's collection were modified to match up with the established games in the show. - Steven and Luffy's discussion at the end of "The Dream Island" was completely rewritten to make the dialogue flow more naturally. - The ending of "The Call on the Private Line" was later edited to include Vivi. - When Durandall wanted to retcon something in Kyon: Big Damn Hero, it was easiest for him just to go back and change the chapters themselves. Usually, this only applied to character names. - In chapter 7 of The Last Crystal Unicorn, Shimmering Ruby insults Shining Armor, calling him "retarded" behind his back. This was found to be offensive by many, so the insult was changed to "pitiful". - Leave for Mendeleiev: The original version of the story included Amber, Chloé's nicer and much more responsible twin sister, as well as Félix. After a hiatus, the author took the original version down and began a revamp, which eliminated Amber and held off on introducing Félix, making him Truer to the Text of his animated incarnation. Hilariously enough, this rewrite started being posted shortly before Season 4 began... and introduced Zoé, Chloé's nicer and much more responsible half-sister. - A minor example from Mass Effect: Interregnum. When the game's Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC was released, it included a list of Garrus's squadmates. Several of them had been included in the fic with original names, so the characters in question were renamed to match. - Chapter 28 of The Longest Road was rewritten in order to deal with the massively homophobic implications regarding Erika. Specifically, the original chapter revealed that LBGTQ+ trainers were barred from being gym leaders, so Ash punished Erika for being a Jerkass towards him by outing her as a lesbian, getting her fired. - Red Fire, Red Planet had the author discover he'd made a mistake with an Andorian minor character, giving him the wrong Andorian gender honorifics. "Sh'" is a female-analogue prefix, but the Andorian in question was male, so StarSword just went back through the first three chapters and batch-replaced every instance of "sh'Kreem" with "ch'Kreem". - SAPR: - Originally during the lead up to the Breach Applejack and Fluttershy were infected with a Grimm parasite that would have turned them into sleeper agents. Due to negative viewer feedback, however, this was removed entirely from the story. - An entire chapter involving a trial and one of Jaune's sisters being a member of the White Fang was removed. - Soul Eater: Troubled Souls: CD/Grade, the author, constantly goes back to edit, readjust, and add little bits of information to the story. - In Sylvia the Sylveon, Moondancer's nickname was Moonie, which was meant to be a reference to early 90s Sailor Moon fans. But after the Unfortunate Implications were pointed out, the author changed it to Dancer. - System Restore: - After the second class trial was completed, author CarthagoDelenda went back and revised the first seven chapters. This was primarily to add details and strengthen the build-up to The Reveal of the second murderer's identity, making the Foreshadowing clearer in areas. In addition, the culprit admits to being more conflicted about their decision and shows more empathy towards \|\|Kuzuryuu and Pekoyama\|\|. Compare the following two lines. Original: I certainly had no intention of killing \|\|Pekoyama-san\|\|, not until I had a reason to. Revision: I had no intention of killing anyone, especially not \|\|Pekoyama-san\|\| not until I was given a reason I couldnt avoid. - Part 5 of Chapter 3 was revised (the first time) to deal with Unfortunate Implications, particularly relating to \|\|Souda's Despair Fever symptoms, in which he imagines that he is Sonia\|\|. There was later a second revision made wherein \|\|Souda survives his injuries, as there was some confusion regarding the nature of his wounds and the author decided against having two murders in Chapter 3, as that was only done to follow Danganronpa's "tradition"\|\|. - Several movies from Disney Animated Canon have had this done to them: - Aladdin: - The opening song describes Agrabah as a "barbaric" locale "where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face." In response to complaints about the Unfortunate Implications of that line, later editions replaced it with "where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense" (though you can still find the original lyrics in some foreign dubs and on the original CD release). - At one point in the movie, Aladdin gets attacked by the tiger Rajah and says, "Come on...good kitty, take off and go...". Due to other, simultaneous noises (possibly Rajah snarling), it's hard to understand what he says, and some people said it sounded like "Good teenagers, take off your clothes." The line was later cut out in the DVD release, only to be restored for the Blu-ray release just over a decade later. - Fantasia: In one scene in the original film, several young black centaurettes with donkey bodies (the one with the most screentime was nicknamed Sunflower) are seen performing menial duties for the beautiful Aryan centaurettes and for Bacchus. Needless to say, later audiences considered this unacceptable, and Sunflower and friends have mysteriously disappeared from all releases after 1969. The two lighter-skinned zebra centaurettes who attend Bacchus got some of their scenes trimmed as well, including a scene where one is trying to help the very drunk Bacchus down from a gazebo. Furthermore, Disney has cracked down on videos on the Internet showing footage of the unedited scenes, so good luck finding any evidence of the original version. - In one scene in the original VHS and LaserDisc releases of The Lion King, a dust cloud kicked up by Simba seems to form the word "SEX." Although the animators claimed that it actually said "SFX" (special effects), the scene still got edited in later editions. - A number of cosmetic edits were made to The Lion King in 2002 to enhance scenes the original animators weren't happy with. Among the changes were re-drawing the crocodiles in "I Just Can't Wait To Be King" to be less crude-looking * : Although the official reason for the change was that they felt the original scene was too rushed, some believe the change was to lessen their resemblance to the art of Michael Bedard and avoid a lawsuit., editing Scar's shadow in "Be Prepared" to better match his head shape, and adding more detail to the waterfall in "Can You Feel The Love Tonight". - The theatrical release of Hotel Transylvania 2 contained a joke spoken by Kakie the Cake Monster: "the scariest monster of all is diabetes!" However, parents and groups reacted quite negatively about the line's implications, so Sony Pictures quietly replaced the line with laughter by Kakie for all future releases of the film. - In the wake of the Me Too Movement, the 2019 home video release of Toy Story 2 cuts out a not-so Hilarious Outtake involving a casting couch-esque moment between Stinky Pete and two Barbie dolls. - The phone number in Bruce Almighty was not originally an example of the 555 trope; Universal digitally altered all releases after the original theatrical print because the original number turned out to actually belong to people in various area codes. Even more confusingly, although the English audio track was overdubbed to match the new number, the French dub on the DVD wasn't, no doubt leaving many Francophones confused as to why the number on screen didn't match the one read out by Bruce. - Original releases of The Crush have the teenage Stalker with a Crush named Darien, after a real woman the writer knew. When the real woman sued him and won, subsequent releases dubbed in the name Adrienne, with varying degrees of success. - The original English version of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II was bumped up to stereo and had most of its dialogue re-dubbed by different actors when it was finally brought to the United States in 1999 by TriStar Pictures for unknown reasons. The only evidence of the original version is a Hindi theatrical print made without a clean music and effects track, so English dialogue is sometimes heard unscathed. So far, no full-length release of the original dub is known to exist. - Director Michael Mann suppressed copies of the original theatrical cut of Last of the Mohicans after some fans expressed displeasure at removal of scenes and music from the director's cut which Mann decided he didn't like ten years later. Various character-driven scenes were excised and action scenes added; complicating things, choice bits of dialogue were edited in, but the overall length of the film didn't change due to the volume of cuts. Altered sound design consisted of recycled bits of soundtrack, with the volume turned down. To this day, the theatrical cut is only available in Europe. - The extended edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King changed a scene where Pippin finds Merry on Pelennor Fields — in the theatrical version this happens during the day, whereas in the extended edition it happens at night, implying that Pippin had been looking for a lot longer. The commentary track reveals that this is because the extended edition includes the Houses of Healing scene, which would have happened in the interim, whereas the theatrical cut does not. note : Interestingly, the point would be moot in the books, as Merry appears in the Houses of Healing scene; he does not in the films. - The original showings of Star Trek: The Motion Picture had dialogue describing the VGER cloud as being "Over 82 A.U.s in diameter." Subsequent prints and the DVD release edited the dialogue slightly so now it is described as being "Over 2 A.U.s in diameter," which better fits with the established canon for how fast the Enterprise travels under impulse power over the timeframe of the movie. (Earlier video releases, such as the widescreen LaserDisc of the theatrical cut and the 4:3 extended TV cut, do retain the 82.) - The Star Wars films have had this happen a lot over the years, enough that The Other Wiki has a whole article about it: - When A New Hope was first released in 1977, it was just called Star Wars. Once it became a runaway success and George Lucas realized he could do all the episodes he envisioned (or claimed to have envisioned at any rate), it was re-released to cinemas with the Opening Crawl now titled "Episode IV - A New Hope". - A scene from A New Hope where Han shoots Greedo in the cantina went back and forth on it. In the original release, Han just shot Greedo in cold blood. Realizing that this might not paint the hero in the best light, the scene was updated for re-release with Adaptational Self-Defense note : and possibly to preserve the film's PG rating, there having been no PG-13 at the time — in the form of Greedo shooting at Han and missing at point-blank range before Han shoots him back. This just made the scene look ridiculous, and fans complained, rallying around the mantra "Han shot first". This led to a third change to the scene in which Greedo and Han fire at each other nearly simultaneously. And Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm led to a fourth variant in which Greedo is dubbed in threatening Han before firing (in an alien language and without subtitles, so you'd have to be a Star Wars nerd to know exactly what he said). - The Special Edition re-release of the Original Trilogy mostly updated the special effects, but in some cases it tweaked things to align with the Prequel Trilogy. Most notable was the appearance of Anakin's Force ghost at the end of Return of the Jedi, played in the theatrical release by Sebastian Shaw (who also played the "true" Anakin we see when Luke removes his helmet). After the prequels came out, Shaw's head was digitally replaced with that of Hayden Christensen, who played the character in the prequels (with the body remaining the same). Fans of the Original Trilogy were not happy, to say the least. - In the original release of Traffic (2000), the drug czar's daughter, a teenage drug addict, attends Cincinnati Country Day School, a private prep school in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. Amid protests from school administrators who objected to the association of the school with drug use, the reference to the school was scrubbed from the DVD release and TV broadcasts. ## By Author: - Arthur C. Clarke: - Clarke rewrote the first chapter of Childhood's End to avoid Failed Future Forecast. However, he does also include the original first chapter in some editions. - In-Verse example: In Ghost From The Grand Banks, one of the main characters made his fortune performing Orwellian Retcons on old classic movies, digitally erasing the Everybody Smokes trope by replacing such films' omnipresent cigarettes and pipes with lollipops, chewed pencils, etc. - Happens a lot in reprints of Enid Blyton stories, partly to change money references to decimal currency but also covering minor plot points (one novel has the characters bribing a girl with chocolate, rather than money as in the original). However, a scene in Secret Seven Fireworks where the Seven accidentally set fire to the shed where they've stored their fireworks and set them all off was rewritten to have the shed instead containing their guy (presumably because that was considered less dangerous), meaning they acquire a new guy by the next chapter and the original ending of the police giving them new fireworks as a thank you was lost. (The novel also alters all references to them buying fireworks to their parents buying them for them, to cover modern age restrictions on sales.) - The villains in many of the Little Noddy stories were originally Golliwogs. The modern editions have replaced them with Goblins. In addition, references to Noddy and Big Ears sleeping in the same bed have been removed. - Isaac Asimov: - "The Bicentennial Man": According to The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories, when Judy Lynn Del Rey had included it in Stellar #2, she had revised several things in the story. However, Dr Asimov restored it to his final draft when including it in his own collection. Future printings continued to use Asimov's version. - Black Widowers: - Tales of the Black Widowers contains an introduction where he admits that he's rewritten several of the stories compared to their original printing, mostly due to the way the stories sound redundant when describing characters the same way in short succession. - "The Iron Gem": This was originally published as "A Chip of the Black Stone", but when Dr Asimov republished it in More Tales Of The Black Widowers, he changed the name back to his Working Title. - Earth is Room Enough: - The German translation, Geliebter Roboter, only contains ten of the seventeen stories published in this collection. The ones left in are mostly those that deal with robots. - The French translation, Espace Vital, claims to be the same collection, but only contains twelve of the original stories/poems and adds "Mirror Image". - "The Evitable Conflict": The original story had Peter Bogart as Director of Research, but Dr Asimov revised a few things when he collected it in I, Robot. In the revised version, Bogart and Lanning are succeeded in this role by Vincent Silver, a much younger man. - "Feminine Intuition": Some versions of the story (such as in The Complete Robot) contain the Three Laws of Robotics, while other publications (such as in Robot Visions Collection) leave it out. - Foundation Series: - Foundations Friends: This Anthology was originally published with only stories written by other authors in Asimov's settings. After his death, it was revised to include stories written by Dr Asimov and anecdotes from his friends/family about what he meant to them. - "Hostess": The version of this story as it originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction had mindless pseudo-genes infecting humanity. During some of the republications, it was edited into a species with no physical body that infected humans and aliens alike. When Dr Asimov republished this story for Nightfall and Other Stories, he removed the last line: Galaxy final lines: "She had finally learned why Drake had married her. Not a conjugal relationship— Conjugation." Nightfall and Other Stories final lines: "She had finally learned why Drake had married her." - "I'm in Marsport Without Hilda": When this story was republished for Nine Tomorrows, it had to be re-edited (phrases like "ribald stories" were switched for "about a girl", while lines like "Chances are they would ask me for [her] phone number." were omitted entirely.). The original text reappears in Asimovs Mysteries. - "Robbie": This story was originally published under the title "Strange Playfellow", but when Dr Asimov republished it for I, Robot, he changed it back to his Working Title and nearly doubled the word count by expanding the story (adding things like a young Susan Calvin Continuity Cameo and replacing the Finmark Robot Corporation with US Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation). Most Anthology books that contain this story use this updated version, but Isaac Asimov Presents: Great Science Fiction Stories of 1940 faithfully republishes the original text. - "Unto the Fourth Generation": The original story ended after the reset and this time Sam Marten missed seeing the red truck. Due to outside influences, Dr Asimov added two lines, telling the audience how Marten had been affected by the events of the story. - Michael Moorcock: - Two different works were edited in later editions, because the first editions appeared to endorse rape in certain circumstances and Moorcock was convinced by feminist criticism that this was morally wrong: - In the ending of the first edition of Gloriana, Quire successfully gives Gloriana her first ever orgasm and ends the barrenness of her kingdom by raping her. In later editions, when he tries to, she overpowers him and rapes him with the same result. - At the end of the first version of "The Transformation of Miss Mavis Ming", the Fireclown cures Mavis of her uptightness and right-wing politics by raping her. In later editions, he does it by whipping her until she has an emotional breakdown, which may or may not be an actual improvement. - On a smaller scale, many 1990s and 2000s reprints of early Moorcock works changed the names of certain characters to make them members of the von Bek or Cornelius families, or to turn originally unconnected villains into versions of Johannes Klosterheim or Gaynor the Damned (sometimes also using the latter's pseudonym in more modern or futuristic settings of Paul van/von Minct). - Stephen King: - King's The Stand was originally set in 1980. Subsequent printings were set in 1985, then the uncut version in the 1990s (with references to AIDS and a few other cultural changes). ## By Title: - Agatha Christie's book And Then There Were None was originally called Ten Little Niggers in the UK. Then it was Ten Little Indians before that term for Native Americans fell out of politically correct language, resulting in its current title. In the novel, the rhyme was changed from Ten Little Niggers to Ten Little Indians to Ten Little Soldier Boys, and the name of the island from Nigger Island to Indian Island then to Soldier Island. The U.S. edition has always used the title "And Then There Were None". - Animorphs was re-released with new covers and some updated pop culture references, though they only got through the first few books. - Anita Blake: In Narcissus In Chains by Laurell K Hamilton, the hardcover version of the book contained a scene where the main character was raped. All other editions of the book have had edits made so that it's merely questionable as to how willing she was (mostly dialogue changes so that she's not flat out saying "no, I don't want to.") - The previous publisher of Avalon: Web of Magic went bankrupt. In the switch to Seven Seas Entertainment, the author revised the books to avoid plot holes and ridiculous behavior. - The Baby-Sitters Club was revised somewhat in later printings, as editors tried to reconcile a few inconsistencies made by Ann M. Martin and ghostwriters: - In the original Kristy's Big Idea, Kristy is described as wearing a skirt and blouse. As Kristy would later be established as only liking sweaters and jeans, this detail was changed to fit that. Her mother's name was also originally given as "Edie Thomas", but as Martin later referred to her as "Elizabeth", this was also corrected in later editions. - Karen's mother and stepfather were originally named "Sheila" and "Kendall" in Kristy's Big Day. Reprints corrected their names to be "Lisa" and "Seth", the names that Martin would settle on when writing Baby Sitters' Little Sister. - An early edition of one Little Sister book had Karen concoct various plans of revenge on a boy that bullied her. One idea was her saying that she'd tell him he was adopted. After parents complained about the implications of that passage, this was changed to Karen's plan being "Tell him I will never ever speak to him again". - The second book of the The Book of the Dun Cow series, The Book of Sorrows, was rewritten and reissued some time later as Lamentations. The new version differs in writing style, changes various plot points, and both introduces new characters and removes existing ones from Sorrows. This was to bring the series in line with the final book, Peace at the Last, which followed the rewritten continuity. - After much demand from fans, and profiteering by secondhand book dealers, Terry Pratchett's first novel The Carpet People was eventually republished. However, it was heavily rewritten, partly to remove bad writing but also to replace the conventional High Fantasy monarchism and glorification of war of the original with the more democratic and pacifist political outlook of Pratchett's mature novels. - The original Oompa-Loompas of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were black, and specifically mentioned to be from Darkest Africa. After numerous people pointed out the Unfortunate Implications of Willy Wonka as a slave owner, later printings changed them to the white and somewhat hippie-ish inhabitants of Loompaland. Additionally, the character of Veruca Salt was originally known as Veruca Cruz. - Darkspell, the second book in the Deverry series, was later released in a revised edition. Some of the changes were made to bring the book more in line with how the author originally envisioned it, before her editor overruled it. For instance, Sarcyn is redeemed in the new version instead of going insane and his brother has been replaced with a sister, whose role has been drastically reduced. Also, the Thieves' Guild in one town was changed into just a father and his son, because the author came to realize that the town wasn't large enough to support a fully-fledged thieves' guild. - The biggest modern revisions made by Jin Yong, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils now ends with Wang Yuyan rejecting Duan Yu, opting to stay and take care of her now crazy cousin, Murong Fu, Duan Yu marrying all his previous romantic interests and a few other retcons. - Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was originally set in 1992. After The Film of the Book Blade Runner was released, subsequent printings changed the year to 2019. - The chronologically last book of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Talking to Dragons, was written first. When it was republished, some minor changes were made to make it agree with the other books. - Ender's Game originally had the main character use the N-word, and depicted Russia in a different light (it was written during the Cold War). Before Orson released an edited version, he told all of his fans that if they sent their copies of Ender's Game to him, he'd send them back free copies of another, not yet released, book of his. What did Orson do with the copies he received? Destroyed them. - Small-scale example: Any reprint of the early Eragon books now marks them as the Inheritance Cycle instead of the Inheritance Trilogy. note : Which has the added benefit of avoiding confusion with another book series. - In 1831, Mary Shelley rewrote significant portions of her 1818 novel Frankenstein, resulting in a much more fatalistic text. - The "FUDGE" books by Judy Blume were edited in post-2002 reprints to, among other things, replace references to The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and The Electric Company (1971) with references to the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, replace vinyl record players with CD players, and in Sheila the Great, change the reason the characters are using a mimeograph machine (in 1972, it was because they hadn't gotten a copier yet. In 2002, it was because the copier broke). - The Gaiad has its chapters frequently updated to keep up with scientific advances or to add new illustrations. - Recent reprints of the older Geronimo Stilton books have many illustrations replaced or partially redrawn to replace Trap's old design note : White shirt, red suspenders and blue pants with the one introduced around volume 31-32 of the main series note : Yellow and green Hawaiian shirt, reddish brown shorts, and also an earring and a ponytail. The partially redrawn ones are the most obvious ones, since the new, digitally colored parts are drawn over the original watercolored pictures. - Harry Potter: - Later editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone were edited to make Nearly Headless Nick's claimed age match with the age given for him in Chamber of Secrets. Also in Philosopher's Stone, Hagrid originally stated he had to "give Sirius his bike back". This was later contradicted by Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban where Sirius Black gave the bike to Hagrid and told him to keep it before disappearing. Later editions of Philosopher's Stone rectified this by having Hagrid just say he had to put the bike away. - Early editions of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets have Dumbledore tell Harry that Voldemort is the last living ancestor of Salazar Slytherin, even though the word "descendant" was obviously meant. This was of course eventually changed, but not before inspiring some humorous Epileptic Trees. Also in the same book, Lockhart mentions that one of the less-than-photogenic people he stole credit from was a witch with a "harelip" (an outdated term for a cleft lip), which was changed to a "hairy chin" in later editions. - In the first American printing of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a mistake made by Rowling (in both the British and US-market editions) made it so the order in which the shadows of Harry's parents come out of Voldemort's wand contradicts the order in which Voldemort said he killed them, launching a thousand fan theories. This was corrected in later editions. - In the original edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, it's a minor plot point that prefects can't take house points. However, this contradicts an earlier scene in Chamber of Secrets in which Percy takes points off Ron. Later editions of Phoenix altered the dialogue so that the rule is that prefects can't take points off other prefects. - A reissue of Huckleberry Finn in 2011 omitted the N-words, exchanging the word "slave" where appropriate. - R.A. Salvatore changed some details of Drizzt's backstory in later drafts of The Icewind Dale Trilogy so as to better fit his expanded conception of the character's origins in The Dark Elf Trilogy. Specifically, the line "Two hundred years of living many miles below ground had not been erased by five years on the sunlit surface. To this day, sunlight drained and dizzied him." The prequel trilogy's timeline established that Drizzt was only in his mid-forties or so. - Imaro when first released in 1981 had a chapter called "Slaves of the Giant-Kings" with Fantasy Counterpart Cultures of the Tutsi and Hutu of Rwanda and Imaro incites a bloody rebellion against the Tutsi. Then in 1994 the Rwandan Genocide happened where the Hutu slaughtered the Tutsi. When author Charles Saunders finally reprinted Imaro in 2006 he removed "Slaves of the Giant-Kings" entirely, replacing it with "The Afua". In addition, Saunders moved the chapter "The City of Madness" to the start of Imaro 2: The Quest for Cush and replaced it with "Betrayal in Blood" since in the original publication there was a large gap between "The City of Madness" and the preceding chapter while "Betrayal in Blood" bridges that gap. - Jurassic Park was slightly edited after The Lost World (1995) was published to remove reference to Dr. Malcolm's death, to support his retcon back into existence for the sequel. - In Just Me and You, the first of Mercer Mayer's "Little Critter" books, at one point, Little Critter is threatened with being spanked. This was changed in recent reprints to have him being threatened with getting a "time-out". - In The Lorax, there was originally a line that joked about how polluted Lake Erie was. Some environmentalists pointed out to Dr. Seuss that there were efforts to clean up the lake. So reprints have changed the Lake Erie line. It can still be heard in the Animated Adaptation however. - In the Magic Shop series, every book includes a pair of talking rats named Jerome and Roxanne except the first one. The twentieth-anniversary revised edition gives them a short cameo, along with some smaller changes. - In later editions of the original Mary Poppins novel, the "Bad Tuesday" chapter (in which the central characters are magically transported to different parts of the world) was repeatedly rewritten to tone down the racist depictions of the foreign characters. The first iteration simply replaced ethnic slurs and other particularly derogatory sentences with more respectful versions, while the final iteration completely changed the characters from human beings into talking animals. - The Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series underwent a major retcon of their first stories beginning in 1959 (the first 34 for Nancy, 38 for the Hardys). Ostensibly to remove dated slang and racist stereotypes, and also to make the stories shorter and faster-paced, this led to a realization that some stories simply fell apart otherwise, so more than a few of the books were completely new stories with nothing but the title being the same. Purists of the two series have criticized the revised books as being bland and sanitized. The original volumes can be found through reprints from niche publisher Applewood Books. - In response to charges of anti-Semitism in his novel Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens eliminated most of the references to Fagin's Jewishness in later editionsin the original he was constantly referred to as "the Jew"though it is mostly the original that is read, reprinted, and studied today, while the more sanitized version has been forgotten. - Oracle of Tao has had a number of edits since its video game version. In particular though, Ambrosia Brahman's name has been changed from Brahmin (in the video game). This is true even on a picture where Ambrosia signs her name on an identification card. - Reprints of the Norwegian edition of the Pippi Longstocking books by Astrid Lindgren rewrite Pippi's father's title from "negerkonge" (Negro King) to "sydhavskonge" (King of the Southern Seas), due to the, well, you know what. - S-F: The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: In this Anthology, there is a note on the first page of "Sense From Thought Divide", by Mark Clifton, admitting to revisions from the original publication. - Edmond Hamilton's book The Star Kings. In the original ending, the hero returned to his own time and body, and his love followed him some time later by swapping bodies with an incurably comatose girl. Once Hamilton wrote the sequel, that changed to her contacting him telepathically and saying they are working on a way to transport him into her time physically. For some reason, however, some recent printings still include the original ending. - Star Trek Expanded Universe: - In one of the more famous examples in literature, at least among Trekkers, Della van Hise's Star Trek: The Original Series novel Killing Time was released and then almost immediately recalled when it was discovered that the author was a former K/S Slash Fic writer, and that this comes through blatantly in the original text of the novel note : no, the originally published manuscript wasn't explicitly K/S, but the subtext was considerably heavier. The next edition had the worst of the subtext edited out, but original copies can still be found on eBay and in used bookstores, and many K/S fans actively hunt them out. - Diane Duane made some minor edits to Rihannsu to clean up internal continuity when the first four books of five were re-released as an omnibus edition in the early 2000s. - In The Stormlight Archive book Words of Radiance, the climactic battle between \|\|Kaladin\|\| and \|\|Szeth\|\| was rewritten: after \|\|Szeth learns that his terrible crimes were All for Nothing\|\|, the original hardcover has the former kill the latter, while the paperback release has \|\|Szeth choose to fall to his death in the Highstorm\|\|. In both editions, \|\|he's brought Back from the Dead anyway\|\|. - Older books in the Kid Detective series The Three Investigators were reedited to replace Alfred Hitchcock with fictional stand-ins after the Real Life Hitch's death. - Tolkien's Legendarium: - Later editions of the book contain a few minor changes to sentences in Elvish. In some cases, these are typos that weren't caught earlier (it's not like many people would know how Elvish is "supposed" to be spelled). In others, it's an actual change to the dialogue. - A major change from The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings was the account of how Bilbo won the Ring from Gollum. The Hobbit shows Gollum offering the Ring as a genuine prize in the riddle game, written long before Lord of the Rings envisioned the Ring as an Artifact of Doom that Gollum would never part with willingly. The latter work cleverly addressed this by saying that the account in The Hobbit was Bilbo's own record of what happened, which Gandalf immediately found very suspicious. Bilbo confesses to Gandalf that he tricked Gollum into giving him the Ring. Then later editions of The Hobbit itself was altered to reflect LoTR's characterization of what really happened, explained In-Universe as Frodo learning the truth from Gandalf and editing his uncle's book. All this does, however, leave the weirdness of reading the extant editions of The Hobbit followed by The Lord of the Rings, leaving Gandalf confronting Bilbo about something that apparently didn't happen. - Diane Duane has released edited "New Millennium Edition" versions of the first nine books of the Young Wizards series to clean up the timeline. Seeing as the series had been published over the course of thirty years at that point, each was set in the present day at time of publication, and yet Kit and Nita had only grown a couple of years... it was probably for the best. In addition to resetting things so the series starts in 2008, she also took the opportunity to fix some other things, such as a very dated understanding of autism in A Wizard Alone. - Happened a few times on Babylon 5. Generally this was done to fix a mistake that was detected almost immediately after the first airing, such as Sheridan's old ship (the Agamemnon) opening fire on civilian transports in "Moments of Transition" (changed to the Pollux later), and Sheridan's notorious reference in "Comes the Inquisitor" to the Jack the Ripper murders happening in the "West End of London". Also, all official releases of the original pilot "The Gathering" are the "Special Edition"; the original pilot (as originally aired) is a case of Keep Circulating the Tapes. - Averted with the recasting of Anna Sheridan. After Melissa Gilbert played John Sheridan's (Bruce Boxleitner, Gilbert's real-life husband) wife Anna in a pair of third-season episodes, J. Michael Straczynski considered doing a reshoot with Gilbert of an earlier second-season scene featuring Anna Sheridan (originally filmed with a different actress), but it never actually happened. - Interestingly enough, some refilmed footage is clearly visible, as there was a Flashback with the Other Darrin in "Z'Ha'Dum". Also lampshaded in the Director's Commentary. - The original LP for the soundtrack of Battle Fever J depicted Battle France wearing the light blue suit he wore in early episodes. The later CD version, first printed during the 1990s, changed to the white suit he wore in later episodes. - Episodes 13, 5, and 7 have two versions: the original, in which Kenji Ushio plays Hedder, and the other in which he has been replaced by Masashi Ishibashi. - Battlestar Galactica became infamous for including deleted scenes in its "Previously On" sequences, or just throwing in extra dialogue when a character's face wasn't visible. - Some of the Missing Episodes in Doctor Who have been reconstructed with animation, which was used in at least one case to do this - the "Bad Wolf" Arc Words from the 2005 series actually show up in "The Invasion", a 1968 story. - At the beginning of Heroes Season Three episode "I Am Sylar", the "Previously on ..." segment shows a scene in which Danko instructs Sylar to shapeshifter into Agent Taub for a while. However, this never actually happened "Previously on Heroes". It was, in fact, an entirely new scene that according to the writers was written and shot for the sole purpose of being placed in the recap. - One episode of Kamen Rider Gaim garnered international attention by "borrowing" the official map of Gotham City to use as the map of the story's setting, Zawame City. For the home version the map was digitally replaced with a more generic-looking location, presumably to avoid legal entanglements with DC Comics. - An episode of Law & Order featured a mass murder at a bar called "The Velvet Room". After the owners of an actual New York bar of that name sued, the episode was redubbed to change the name of the bar to "The Vivant Room". - The short-lived The Little Muppet Monsters was retconned out of existence in reruns of the The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years special from 1986, which was made before LMM was cancelled. The original broadcast included cameos by the show's characters, clips from the series, and a mention of the show in a speech by Big Bird, all of which were edited out when the special was shown on Odyssey. - The picture of Penny & Desmond in the Lost episode "Orientation" originally showed Henry Ian Cusick with a model who was not Sonya Walger. On the DVD, the photo has been digitally altered to include Walger (and was edited for the rerun as well). - The re-filming of earlier episodes of Seinfeld when Frank Costanza was recast. Also, the first episode featuring Newman had him voiced by Larry David, as he did not appear on screen. Reruns of the episode feature Wayne Knight's voice instead. - At the end of the first season of Sherlock, John's Character Blog stopped dead, with increasingly worried comments from his friends, none of whom had seen him since the Cliffhanger. When the second season revealed \|\|the cliffhanger was resolved very simply within seconds\|\|, the blog was quickly changed to fit the new events. - Sons of Anarchy inserted a line in a "Previous On..." wherein the character of Cherry who had been explicitly Put on a Bus to Canada is told she will be "safe in Ireland," to set up her three episode guest appearance while the club goes to Oireland. - Done on, of all shows, Wheel of Fortune. The Announcer Charlie O'Donnell died in November 2010, barely two months into the 28th season. Naturally this meant that other announcers would fill in, but where this trope comes into play is with the episodes Charlie had taped which had not yet aired. Deciding that it would be "too sad" to hear his voice posthumously, the producers dubbed Charlie's voice over with those of the fill-ins. This came into play again during the summer rerun cycle in 2011: as Jim Thornton had been chosen as the permanent replacement, he was dubbed over everyone else on the reruns — including a few episodes originally announced by Charlie, meaning that some were overdubbed twice! - After Rolf Harris' conviction for indecent assault, his vocals were removed from subsequent reissues of Kate Bush's Aerial and replaced with her son Bertie. - Mark Ronson's Uptown Funk! had co-writer credit given to Trinidad James from sampling All Gold Everything, The Gap Band for similar elements to Oops, Upside Your Head, and the producers involved with all three bands. - Michael Jackson did this twice and didn't announce it. After the success of the Rock With You single - which was itself a remix, as was the B-Side Get On The Floor - the album Off The Wall was reissued with the single mixes replacing the album versions, unannounced, which remains to this day. The same thing happened with the album Bad, which had numerous differences, most notably a spoken intro to I Just Can't Stop Loving You. The 2001 remasters presented retained the revised tracklistings. Enough people kicked up a fuss about the Bad album being changed that they hoped the original mix (albeit remastered) would be reused for Bad 25. It wasnt, the revised mix was used instead. - Michael had three changes to his albums that were announced, however - Ben had the cover changed to remove the rats (Ben is supposed to be Michael's pet rat) because they were apparently scaring kids, History was revised to contain an edited version of 'They Don't Care About Us' (due to containing the line 'jew me, kike me' which was considered offensive), and Off The Wall's cover was changed to just showing his lower half on the US pressings and the 2001 remaster because it was thought that younger fans would not realise it was the same Michael (prior to his skin bleaching and hair straightening). - After Michael's death, newspapers that had accused him of being a pedophile stopped doing so and praised him instead, acting like there had never been any accusations, though a new set of allegations against him surfaced in early 2019 following the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland. This naturally confused their audiences, some of whom were quite vocal about it. - Stay With Me by Sam Smith, James Napier and William Phillips had similarities to I Wont Back Down by Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, who were retroactively given co-writer credit on Stay With Me. - When it was released as a single, Taylor Swift's "ME!" contained the line "Hey kids, spelling is fun!", however the album version removes this, likely because of the negative reaction the line got. - After the first 3 million copies were sold, Weezer's self-titled debut had the album mix of "Say It Ain't So" quietly replaced by a single remix at the band's request - the difference is barely noticeable anyway. A deluxe version of the album included the original mix as a bonus track. - Wham's 2011 reissue of The Final (with a DVD of the video release) presented it as the 'original album' and played on the nostalgia of people who would have bought it on vinyl or cassette in 1986. However, the reissue is based on the CD release, which was released later and doesn't contain Blue (Armed With Love), the extended mixes of Bad Boys, Careless Whisper and I'm Your Man. As Blue is pretty rare on CD, this was widely seen as a missed opportunity. - It's very common for books of newspaper comic collections to revise, edit, or just outright omit comic strips the artist disliked on first run. Since it's quite difficult to track down "original" strips as they first ran in newspapers, this is one form of media where Orwellian Retconning can be almost undetectable and thus extremely successful. - In The Prehistory of The Far Side Gary Larson admits to doing this on several occasions. For example, one comic involved a vampire watching a TV ad boasting "when you're out of A-positive, you're out of blood!" with the caption "Your Vampire TV station." Larson admitted finding that caption redundant, and sure enough it never accompanies the comic in any other Far Side collection or calendar. - The Complete Calvin and Hobbes book-set had some of the dialogues altered: - A strip from January 7, 1987 had the dialogue "Was I adopted?" changed to "Was I genetically engineered or cloned?". - A similar change was done for the November 25, 1988 strip, where mentions of "biological mother" was changed to "a good mother." - A strip from November 24, 1987 had Calvin's dad's explanation for why the weather is getting colder altered so that it's more scientifically correct. - This was played with in a Dilbert comic, when Topper says he passed a gallstone so big it became the Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration. Receptionist: I find that hard to believe. Topper: Give me ten minutes and then check Wikipedia . - The Family Circus frequently reuses panels, either with the same joke or a new one that fits the art. These panels are generally redrawn to update any technology (although the wood-panelled CRT television remains an exception), and sometimes reworked to update other things as well (like a rerun "We're going to Disneyland!" storyline that made a point of referencing the most recent attractions). As with FBOFW, scenes in cars have seat-belts added. - When For Better or for Worse entered reruns, several older strips had their artworks altered, from seat belts being added when characters are driving to Ellie reacting more angrily to John (this was after Lynn Johnston divorced her husband, who was the basis for the character). This is, however, averted in The Complete Library hardcover reprint, where the book editor is taking great pains to restore the strip close to the original version as possible. - An early FoxTrot strip had Jason recording an answering machine message proclaiming that the caller dialed "Satan Hotline". When the strip was reprinted in book collections, it was changed so that Jason was singing "A million bottles of beer on the wall." - Another strip featured Andy, high on decongestant, realizing that she was surfing the television when it was off, which lead her to claim "I thought Oprah looked extra-black". Given the unfortunate implication with the dialogue, it was changed to "I thought Bill O'Reilly seemed a little soft-spoken" in reprint collections. - A Garfield strip for October 20, 2002 originally had Garfield reciting Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay". However the poem was still under copyright when it ran so it was replaced with an original poem in reprints. (The poem has since lapsed into public domain as of 2019). - A retcon that was done because of an error: a Pearls Before Swine strip from February 7, 2016 accidentally ruined a pun in the next-to-last panel, where Pig said "I want to be your friend" instead of "I want to be your Fred" (this is based on a lyrics from a Bruce Springsteen song "Born to Run"). In the online edition and subsequent reprint in book collections, it was corrected so Pig said "Fred". - Ever since the World Wrestling Federation were forced to change their name to World Wrestling Entertainment in 2002, they've made sure to remove all references to the letters WWF and the "Federation". This is partly because of not being allowed to use the acronym for legal reasons, and wanting to make the rebranding as absolute as possible. Which means that older wrestlers like Randy Savage are referred to as "former WWE wrestlers", even if their runs with the company took place long before the name change, and making edits whenever a wrestler or announcer mentions "WWF" on DVD releases of pre-2002 footage. Averted on the UK licensed DVDs which, through some legal loophole, can be released unedited. Averted with the release of the WWE Network, as footage from the WWF days can be found there unedited due to a licensing agreement between them and the World Wide Fund for Nature. - Trisa Hayes had appeared in Penthouse some time prior to her surprise ECW debut as Beulah McGillicutty at ECW Hostile City Showdown 95. However, because WWE had a working relationship with Playboy at the time that the Rise & Fall of ECW DVD was released in 2004, Tommy Dreamer had to say that she had been a Playboy Playmate. For the record, Tommy Dreamer, real name Thomas Laughlin, is married to Trisa Hayes in Real Life. Yes, WWE made Tommy Dreamer lie about what magazine his wife had appeared in prior to her ECW debut. - When Sid Justice eliminated Hulk Hogan at Royal Rumble 1992, fans cheered and Gorilla Monsoon responded as if it was fair. While the home video version kept the original reaction and commentary, the recap on Superstars in the weeks after was edited to remove the cheering, and Monsoon actually re-recorded his commentary to cast Justice in a negative light. - Normally, the debut of a company's new logo would be greeted with much fanfare. However, when WWE decided to update their "scratch" logo into a more modern, sleeker logo, there was not one mention of the new logo made on-air, despite it replacing the old WWE logo on almost everything (microphones, stage, announce table, backstage interview area, turnbuckles, the patch on the referees' shirts, etc.). Making it doubly bad is the fact that the supposedly "new and improved" WWE Championship was to be revealed that night, but what was revealed was a belt exactly the same as the old WWE Championship, only with the new logo instead of the old. So in Kayfabe, no one exactly knew what was so new and improved about the belt, as it was never mentioned by anyone on air. - Given the nature of BZPower, wherein players can edit their own posts at will, this has taken place every now and then in RPGs such as Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze RPG or Dino Attack RPG, usually when a player is adding in a piece of information he originally forgot or when a player is decanonizing something he wrote. For example, in Dino Attack RPG, Dr. Cyborg's revelation of Pterisa's origins vanished without a trace after Andrewnuva 199 asked avmatoran to retcon it. - Done humorously with the Paranoia franchise, where the much-reviled fifth edition of the game has been officially declared an unproduct. - Pathfinder: Following the January 2023 controversy over Wizards of the Coast's attempted changes to the Open Game License, Paizo announced they would be divesting Pathfinder Second Edition of remaining material held over from Wizards' SRD. This results in a lot of retcons to established lore of the Lost Omens setting: among other things, dragons have been thoroughly reworked away from the chromatic and metallic breakdown of Dungeons & Dragons, and the drow are being deleted altogether in favor of expanding the role of the serpentfolk. The latter basically means the Second Darkness Adventure Path is now Canon Discontinuity. - When Warhammer 40,000 ended the Squat race, reprintings of books where Squat characters appear had them deleted, turned into humans or Ratlings although they do get a mention since the sixth edition rulebook. They were eventually brought back as the Leagues of Votann in 9th edition. - The original Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney Theme Parks was refurbished to include characters from the film adaptations, with dialogue rerecorded for several of the ride's original characters referencing Captain Jack Sparrow and the like. Fan reaction was mixed. Many years prior to the movie, the ride was altered to give all the women being chased by the pirates plates full of food to tone down the implications of the scene by attempting to provide a G-rated motive for the pursuit. (They're just trying to steal the food! And the women are trying to prevent them from stealing the food! That's all). - One of Walt Disney's motivations for building Disneyland in the first place was that he regretted not being able to change his movies after they were released, but a theme park has lots of opportunities for renovations. Whether he meant that recalling and re-editing his films would have been financially unfeasible when he had new movies that needed work on or that ethically he just couldn't bring himself to do it is uncertain. - While most content updates in City of Heroes added new missions and story arcs, there were occasions when the developers would go back and redo existing missions that were badly designed (making them very unpopular with the players) or that were contradicted by changes to the game lore. The infamous Positron Task Force was completely rewritten from the ground up after years of overwhelming negative feedback from players. - This also could happen frequently with the Mission Architect feature as it was possible for the author to edit a story arc that they have published without taking it down and republishing. The arc still had the same ID number and player ratings, but could very well have been changed into a completely different story if the author so chose. - Sometimes this was necessary as a exploit fix could have unintended consequences for authors who didn't try to write farming missions and now had to make changes to fix their damaged story arc. - Dragon Age: The Chantry is well-known to rewrite historical documents to suit whatever politics it has at the time—particularly mage and/or elven heroes. - While the Enslaved Elves fought with the humans' prophet Andraste to free Southern Thedas from Tevinter, after the Exalted March against the (Elven) Dales, the Chantry stripped the elven general Shartan from the Chant of Light, and race lifted \|\|Ameridan, an elven mage Inquisitor\|\| to support their on-going anti-elf propaganda. - They also tend to erase or downplay the heroic accomplishments of mages, since the Chantry derives a lot of power from convincing the common folk that their Templars (whom they keep addicted to lyrium, which the Chantry has cornered the market on) are the commoners' only protection against dangerous magic-users (who they claim, if left unchecked, could create another Tevinter). - In Dragon Age: Inquisition, if the Inquisitor is male and in a romance with Dorian, Dorian can remark at one point that he wonders how long it will be before the Chantry writes that part out of the Inquisitor's exploits (due to Dorian being from the Tvinter Imperium)? - A couple of changes were made to Portal for its Alternate Reality Game leading to the announcement of Portal 2. Specifically the ending was altered and a series of radios were added to the game with an accompanying achievement to find the locations where all the radios received a signal. - Fallout 3 had some changes made by its "Broken Steel" DLC, mostly to address complaints about the ending. note : The biggest one being why you couldn't send in one of the several companions you might have following you at the time who were either immune to radiation or blindly loyal/brainwashed enough to obey you \|\|into a radioactive area to save the day (one of which had already used his immunity to radiation to retrieve a MacGuffin from another radiation flooded area when you first met him).\|\| Although you still have to do it yourself if you want to be "good". - All the re-releases of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake since the 2004 Japanese feature phone ports renamed many of the characters specific to those two games. The re-releases of Metal Gear 2 in particular also changed all of the realistic character portraits into ones drawn similarly to the style of Metal Gear Solid illustrator Yoji Shinkawa, since all of the portraits in the MSX2 version were trace-overs of real-life celebrities (which could've led to Konami facing legal problems if they were kept due to the unauthorized use of people's likenesses). Dr. Kio Marv's broken Russian in the second game was also rewritten to more closely resemble actual Czech. Even the Japanese Virtual Console release of Metal Gear 2, which is otherwise an emulation of the MSX2 game, uses the Shinkawa-style portraits. - The 10th anniversary re-release of the Wesker's Report documentary removed the line in which Wesker claims that Sherry is in his organization's custody. This was meant to foreshadow a plot development for a future game that was later abandoned. - The GBA re-release of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past rewrites Link's uncle's dying speech to remove the infamous "Zelda is your..." line. A Mythology Gag, however, has a superboss that gives a more accurate translation of the original Japanese line ("You are... the princess's... ... ... ...") right before attacking. Also the "seven wise men" were changed to "Seven Sages", to be consistent with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, especially since it reveals only two of them actually are men. - Originally, the Gerudo symbol in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was a crescent moon and star, very similar to the symbol of the Islamic faith. Also, the text of the Ominous Latin Chanting in the Fire Temple was originally an Islamic prayer. Both were changed in subsequent releases of the game to remove the Islamic references entirely. Also, to maintain the E rating instead of getting bumped to T note : E10+ didn't exist yet, Ganon's blood shed during end-game cutscenes was changed from red to green. - Submachine 1: The Basement is actually the third version of the original Submachine. Amongst the changes are the inclusion of a teleporter device and a Wisdom Gem, both fundamental concepts in the later Submachine games. - Mass Effect 3 altered and expanded on its ending after major fan backlash. Most of the changes were done to avoid any Inferred Holocausts, make the endings more bittersweet than unintentionally bleak, and give a bit more insight into how the final choice shaped the universe. The reaction to these changes were mostly positive. The Leviathan DLC goes even further and has \|\|the eponymous Leviathans mentioning the AI behind the Reapers, the Catalyst, which has relatively no build up in the main game\|\|. - Nintendo and Game Freak received criticism over Jynx's design in the Pokémon franchise over her similarity to the blackface stereotype. (This was not intentional—but what Jynx is really based on is controversial itself.) They resolved this issue by changing Jynx's face from black to purple, including for remakes of old games, as well as promptly replacing any images of Jynx with a black face with new artwork where her face is purple wherever possible and recoloring the episode of the anime that started up the whole debate. This proved futile with the English dub, though (see Anime & Manga section above). - Star Trek Online: After the Legacy of Romulus Expansion Pack launched Cryptic started going back through the early missions and tweaking them, culminating in season 9's complete rewrite of the Borg and Undine episodes as one episode titled "Borg Advance". While most of the changes were fairly well-thought-of, "Where Angels Fear to Tread" (formerly "The Return") had what was previously an ordinary Romulan Star Navy captain fiddling with Borg tech * : something Starfleet and the KDF have been doing, too get retconned to be a Tal Shiar officer who was experimenting on Romulan Republic POWs. This made the moral choice (left over from the previous version) of what to do with her and the Borg tech she's experimenting on no actual choice at all. - In the Game Boy Advance and most later ports of Final Fantasy VI, the scene in which Locke meets Celes is censored to remove the Imperial soldiers beating her onscreen, which Squaresoft considered necessary in the age of video game ratings systems in order to get the desired rating in Japan. - Final Fantasy XIV: - This trope is what fuels the fight between the Ishgardians and Dravanians — \|\|the Ishgardians and Dravanians lived in peace after they saw the awful price Hraesvelgr paid when he was forced to eat the human Shiva. However, King Thordan I and his Knights Twelve, seeking the power of the dragons, slew Ratatoskr and ripped out the eyes of her brother Nidhogg. The king and half the knights were killed by Nidhogg and the remaining knights stole away with Nidhogg's eyes and claimed Ratatoskr's power as their own. When the Dragonsong War started, the Church lied as to who started the war, claiming the dragons betrayed them instead. This remained a secret for a thousand years until the Player Character and the remains of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn make their way to Ishgard to hide from the Brass Blades and Crystal Braves after they are accused of regicide.\|\| - Patch 6.1 adds a few small retcons as part of its effort to shorten the infamous Praetorium dungeon down from over an hour long to half an hour. The player character now \|\|only recognizes the suit of Magitek armor they bonded with, "Maggie", after it's destroyed\|\|, and the party encounters Gaius for the first time earlier on in the dungeon. - The Bonus Stage episode "2 Fast" has a Gamebooks-style ending, and included in the options is "Creepy Ending". Originally this involved Elly and a female Joel waking up in bed with Phil. Apparently fans were disturbed by this, as Joel says in the following episode, so Elly's mouth was removed and the figures were changed into puppets. - Everything Is Broken: - In the original upload of part 7 Flippy starts to run away from evil Flaky when Celestia comes out of nowhere and whispers "run" into his ear and she is never seen again. But in the 2020 reupload that is edited out and Flippy runs away by himself. - In the original upload of part 9, LG Creepybloom explains to Rainbow Dash they are not the original characters but came from fanfics. But in the 2020 reupload that is edited out so they are not aware of their fanfics anymore. - Busty Girl Comics changed a few words in an early strip to try to be more inclusive of diverse feelings on busts. Since Tumblr archives previously uploaded versions of images, you can compare the original◊ to the more cautiously framed◊ version. - 8-Bit Theater: Thief's uniform turns red shortly after he changes class to Ninja. Then it turns black to make him more like a traditional ninja (and because Fighter and Red Mage are already very, very red). When the other warriors call him on it, he claims it's always been black... and when that comic went up, the author went back and edited every single page in which Thief is wearing the ninja uniform (even some very old pages, where Thief is wearing the ninja uniform in Flash Forwards or Imagine Spots), to make that uniform black. - There is a device in City of Reality that is made to do this and this alone. It is brought to Reality by a thief who uses it to predict the every move, and later used by Hawk, who uses it to be "perfect" at everything, until it falls back into the thieves hands. Later, it turns out it was causing freak storms threatening Reality. - The same device is later used by the reader in a dark Gamebook in Magic World. - And then used by saboteurs trying to steal crystals from all the worlds at once. The first time, they failed due to the high security, but the second time around, they knew exactly what to do. The characters are still dealing with the fallout. - This last one is the only one that was actually retconned into the comic, with the original version available off-site. All other instances were treated as regular Mental Time Travel. - Schlock Mercenary quotes from a book called The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries. Originally, this was The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates, until Franklin-Covey, owners of the actual Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, noticed and sent what can only be described as a very polite cease and desist notice. Luckily, Tayler took it in stride since the change meant he could finally make Merch based on the quotes without a potentially harsher letter. - The print release of early chapters of El Goonish Shive changed a few things (which were later changed in the archive as well) away from throwaway gags and/or revealing too much. Such as Grace's reaction to Tedd's invitation (first version didn't fit her Innocent Fanservice Girl character), Susan's reaction to meeting "Ellen" fElliot (first version sounded really out-of-character, with Susan calling "Ellen" "cutie") and a conversation between the same fElliot and Sarah. - In Erfworld, Bogroll's special ability was Regeneration and Deletionism was a school of magic for Naughtymancy along the Numbers axis, but was completely changed in the archives and books so that Bogroll now had Fabrication and Naughtymancy/Numbers was now "Retconjuration". Deletionism and Regeneration now only exist in the memories of fans (and the wiki). Word of God said that this was because he hadn't thought the special abilities system through at that point. - Starslip was originally called Starshift Crisis, but copyright issues with StarShift: The Zaran Legacy caused the starshift (the in-universe transportation method) to be retconned as the "starslip", and all references in the archives were changed. - The author of Meaty Yogurt had previously written another comic featuring a character with an odd eye. After feeling that an eye scar in Meaty Yoghurt was too reminiscent of this character, she redrew all the character's appearances with a lip scar instead. - In Gunnerkrigg Court, a few bits of dialogue in the first two chapters were quietly changed, a year or two after they first went up. For example, on this page, " homme de fer" was changed to "tin man" because Tom thought the French was gratuitous. Oddly enough, some further changes were made for the first volume of the print edition, but these weren't incorporated into the online archives. - Homestuck: - Andrew Hussie stated that the playable human characters are supposed to be a-racial, so readers could imagine them as any race they prefer. When a reader pointed out an old page on which one of these characters was referred to as a "white rapper", Hussie went back and replaced the word "white" with gibberish. note : The author has stated he had done this as a joke. Soon afterwards, he changed it to "a white guy who is a rapper". - Occasionally panels are posted with unintentional errors, which are quietly corrected by the author shortly afterward. For example, when the Bec's Head Base first appeared it had the troll's Sgrub logo. It was quickly changed to the standard Sburb logo. The Sufferer's death was initially depicted with less detail, and soon had more muscles and lines showing the cut of his clothes added. Another example was in a flash where \|\|the deceased Nepeta\|\| was shown without the Prophet Eyes of dead characters. This was also corrected, dashing hopes of a resurrection. Amusingly the opposite happened in a flashback panel where two characters that were alive at the time of the flashback were shown with Prophet Eyes - again, this was fixed. - Overlapping with Cut Song: A dispute with a (now former) member of the music team caused a few existing flash animations to be re-done with new music. In another example, a composer had his songs removed from the fifth music album after he was caught plagiarizing. It happened again when a winner of the fan music contest did the same thing. - Another race incident happened after one of the a-racial, Deliberately Monochrome human characters got a "ridiculous game powerup" that involved a wacky palette, including peach-toned skin...and described it as feeling "Caucasian." This was initially done deliberately by the writer to poke fun at the issue, but some readers took it as an excuse for harassment, leading him to rewrite the line as "peachy". - And a huge one with \|\|John reaching through a hole in the universe and poking his arm into a number of past panels and even a couple of flashes - all of which now have his arm inserted into them if you go back and check\|\|. - And again with \|\|oil being zapped all over past points in the comic by the same\|\|. - The Adventures of Dr. McNinja's "Issue One Half" and "There Is A Raptor In My Office" originally had Doc dealing with a villainous Ronald McDonald and the McDonald's corporate empire. "AWOL MD" has him showing up again as Donald McBonald - going from Enemy Mime to straight-up Monster Clown as a result - and both the previous issues were altered to feature "McBonald's" references. - Invoked but averted when Bedivere stops being Gender Flipped in Arthur, King of Time and Space; the characters say it'll only happen as long as no-one expects the management to go back and redraw all the previous strips he appeared in. A later retcon establishes he's trans, so the previous strips of him appearing female are in continuity. - Jodie Troutman has been very careful to expertly hide her earlier comics (except for Vigilante, Ho! and the second-incarnation Sporkman strips) from the Internet, to the point that the FAQ for Mary Elizabeth's Sock has a question of whether the characters have been seen before, to which she responds that some of them have been in Lit Brick and Sporkman (neglecting to mention nearly all were in, and most originated in, Basil Flint, P.I., Andiewear, Felicity Flint, Agent From H.A.R.M., Flint Again, and/or Flat Feet and High Heels). - Ménage à 3 experienced an unusual retroactive adjustment, in that it became less censor friendly, when the creators got tired of having to apply a Scenery Censor to the strip's extensive nudity, and went back over early strips adding nipples and such. - A couple of early Questionable Content strips have been edited since they first appeared. See the series' trope list for details. - An early strip in Between Failures has Thomas using "queer" as a pejorative, which was later edited to a different insult. The creator discussed his reasons in that page's comments section - mainly that Thomas was planned to have a bad tendency to "kick down" due to his general anger and frustration in life, and that he was supposed to eventually confront and grow out of such insults. In practice, Thomas mellowed considerably faster than originally planned and so the bad habit and planned storyline went way out of tone for him and had to be discarded, with the creator going back to snip off the dangling thread. - Sister Claire did this for the first few comics due to Yamino not being satisfied with how the original pages turned out and some of the more juvenile humor at the time which contrasted greatly with later events of the story. As such the new pages tone down these bits and add some more context to the characters. - In Eerie Cuties, Blair using an Artifact of Doom to make Brooke and Nina make out got such an outcry from the fans that it was changed to him forcing Brooke to do a cheerleader routine instead. - In Dangerously Chloe, Abby originally looked significantly younger in her first appearance; the comic in question was edited before the next update for unclear reasons. Also, Lacy's dialogue originally suggested her lesbian parents would be disappointed with her if she started dating boys - this was changed after fan outcry to her just wanting to emulate them. - Chris-chan had made many retcons in Sonichu (such as changing names on those based on real people), but the ones made in September 2015 were noticeable. Issues 9 and 10 were altered to be less homophobic, such as replacing the infamous cure for homosexuality plotpoint with a cure for "Nombie-Zazis", although some details such as the need for Chris' "straight blood" were still left intact. - VG Cats is pretty notorious for doing this anytime it crosses the line. A joke about the death of Satoru Iwata went over so poorly that the strip that once contained the gag was heavily trimmed to almost nothing, and two entire strips were withdrawn altogether because they offended fans (one offended Bronies, another that had already been moved to the site's outtakes folder was deleted altogether for its harsh stereotyping of fan convention attendees). - In Jerkcity, a number of strips, dating to its debut in 1998, were updated in 2020 to reflect the comic's name having been changed to Bonequest a couple years prior. The strips featuring the Rands character were also changed, either with another character (usually Atandt) being put in his place or with the strips being replaced wholesale. Some oddities occurred as a result, one in particular involving a strip originally featuring Rands asking Deuce to be his "smooth buddy". After the update, Rands was replaced by Pants, who in the strip immediately afterwards asks if he missed "smooth buddy week". - In BIONICLE's 2001 Mata Nui Adventure Game (AKA Mata Nui Online Game), the islanders were originally called Tohunga, which unknown to LEGO was a culturally sensitive term to the Maori people. The game was also intended to mention ritualistic Haka dances and the deities Papu and Rangi, all inspired by Polynesian cultures. After threats of a lawsuit, the cultural elements were mostly removed, though they remained in a couple of text files and in the game's German dialogue. For the game's 2006 re-release, Tohunga was replaced by the made-up Matoran, the name LEGO had been using since late-2001 for the villagers. The prompt "choose your Tohunga" from the final mini game was however not corrected. Also removed was Tahu's silhouette on the beach and the accompanying short cutscene, as the re-release lets you play chapters in different orders and keeping them would cause continuity mistakes. Later, Templar Studios released the original version on their site (only missing a couple text files), even preserving all instances of Tohunga, which would not have been legally permitted for LEGO. - Season 1, episode 3 of TANIS refers to the real-life case of Elisa Lam, who drowned in a hotel's water tower under mysterious circumstances. The podcast presents a fictional conspiracy theory that Lam had been possessed by a future-flung Aleister Crowley. After outcry from the listeners, the episode was re-released with all instances of Lam's name bleeped. However, it's still obvious who's being discussed, what with the infamy of the case and references to Crowley writing about a historical figure named Siela (pointed out as an anagram of "BLEEP") and contacting an alien named Lam (not bleeped). - Daria justified airing on MTV by using then-current songs as interstitial music; however, the rights issues put off a DVD release for a decade, at which point it was finally released with almost all of those songs removed. The box actually contains a little note from creator Glenn Eichler commenting on this, noting that while season one Daria would disapprove, season five Daria would say to shut up and pass the popcorn. - The DVD also unfortunately has an edited version of "Is It College Yet?" In particular, this version takes out some scenes that help set up \|\|Daria and Tom's breakup\|\|. - The Pixar short Knick Knack had one of these. In the original 1989 version, the character models for Sunny Miami and Sunny Atlantis have very large breasts. In the 2003 release and onward, they both have significantly smaller breasts. Their new bras are also less revealing. - If you look closely at the 1989 version, you can see Sunny Miami's bra does not extend to her back. It does in the 2003 version. - This wasn't the idea of Disney, but of the original creator John Lasseter, which is a bit ironic looking back. - In "Space Pilot 3000," the first episode of Futurama, a man using the New New York tube system originally requested "JFK Jr. Airport" as his destination, an obvious joke on the real NYC's JFK International Airport. A few months later, the real JFK Jr. died in a plane crash; subsequent U.S. airings changed the line to a different parody of an NYC location, "Radio City Mutant Hall". - A quick gag in "The Cryonic Woman" had Bender applying for a job using the career chip embedded in a severed human arm, which when scanned reads "Prime Minister of Norway." Following terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011, reruns on Comedy Central and SyFy, as well as (eventually) the streaming version on Netflix and later Hulu, used an edited cut where the career was indicated as "Chainsaw Juggler." Cartoon Network's reruns left the joke intact. - In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, an Ascended Extra known affectionately among fans as Derpy was given a scene which not only made her Fan Nickname Ascended Fanon but also gave her a speaking line. However, due to the voice actress thinking Derpy was male, she was given a deep voice which, given Derpy's role as The Ditz and the implications of her name, sounded like a Simpleton Voice. This resulted in complaints from Moral Guardians who claimed that "derpy" was pejorative and insensitive to people with disabilities. In order to avoid continued controversy, the episode became a Missing Episode for a while, and when it returned to iTunes and The Hub, she was given a voice with less Vocal Dissonance and the line referring to her as "Derpy" was edited to take out the name (though The Hub's closed captioning wasn't updated to reflect the change). Many fans weren't happy, but episode writer Amy Keating Rogers later explained why it had to happen. - It's worth mentioning that those who bought and downloaded the episode from iTunes early on (for example, those with a Season Pass) have the original version of the episode. Those who have the Friendship Express DVD also have the original version. - South Park: - The first airing of the episode "The Mystery of the Urinal Deuce" gave George W. Bush a fairly "generic" accent; within a few days, re-airings had redubbed him with something closer to his real-life Southern accent. - After "The Big Fix" revealed that minor character Token Black's real name is actually Tolkien, all previous media where his name is uttered were edited to have the subtitles say "Tolkien" instead of "Token" note : except South Park: The Stick of Truth and South Park: The Fractured but Whole, as the retcon happened long after those games ended development. Stan and Randy's subtitles still refer to him as "Token", as they had assumed his name really was Token before the reveal. - In the original airing of the Superman: The Animated Series episode "Apokolips...Now! (Part 2)," Stan Lee, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and Nick Fury could all be seen at Dan Turpin's funeral, with the cameos meant as an homage to the deceased Jack Kirby. Presumably for legal reasons, the cameos were all removed for the DVD release and subsequent airings. The cameos were finally restored when the episode streamed on HBO Max in 2021. - In the original cut of the 1933 Disney short, The Three Little Pigs, The Big Bad Wolf attempts to trick the pigs into letting him into the brick house by disguising himself as a stereotypical immigrant Jewish peddler, complete with skullcap, beard and exaggeratedly big nose. In 1948, the studio reanimated the scene so that the wolf was now disguised as a Fuller brush salesman. However, he still had a Yiddish accent. In subsequent prints, especially for TV, the audio was overdubbed to give him a generic "dumb guy" voice. - In the original airing of The Simpsons episode "Team Homer", Homer is shown having somehow stolen the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor given to Dr. Haing S. Ngor for The Killing Fields. Only a month after it aired, Dr. Ngor was murdered, which could make viewers think that Homer killed him for it. In syndication and on the season seven DVD set, the scene was changed to show the Oscar being the one given to Don Ameche for Cocoon, who had died a few years earlier, but of natural causes. The original version of the episode showing Ngor's award has never re-aired, though some YouTube users managed to upload the scene. - The first season of Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? gave the titular character a Synthetic Voice Actor. In later episodes, he is voiced by a human voice actor named Bobby Block. Re-runs of the early episodes had his dialogue re-recorded with Block's voice. - There are a few rather infamous images from the USSR featuring Stalin and others... then fewer and fewer 'others' as those people (or the nations they hailed from) fell out of favor, until only Josef Stalin remained. - When Orwell worked for the BBC he had trouble keeping up with shifting alliances. First the Soviets were neutral towards The Allies and against Germany & Japan (Second Sino-Japanese War), then neutral with Germany & Japan and against The Allies early in World War 2 (Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact), then against Germany and neutral with Japan and allied with The Allies (Soviet-German War, Soviet-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact), and then against Japan for the last month of the war. And then the Soviets were against The Allies again as the Cold War sank in. Further complicating matters, every one of Germany's European allies (Italy, Romania, Hungary, Finland, etc) also fought on both sides. Each and every time propaganda in the concerned countries had to change tack, sometimes drastically. - This is a possible explanation (besides Fake Memories or The Multiverse) for the Mandela Effect. But it requires a fair amount of belief, because the level of organization is far beyond what is considered normal (think Eastern Europe during Soviet times). In order for this explanation to work, essentially every copy of Berenstein Bears everywhere needs to be replaced with Berenstain Bears. While this plays out easily when there are few copies, as in the picture of Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov, replacing hundreds of thousands of copies of a written work is another matter. This also fails to take into account the fan backlash note : Seen most recently at proposals to retcon the works of Roald Dahl to any change to canonical texts, which means second or third hand copies of the original source material is sought after and guarded jealously, in preference to revised modern editions. This also applies to video copies of films and TV shows; the original politically incorrect version of Fawlty Towers is always going to be out there somewhere. Fans will see to this.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrwellianRetcon
Orphaned Index - TV Tropes An Index of tropes about orphans or that often involve orphans. Tropes that have been left all alone in the world include: Related: Adopt an Index Parental Issues <!—index—> Abandon the Disabled: A character is abandoned by their parents, because they are born disabled. Alone Among Families: A character with no family is surrounded by happy families. Anachronistic Orphanage: A traditional orphanage in a setting where there logically shouldn't be one. The Artful Dodger: Crafty, street-wise homeless child. Conveniently an Orphan: A character is an orphan so the plot can move along more easily. Don't Split Us Up: Siblings don't want to be adopted by separate families. Doorstop Baby: A baby is left on someone's doorstep and adopted by whoever lives in the house. Escaped from the Lab: The character is a refugee from a laboratory that experimented on them. Evil Orphan: An orphan (normally a young girl but sometimes a young boy) who turns out to be evil. Evil Orphanage Lady: An female orphanage owner who's cruel to the orphans. Fostering for Profit: Someone fosters a child purely for business. Heartwarming Orphan: An orphan child who normally ends up being adopted and is a good character who makes the audience emotional. Lost Orphaned Royalty: An orphan turns out to be descended from royalty. Nephewism: A kid is raised by his aunt/uncle rather than by his parents. Notorious Parent: The mother and/or father leaves the kid because theyre criminals on the run. Orphanage of Fear: An orphanage where the orphans are abused and tormented by the people running it. Orphanage of Love: An orphanage that treats its orphans well. Orphan's Ordeal: When being an orphan sucks. Orphan's Plot Trinket: Plot critical object of sentimental value to an orphan. Parental Abandonment: Neither of the character's parents are seen or mentioned. Disappeared Dad: A character's father is never seen while their mother is accounted for. Missing Mom: A character's mother is never seen while their father is accounted for. Parental Substitute: A character who acts as a parental figure to someone whose parents are absent or out of focus. Pauper Patches: A character living in poverty is wearing clothes that are patched up. Promotion to Parent: An older sibling takes responsibility to take care of their younger sibling or siblings. Raised by Grandparents: A character with missing parents is instead raised by their grandparents. Raised by the Community: An entire community of people not related to a child raise the child. Rules of Orphan Economics: Orphans will either be totally provided for or will have to scrape by on their own Satisfied Street Rat: An orphaned kid who has turned living on the street to their advantage. Saving the Orphanage: The hero has to stop a heartless business exec who wants to destroy a local Orphanage of Love. Self-Made Orphan: A person who has killed their own parents. Street Urchin: An orphan who spends most of their time on the streets doing what they can to get by. Teenage Wasteland: Kids now have adult power and responsibility and rule over society. Unknown Relative: The identity of a character's close relative is unknown to them, the audience or both. <!—/index—>	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanTropes
Orphan's Plot Trinket - TV Tropes "I know these don't mean anything to you, but they're everything to me. They're proof I got parents." Orphans get a disproportionate amount of attention from the plot of any given story, and is it any wonder why? Orphanhood is a plot gold mine. Right up there with a propensity to stare wistfully out windows, orphans collect an alarming number of plot-relevant knick-knacks. They will usually be a necklace or locket, and generally be a clue to the orphan's family, though they may have some other plot purpose, but they will always be inherited from the family in question. Mysterious swords and the like are very common. If the trinket saves the orphan's life by blocking an attack, it's also a Pocket Protector. If it wards off evil, it's a Protective Charm. If it grants powers, it's a Magical Accessory. If it's a stuffed animal, it may be a Sentimental Homemade Toy, and can overlap with Toy-Based Characterization to serve as a point of connection between them and their missing parent. Often used as a clue when Searching for the Lost Relative. Why living families are so lacking in portrait lockets and the like may forever remain a mystery. See Two Halves Make a Plot when the trinket has a counterpart. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - In the Golden Age Captain Marvel stories, Billy gets a Deathbed Confession from his childhood nurse, Sarah Primm, explaining that he has a twin sister, and is given half of a locket. He soon realizes that he recently met a girl, Mary Bromfield, who was wearing the other half. Unlike Billy, Mary was adopted by a nice, rich family who wind up taking him in too. - In Marvel Comics, Kevin and Parnival Plunder were each given half of a silver medal while they were young. Kevin would soon after go missing. As adults, they met again as Ka-Zar and the Plunderer, realizing their identities after putting the two halves together. It turns out it's actually the a chunk of vibranium, the first of its kind, and that anyone who possesses it can make more and virtually rule the world. I.e., it's also a prime MacGuffin. - Superman's spaceship can serve as this, as it often has significant information programmed in (including messages from his birth parents). Also, in some modern versions, his cape is actually made from his baby blanket, which is a super-strong Kryptonian material that won't suffer Clothing Damage. - Wonder Woman: Black and Gold: In "Memories of Hator" it turns out the entire reason Diana is visiting Badra is that she has recovered Badra's mother's crown. This is a rather significant trinket as the entire planet Badra originates from, and her family, were destroyed in a war long ago. - In the universe of the Our Own League fan novels, Donna was adopted into the Amazons' royal family after surviving a plane crash and washing up on their island as a little girl. Ever since, she's treasured the only key to her past: a lanyard with her underaged passenger ID. \|\|At the end of the third book, it's finally used to prove her identity to her long lost mother.\|\| - In the Call of Cthulhu board game Arkham Horror, the character Wendy Adams, the Orphan, starts with an Elder Sign. The Elder Sign is a powerful item capable of permanently sealing gates to the other worlds and having six in play wins the game. - Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition includes the "Backgrounds" mechanic, in which what you were before you started adventuring grants you skills and equipment. The equipment granted by the "Urchin" background includes "a token to remember your parents by". - Anastasia: Zig-Zagged. In the prologue, the Dowager give young Anastasia a music box (rather than a necklace that opens the music box, like in the film) as a parting gift before she leaves for Paris. But Anastasia is unable to retrieve it before her family is captured and she loses her memory, subverting the trope, until Dmitry inadvertently reunites her with it years later. The fact that she is able to open it and remember the lullaby when no one else could later proves her identity to the Dowager. - Oliver! is an adaptation of Oliver Twist, so naturally this trope occurs in the musical. - Likewise Annie's locket and the note her parents left with her. Though the locket turns out to be mass-produced and useless for finding her parents \|\|but the handwriting on the note does get identified, unfortunately her parents turn out to be dead.\|\| - A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum has the gaggle-of-geese rings Erronius gave to his children before pirates kidnapped them as children. This comes from the Plautus and Terence plays A Funny Thing was based on, and they got it from the works of Menander and other Hellenistic comedies. - Joanna insists on bringing her reticule with her when she an Antony plan to run away during the song "Kiss Me" in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. He tells her he'll buy her a new one but she tells him it was "the only thing my mother gave me". - Older Than Feudalism: In Euripides' play Ion, the orphan Ion was raised in a temple after his mother abandoned him, and the only clue to his true identity is the basket he was found in. His mother conveniently recognizes this basket just in time to prevent him from killing her, after she tried to assassinate him. - The handbag in The Importance of Being Earnest. Also presumably in the film versions. - Agatha's locket in the webcomic Girl Genius has pictures of her missing parents, and also \|\|suppresses her hereditarily strong mad scientist abilities which would otherwise bring unwanted attention to her\|\|. - More recently, the locket serves to \|\|suppress the mind control abilities of her not-so-dead mother, Lucrezia Mongfish.\|\| You have to wonder if that wasn't really what it was made for in the first place, and the other thing just a side effect. - Parodied in Guttersnipe, wherein Lil' Ragamuffin, the proud street urchin, admits to her pet rat that she wishes she could find her parents one day, and produces a locket with their pictures in it: her only clue to finding them. Rat then informs her that those are just the placeholder photos that come with the locket. - The pendant Anaak gave to her mother when they parted in Tower of God. After the latter gets murdered by the Royal Enforcement Division, the rookie agent, Ren, takes it for himself. Much, much later, he managers to lure Anaak with the pendant. - Tally from The Weave owns a locket, one half of which contains a miniature map that marks her original home, the other half a photo of baby Tally with her parents, though her father's face is strangely blurry on it. - Muted: Camille's locket given to her by her late mother. The enchantment inside it was what saved her life from the fire. - Slightly Damned: The angel Darius Elexion found 3 abandoned demon children - \|\|Iratu, Sakido, and Buwaro\|\| - and put them under his care, effectively raising them as his own. He gave each of them one of his three magical pendants - \|\|the Moon Pendant to Iratu, the Sun Pendant to Sakido, and the Star Pendant to Buwaro.\|\| Around a year later, Darius left to confront Death, never to be seen again \|\|(or so it seems, at first),\|\| leaving the three to fend for themselves for the next 15 years. \|\|After Sakido's tragic death, Buwaro now has possession of her Sun Pendant.\|\| - Carmen Sandiego has one in multiple continuities, such as a locket in Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? and a collection of dolls in Carmen Sandiego. - Gosalyn's lullaby in the pilot for Darkwing Duck. - Esteban's medallion in The Mysterious Cities of Gold. - In Futurama, the Warden of the Orphanarium has one belonging to Leela that he forgot about. It's simply a letter in an untranslatable alien language, but it serves a purpose beyond being a memento - \|\|it contributes to her parents' deception that Leela is a member of an unknown alien species rather than one of the persecuted sewer mutants from Earth.\|\| - Although she's technically only half an orphan (her father Hakoda is still alive, but off fighting a war in another part of the world), Katara's grandmother's necklace functions as this on a couple of occasions in Avatar: The Last Airbender: \|\|lost on a prison platform, found by Zuko, used to track the band by scent, retrieved by Aang; revealed Gran-Gran Kanna's history with the Northern Water Tribe and the man who becomes Katara's waterbending master, Master Pakku... who is actually the one who made that necklace with his own hands, as a gift for Kanna when they were arranged to be married.\|\|. - In Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the same Captain Marvel trinket mentioned above is used, except here Billy seems to have had it long before he met his long-lost twin Mary. - Played for Laughs in Bojack Horseman, in the season 6 finale two minor characters with a similar appearance and annoying personalities reveal they both have two halves of a necklace with their family crest given to them by their long lost parents and assume this must be a common practice. - Quasimodo's medallion in The Magical Adventures of Quasimodo. - In Defenders of the Earth, Kshin was carrying part of a map to a lost city when Mandrake first met him. Unusually for this trope, this is not mentioned for most of the series and only becomes relevant when Kshin's grandfather (who feared his grandson was dead until he saw a picture of him with the other Defenders) turns up with the other half of the map. - Loulou's ballet slippers in Loulou de Montmartre. The newspapers they were wrapped in also give clues to when and why her mother abandoned her. - Voltron: Legendary Defender: \|\|Keith's Marmora knife, which once belonged to his long-lost mother and serves as proof of his Galra lineage\|\|. - In the DuckTales (2017) episode "Louie's Eleven", Gabby McStabberson says that her dagger belonged to her mother and is her only clue to her true parentage. Since she's in the middle of a fight with Webby and is immediately knocked out we learn nothing more about this. - The medallions in Sonic Underground. - The Foundling Hospital in London has cabinets of these tokens, left by mothers surrendering their children in the 1700s. The tokens were carefully kept on file with the children's papers, but unfortunately most mothers never returned to claim their children for one reason or another, with a few notable exceptions. - Happens in China: Author and journalist Xue Xinran "writes of mothers wanting to provide their children with legacy mementoes when they give them up for adoption: some write letters to their babies on their clothing; others leave their fingerprint in blood. But orphanages routinely toss the clothing out." - The Romans used to think it tragic, but acceptable, to leave an infant you couldn't provide for, particularly girls, on the ancient Roman equivalent of the local garbage dump. But the parents would often leave the child with a necklace of charms, in the far-fetched hope that some noble family would stroll by and take the child in, and the child would grow up with the memento to remind them where they came from. They even wrote plays about it, with the storyline usually having the child growing up and searching for, and inevitably finding their birth parents.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphansPlotTrinket
Osama - TV Tropes Osama may refer to: If an internal link led you here, please change it to point to the specific article. Thanks!	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Osama
Accuse the Witness - TV Tropes He who Sahwit, done it. Judge: Mr. Wright, are you indicting the witness as the real murderer? Phoenix: Of course! That is precisely what I am doing! An unconventional courtroom tactic which involves accusing an unlikely or controversial witness of being the perpetrator of the crime—particularly the accused's spouse or other close family member. Whether or not this accusation is true is immaterial. The point is to cloud the issue and raise reasonable doubt. An unscrupulous cousin to The Perry Mason Method. Also related to Frame-Up, though this is more spur-of-the-moment (and is often an attempt at specifically Framing the Guilty Party). If a witness does this to him/herself, it's a case of Taking the Heat. If the accuser turns out to be right by complete accident, it may overlap with Accidental Truth and Right for the Wrong Reasons. ## Examples - Variant: \|\|Kurt Godel\|\| in Negima! Magister Negi Magi claimed himself to be behind the attack on Negi's village. \|\|But he was lying. It really was apparently the senate.\|\| - In the climactic trial scene of New Jack City, Nino Brown stands up and dramatically accuses one of his lieutenants of being the real head of the gang, Cash Money Brothers. This works and he gets a ludicrously small sentence in exchange for testimony — despite every piece of evidence, including eyewitness testimony from an undercover cop — saying Nino was the boss. Or at least, it worked for a few minutes. (As a side note, the real-life drug lord Nino Brown was modeled on tried the exact same stunt and failed) - In Legally Blonde, the climax of the movie involves Elle Woods getting \|\|the murder victim's daughter to incriminate herself on the stand, by using a clever line of questioning that seems unrelated,\|\| thereby proving the innocence of Elle's client (the deceased's ex-wife). - The climax of Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer. Rumpole, having established that the witness was the last man to be seen with the murder weapon, had a motive, and could have shot the men, accuses him. The witness does not confess, but his denial is kind of weak — and before the prosecution can examine him again, he bolts. The judge's summation is very favorable to the possibility, and reminds the jury that if they think it's a real possibility, they can't be sure the guy on trial did it. - The whole point of the court martial in The Caine Mutiny. Greenspan unrelentingly cross-examines Queeg this way, eventually calling him as a hostile witness for the defense, accusing him of several illegal and immoral acts in order to portray him as incompetent and unfit for command. The prosecutor eventually realizes that Greenspan has turned the whole thing into a trial where the defense is prosecuting a witness. (And it works.) - Potentially inverted in Neverwinter Nights 2. During the scene when the PC is on trial, the prosecution attempts to invoke this trope by calling you as a witness to your own trial. With enough skills and charisma, you can turn the tables begin accusing the prosecutor. - Knights of the Old Republic sees the player character defend an accused murderer on the planet Manaan. At his trial, you're given the option of asking a Rodian witness if he planted evidence to make your client look guilty. You can then use the argument that your client is being framed to potentially get him acquitted. As it turns out, the Rodian did plant the evidence, but \|\|your client really did do it. It was a case of Framing the Guilty Party.\|\| - Done often in cases in Ace Attorney. Overlaps with The Perry Mason Method in that in a lot of cases the witness Phoenix or Apollo accuses is the real killer (or an accomplice, or tampered with the crime scene, or is withholding crucial testimony), but there's also a lot of subversions. - In the third case of the first game, Phoenix actually does intentionally accuse a completely innocent party purely to buy another day of investigation note : To be fair, this is not necessarily Phoenix antagonizing an innocent for his own ends. The prosecution had provided no motive for the crime and was arguing primarily on the premise that the defendant was the only one physically capable of performing the murder. Phoenix rightfully points out that, based on what they currently understood, this other party was every bit as capable of having committed the murder as his client and might have been the one in the defendant's chair if the investigation had gone even slightly different - which constitutes a whole lot of entirely reasonable doubt towards his client's guilt. In the process, she reveals that Global Studios Executives \|\|(which includes the real killer)\|\| were at the studios that day, purely to save herself, and this enables Phoenix to get closer to uncovering the truth. - In the fourth case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Justice For All: - Played for Drama where you are forced to accuse \|\|Adrian Andrews\|\| just to buy time. \|\|This also ends up backfiring spectacularly as not only does she clear her own name during the cross-examination but manages to extend the trial and inadvertently cause Phoenix to break his agreement with a kidnapper.\|\| - Parodied in the same case when Will Powers (a former client of Phoenix's, now a witness for another case) breaks down crying on the stand because he knows Phoenix does this in every single case he takes and assumes he'll accuse him. Powers: You... You're going to try to trick me into a corner, aren't you? Phoenix: Huh? Powers: I... I know I'm just a poor, underpaid action star, but... But... I... I'm not the killer! Phoenix: Um, no one said you were, Mr. Powers. Powers: No, please! Don't trick me! Every time you do your lawyer thing, the witness suddenly turns into the bad guy... - In case 5 of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trials and Tribulations, Phoenix doesn't even know who to accuse, and in the end \|\|isn't even sure what crime has been committed (homicide or justifiable self-defense). For fully three days, he doesn't accuse anyone\|\|. - Accusing the witness? Phoenix can do better than that! He goes as far as accusing the prosecutors. And at one point in the second game you have an option to select which strongly implies that the Judge is the guilty party. This is about as good an idea as you'd think. \|\|The two accused prosecutors in the original trilogy, however, are indeed guilty\|\|. - Presenting profiles as evidence makes it possible for you to accuse almost anyone at certain points in the game, if openly asked who the culprit is. Don't like Franziska? Go for it! Hate children? Accuse Pearls! Heck, you have Phoenix's own profile in your possession in some cases. - In the flashback of \|\|Phoenix's last trial\|\| in Apollo Justice, he starts pushing \|\|Valant\|\| as the murderer of \|\|Magnifi Gramayre because Valant tampered with the crime scene\|\|, but it ultimately turns out that \|\|while Valant did try to frame Zak, Magnifi's death was a suicide.\|\| - Used in the last case of Investigations (where it's technically a police investigation rather than a court trial but the procedure is identical) by Shi-Long Lang on \|\|Franziska von Karma\|\|. His reasoning is that \|\|she was the only person with access to both parts of the embassy at the time. At least, that's his excuse. He actually knows she's innocent and he knows Edgeworth will easily prove her innocent, but in order to prove it Alba would have to let them back into the embassy to investigate—which is where they wanted to be in the first place\|\|. - In the first case of Apollo Justice you go through the usual procedure of accusing the witness and even make her break down. \|\|But that isn't the end, because she didn't actually do it, you simply caught her in a lie about her role at the club where the crime takes place.\|\| It also features an inversion where \|\|the defendant and witness, Phoenix himself, accuses a member of his own defense for the crime\|\|. - Phoenix pulls a variation of this in the second case of the first game. Rather than accuse April May of the murder, Phoenix accuses her of (and proves her to be) wiretapping the victim. While this alone doesn't discredit April, her alibi under further cross-examination reveals another suspect for the murder itself, buying Phoenix another day for investigation. - In The Great Ace Attorney, this strategy blows up in Ryunosuke's face when the witness he \|\|(erroneously)\|\| accuses of murder in his first case \|\|turns up as the jury foreman in his second and carries a bit of a grudge\|\|. - He later tops himself and his descendant by accusing two separate judges of murder. And while one was a Japanese judge in England and had no legal authority at the time, the other was the judge for the current trial. Unlike when Phoenix tries it, this works out \|\|as both judges are guilty\|\|, though it takes a Big Damn Heroes courtesy of Herlock Sholmes and \|\|Queen Victoria herself\|\| to make it stick. - Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: In the third case, Makoto accuses \|\|Celestia\|\|, who witnessed the culprit in action, of being the real culprit, because it had become clear that the murder involved a complicated plan to establish a false narrative time, and \|\|Celestia\|\| being the only witness to and greatest proponent of said narrative makes them look suspicious once said narrative has been conclusively debunked. - In the fifth episode of Umineko: When They Cry, \|\|Battler accuses himself of the crimes to prove that Natsuhi needn't necessarily be the culprit. Of course, everyone knows he's lying, but Erika has to accept the possibility because her own rules have eliminated all the evidence exonerating him.\|\| - Game Theory: Discussed in a video about Among Us. When an imposter is caught after murdering someone, they might accuse the person who caught them of committing the murder. MatPat argues this is the wrong strategy, as it becomes clear that one of the people making the accusation is a liar. Even if the imposter is successful, the rest of the crew will be suspicious of them in future rounds of the game. - This was spoofed on The Simpsons when Bart and Lisa accuse, during Sideshow Bob's trial, obvious Rush Limbaugh stand-in Birchibald Barlowe of being the true mastermind behind rigging the mayoral election on the grounds that Bob isn't smart enough to have done it himself. Bob will not stand for this. He immediately produces every piece of detailed evidence proving that he and only he could have effected such a triumph, including monogrammed leather files entitled "Bob's Fraud Log", volumes I-VI. - Little Lulu: Annie was accused of breaking Eggy's guitar and Lulu managed to prove Tubby, who was testifying against Annie, was the real culprit. - Rarely, if ever, done as blatantly as in fiction, but there certainly are cases of one suspect testifying against another. Direct accusation is against the rules of practice in some jurisdictions. However, a competent lawyer should be able to pick enough holes in a genuine murderer-witness's story for what really happened to become obvious to all concerned, or at the very least secure an acquittal. - The Troy Davis case is an excellent example of this, as one of the key witnesses (and one of only two to maintain his testimony up until Davis' execution), Sylvestor "Red" Coles, was himself a suspect. - In the retrial of Nat Fraser (his first conviction was ruled unsound by the Supreme Court of the UK), one of the suspects of the murder of the defendant's wife, Hector Dick, was accused on the stand of doing the murder himself. This was not successful, though it did convince the daughter of the victim, though not the rest of her family, that Dick was the murderer. - In Clarence Earl Gideon's note : the same man whose legal challenge went to the Supreme Court and established the right of an appointed lawyer in all criminal trials second trial his lawyer argued that a key witness for the prosecution had likely been a lookout for the real criminals. - Older Than Feudalism: Cicero is known to have employed this tactic in his famous judicial speeches, most notably in the very first case of his career when he defended Sextus Roscius against the charge of patricide. He was a lot more direct about how he went about this than most later examples, largely due to how lax Roman trial procedure was back then.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrMaybeYOUDidIt
Rescued from the Underworld - TV Tropes Orpheus in the underworld, rescuing his wife. For a value of "rescue" that includes walking off with a lute. "Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?" A beloved character has been taken someplace beyond mortal ken and reckoning. But thankfully, the land of the dead is a place that can be visited. If the protagonist can brave the journey To Hell and Back, they can free the soul and resurrect them. Success is not guaranteed though. Sometimes it's not the body that's gone but the mind or soul, which can happen if they are lost in Cyberspace or in a Dream Within a Dream. They may have been trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine or Psychological Torment Zone, or had their Soul taken into the Spirit World. There tend to be rules and Leave Your Quest Tests involved in getting into and out of the Spirit World, such as having money for The Ferryman, ways to calm the Hellhounds, and the self discipline to ignore the phantoms trying to make you leave the path. It's also generally a bad idea to eat or drink anything while you're there. Sub-Trope of To Hell and Back. Compare Escaped from Hell, which need not involve assistance from the outside. If someone dreaming starts to wake up when he realizes that he's not in the real world, he may have found A Glitch in the Matrix. If he is helped to wake up by a character from within the dream, then the Dream Tells You to Wake Up. Contrast Weirdness Search and Rescue when the hero is being helped to escape a weird setting. This is a Death Trope so expect heavy spoilers. ## Examples: - One of the many, many MANY subplots of Angel Sanctuary is about Setsuna trying to get back the soul of his beloved sister Sara. Cue travel to the Hades, learning she already left... and we have not even covered 25% of the series. - Berserk: The Skull Knight did this upon rescuing Guts and Casca from the Godhand and their Apostles during the Eclipse. Having a sword that can slice through dimensions definitely helps. - Black★Rock Shooter: Mato becomes/fuses with the eponymous Black Rock Shooter and goes to the Otherworld to save Yomi from Dead Master. In the OVA, everything else in the Otherworld happens after that event. In the anime series, this is all the information she has and she gets there after her sword goes in. - Being a series that deals with the afterlife, Bleach does this a lot. - The Soul Society arc sees the gang travel to the Soul Society to rescue Rukia. - The Arrancar Arc sees the gang travel to Hueco Mundo to rescue Orihime. - In the first film, Ichigo's and the gang have to travel to the Dangai to rescue Senna. - In the second film, Hitsugaya flees in exile to the human world, accidentally catches up Ichigo in his woes before sneaking back into Soul Society to try and solve the mess by himself, causing Ichigo to travel back to Soul Society to help save Hitsugaya and clear his name. - In the third film, Ichigo and co. travel back to Soul Society to rescue Rukia in what is an unashamedly obvious rewrite of the Soul Society arc with slightly different villains. - In the fourth film, Ichigo travels to Hell to rescue Yuzu. - This trope is discussed in Children Who Chase Lost Voices with the story of Izanagi and Izanami in Asuna's class; Morisaki also mentions that there are similar stories around the world. \|\|He later tries to pull one off with his wife, Lisa.\|\| - Inuyasha: Early in the series, Kagome doesn't enter hell, but gets very close to the entrance to save a child's soul who had died. - In Jack and the Witch the titular boy hero descends into a frigid cave full of growing and shifting ice to rescue the banished witch Allegra, who'd been sent there by the Harpy Queen to freeze to death. The Ice Cave and its subsequent shift into a magical battleground seem to be tied to the Queen's magic, as they fade out once her crystal ball is smashed. - Happens twice in the same instance in Kamisama Kiss when Nanami follows Kirihito into the Underworld only to wind up in trouble herself which causes Tomoe to come after her. - Happens twice in Den-noh Coil, where one has the ability to connect to the internet through your mind via Augmented Reality glasses. Both Haruken and Isako get trapped in Coil Space, causing them to fall into a coma. Yasako has a hand in bringing them back both times. - Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie: Rebellion. \|\|It's a major plotline of the movie, as the Incubators had tried to force Homura to become a Witch by selectively isolating Homura's Soul Gem from interference, thus forcing all the grief and despair building up to remain within. Madoka mounts a rescue mission by entering Homura's Soul Gem and breaking her out from within; Magical Girls both still alive (Mami, Kyoko) and those whom Goddess Madoka had already taken when their Soul Gems ran out of magic (Sayaka, Nagisa) join her, though the rescue hits a couple of snags en route.\|\| - Chapters 6 through 10 of Pupipo! feature Wakaba and Po on a mission to bring back their friend Azuma after she is hit by a car. - Rebuild of Evangelion brings us this, with the most unlikely Orpheus of them all...\|\| Shinji Ikari goes berserk and red-eyed, utterly stomps the Tenth Angel into the dust and pulls Rei, who got eaten along with her Eva, out of the dead Angel's core. Subverted in true Evangelion fashion since bringing Rei back involved creating an apocalypse that nearly wiped out the whole world, and Shinji doesn't actually get to be with Rei after Kaworu stops the apocalypse by spearing Eva-01 from space.\|\| - This trope is subverted in Shamanic Princess. The heroine's childhood companion, Sara, is trapped in a painting. The characters try various things to extract her, including entering the painting itself (although that was more the painting's idea,) \|\|but they never succeed. Sara cannot be saved and does not need saving, because it was her destiny to fuse with the painting.\|\| - This is the basic premise of Angela: Queen of Hel albeit the title suggests that Angela's quest to save her dead beloved Sera probably wont go without complications. - In Chicago Typewriter, a demon steals the soul of Emilio Enzo's girlfriend, Katherine. Enzo must venture to the underworld to rescue her. - In Day Of Judgement, various heroes are forced to travel to Purgatory to recruit a new soul to bond with the Spectre after Jim Corrigan ascends into Heaven, resulting in Hal Jordan bonding with the Spectre and starting a chain of events that will restore him to full life. - During Mark Waid's run, the Fantastic Four rescued their fallen teammate Ben Grimm in this manner (albeit retrieving him from Heaven rather than Hell). - Patsy Walker had this happen to her twice, giving extra meaning to her superhero name Hellcat. And both stays in hell caused by her ex-husband Daimon "Son of Satan" Hellstrom: first, following her death, by accident (The Avengers unknowingly rescued her soul from Hell thinking she was the recently deceased Mockingbird), and then in Marvel Divas, after a Deal with the Devil where she agreed to spend time with Daimon to cure the cancer of her friend Firestar, only for Firestar and two others to go rescue Patsy. - The Sandman (1989) features at least two cases: The title character going into Hell to release an old love that he'd condemned after she rejected him, and his son Orpheus's trope-naming trip to retrieve Eurydice. The other underworld rescue in Greek Mythology (Heracles rescuing Theseus) is stated by Death to be complete BS: Heracles simply got blackout drunk for two weeks. - A story arc of Secret Six had them doing this to rescue Scandal's lover Knockout. - In Phil Foglio's 1993 adaptation of Stanley and His Monster, Stanley Dover's monster friend Spot turns out to be a demon who was kicked out of Hell for being too nice. When Spot goes back to Hell to protect the Dovers, Stanley must go and rescue him. - The second Swamp Thing Annual has the title character, with the assistance of The Phantom Stranger and Etrigan, journey out-of-body to Hell in order to rescue Abby, whose soul her uncle Anton Arcane had maliciously cast down there. - In The Phantom Stranger tie-in to Trinity War, the Phantom Stranger and a few other heroes go to heaven's basement to rescue the soul of a dead hero. \|\|They fail and the Stranger is sent to oblivion while the heroes are sent back to Earth\|\|. - Wonder Woman: - Wonder Woman (1942): Sofia Constantinas gets too close to an entrance to the underworld and is entranced and taken to Hades by Charon in response. Steve Trevor manages to rescue her and bring her back to the surface before her time there renders her properly deceased. - Wonder Woman (1987): Diana, Cassie, and Ferdinand go to Hades to revive Hermes at Athena's bidding. - In Being Dead Ain't Easy, \|\|when Seto refuses to leave the Soul Room, leaving his body empty, Joey heads in to rescue him.\|\| - Dungeon Keeper Ami features this in the Sailor Moon native-verse subplot. At first it's just Usagi, Rei, and Luna, later they are joined by Makoto. Played with somewhat, however, as a way to get Ami home is apparent quite early on from Ami's end, it's simply too dangerous for the Light Gods to send her, as the Dark Gods will immediately use that opportunity to attack Ami's world. The overarching plot then revolves around overcoming this. - In Hell and Back, Ratchet goes down into the Pit to rescue Drift. - In Pony POV Series, this is actually part of the afterlife's set up. Havoc, the Warden and Anthropomorphic Personification of Hell, permits souls from Heaven to descend into his domain to try and rescue their condemned loved ones. However, it's not easy, as there are both trials for the attempted rescuer to travel past to reach their loved one, and the loved one themselves can only be freed if they're convinced to accept their actions were wrong and genuinely seek repentance. Dark World!Pinkie Pie, following her death, proceeded to do this with all her adopted children that ended up there while she was still Discord's brainwashed minion. From later scenes, it appears she succeeded. It should be noted the rescue isn't necessary, only accepting the wrongness of their actions and genuine repentance is (though they may have to act as an Angel for awhile depending on their crimes, or choose to do so) but one of the major reasons the condemned are in Tartarus to begin with is they refuse to accept how evil their actions were and thus few are likely to ever change on their own. - In Propagation, Blackgaurd dumps \|\|Taylor, the LA Wards, some of the LA Protectorate, a couple supervillains, and about a square mile of LA\|\| into another dimension. - A variation appears in Shadowchasers: Power Primordial. After a dark curse traps Ember's soul in the Venomous Tarns (the realm of Seghulerak, the demonic goddess of the ophidia, making it heaven for ophidia and hell for anyone else), with her physical body being guarded by her kidnappers, Jetta the Bronze Hearted (a Cosmic Entity whom Ember is supposed to sponsor) is the only ally who knows about it, but can't act herself. The solution is to communicate (through a vision) with Ember's cousin and Big Brother Mentor to go there in spiritual form, and help muster up the willpower to break the curse on her own. (Not only does it work, but it sets up an important Chekhov's Gun for when Ember physically escapes her kidnappers later, and has to confront her Arch-Enemy.) - In The Book of Life, Manolo thinks he's doing this for Maria when Xibalba sends him to the Land of the Remembered. In reality, he's the one who's been killed. - The plot of Hell And Back centers on best friends Remy and Augie, who must rescue their other friend, Curt, after he gets trapped in Hell as punishment for breaking a blood oath (over a fucking mint). - In Disney's Hercules, \|\|the main character travels to the Underworld in order to rescue Meg's spirit and reunite it with her body, thus getting his godhood back.\|\| - Black Orpheus is the Orpheus myth set in 20th century Brazil. Orfeo, who refuses to accept that Eurydice is really dead, is led down a staircase to The Underworld, where he hears Eurydice's voice at a native religious ceremony. Before he even has a chance to find out if he can lead her out, he turns and looks, and she's gone. - Averted awesomely in Hellboy. Hellboy's love interest has just been captured by the things the villains have been trying to summon. Knowing that they're using her body as a host, Hellboy tells them to let her go—or he'll come in and get her. She's immediately released. - Done by the protagonist in the campy 1992 movie Highway to Hell, after his girlfriend is kidnapped by the devil while still alive. The Deal with the Devil part is saved for when they try to escape. - Honey Baby has a dream sequence where Tom, as Orpheus, goes to rescue Natascha from Karl, who are Eurydice and Hades, respectively. Seeing Karl's reflection in the mirror makes him turn back and lose Natascha. - Inception had Cobb rescue Fischer and Saito from the deepest subconscious. - Funnily enough, Limbo's closest to \|\|his deepest unconscious, as he's the only one who's been down there long enough (local time) to build anything.\|\| - Mal became \|\|a Glitch Entity and The Ophelia\|\| because Dom's attempt to rescue her from Limbo worked much too well. \|\|Dom planted the idea that they should kill themselves to get out of Limbo in her mind, but the idea was so firmly implanted that she ended up killing herself in waking life because she believed that she was still dreaming. After that, Dom's subconscious projection of Mal tormented him with memories of the botched Orphean Rescue and played havoc with damn near every one of his dream schemes. Dom eventually conquered her with a complete inversion of the rescue—he told Mal's projection that he was done with her and would leave the memories in Limbo.\|\| - A dream world variety in The Last Witch Hunter — Chloe dives into Kaulder's mind to rescue him from a Lotus-Eater Machine, and while he initially rejects her, she manages to bring him back. - In Parking (1985), Orpheus has to rescue himself from the Underworld first after dying before he was supposed to, then heads back in to save Eurydice. - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, starts off with Will, Elizabeth and \|\|Barbossa\|\| planning on going to the afterlife — more specifically, Davy Jones' Locker, which is portrayed as a kind of Purgatory as Jones no longer takes those who died at sea to the afterlife — to retrieve \|\|Jack Sparrow\|\|. - Poltergeist: Carol Anne is kidnapped by the ghosts and taken to the astral plane where they are trapped. - Shredder Orpheus has Orpheus attempt to rescue his wife, Eurydice, from Hades, here an evil Underworld broadcasting corporation. In a twist on the traditional myth, he's later given a second chance to save her after successfully skating an Underworld parking garage. - The low-budget film Tequila Body Shots doesn't even hide the fact that the climax will be this: The protagonist's name is Johnny Orpheus. Plus...guess what he uses to bring his love interest back from where she is? - In What Dreams May Come, the protagonist goes into hell to find his wife's soul who is trapped in her own guilt and despair after committing suicide. - In Briar's Book, Briar follows his teacher into death to convince her to come back. - Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator has Willy Wonka and Charlie go deep down to rescue Grandma Georgina from Minus Land, where she went after having reduced her age to below zero. - In Deep Secret, Nick goes to Babylon in order to restore Maree after her soul is stripped from her. Babylon isn't the land of the dead exactly, but it's definitely "outside here or there", and it's associated with death in the folk songs Nick uses to guide him. On the way back, Nick remembers the legend of Orpheus and refuses to look back even though he can hear Maree behind him, which was a very wise decision. - Discworld: - In The Light Fantastic, Twoflower is hit by a poisoned blade and his soul is sent to Death's domain. Rincewind is given a potion by the necromancer in a nearby settlement, and his soul also leaves for Death's domain. He finds that Twoflower has been teaching the four horsemen of the apocalypse to play bridge, which has not gone down terribly well. Rincewind then rescues Twoflower and both of their souls manage to get back to their bodies soon. - Invoked in Wintersmith, where Roland has to descend into "an" underworld to rescue the Summer Lady, because that sort of thing is expected in these situations. - The Friendship Song by Nancy Springer has this with Harper and Rawnie venturing to the underworld to rescue the soul of a rock singer. It's then played with as he has to choose to come back on his own. - Full Tilt by Neil Schusterman involves a boy going to rescue his brother from some kind of hell, appearing as an Amusement Park of Doom, after he was lured in. - The aptly named Forgotten Realms novel Elminster in Hell featured Mystaria's attempt to rescue the title character from Nergal's realm, but it was not easy. After finding out she could not make the attempt herself (the Pact Primordial forbids gods from doing so) she recruited her other Chosen to do so. Both Halaster Blackcloak and the Mad Mage of Undermountain failed to do so, but the Simbul succeeded, both she and Elminster defeating Nergal in a climatic battle before escaping to the mortal world. - Inverted in the second Ghost Roads book. Rose is brought back to life through an Unwanted Revival, so she and her allies devise a plan where she will descend to the Greek underworld with a companion, ask Persephone and Hades to let her leave, and then have her companion deliberately look back at the last moment, returning her to her ghostly existence. Her boyfriend is already dead, and Apple can't leave her Place of Power, so the only person who can be Rose's Orpheus is \|\|Laura, her former (?) enemy\|\|. - Paul Kidd's third Greyhawk book, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, ends with a trip to Thoth's realm to rescue Enid. Enid: Just how much trouble have I put you to? Escalla: None! Nothing we minded! Well, we had to steal the clone spell from this wizard guy in Greyhawk, then make you a new body at Dad's place, then find the river Mnemos, fight a few evil denizens, avoid a few rampaging armies, then find this place and bust in. Simple! - In The Heirs of Alexandria series, \|\|Maria\|\| assumes a Persephone like role to become Queen of the Underworld and use her powers to save everyone. Upset that she was tricked into this, \|\|Benito\|\| travels to the Underworld to rescue her. Hades agrees to let her go, under one condition: she will follow him back to the land of the living, but he must take it on trust that she's actually there. If he ever looks back to verify her presence, she must return to Hades. Of course, being who he is, he cheats: \|\|he has one of his companions, a knight in mirror-polished armor, walk in front of him so he can see her reflection in the armor.\|\| - Being Genre Savvy, he even waits until they're on the boat before turning around. "To be sure." - The Iron King is about a sister rescuing her kidnapped brother in Fairyland. - Double Subverted in "The Land Of Oblivion". The heroine's brother is really dead, and nothing can actually resurrect him. However, he is captured in the Bad part of afterlife (the titular land), \|\|and about to be made Deader than Dead\|\|, and she manages to bust him out and bring him to a place where he can enjoy a happy afterlife. - In Minecraft: The Crash, Bianca thinks that if she saves Lonnie in the game she can save him in real life. \|\|It ends up being subverted, as it's really a way for her to deal with losing him in a car crash.\|\| - Overdrawn At The Memory Bank has this trope, though in this case, Apallonia knows exactly where Fingal's mind is; it's his body she's having trouble finding. - Percy Jackson and the Olympians starts off with a variant, setting its tone as a quirky modern reinterpretation of Greek myth. Percy suspects his recently-kidnapped mother is in Hades' hands, so he does what any sensible son would do and storms the gates of hell. Unlike most Orphean rescues, this labor of love is totally platonic. And actually successful, albeit not in the way Percy expected. - Shadow Police: \|\|In The Severed Streets, DI Quill is murdered by the Ripper and sent to Hell. Costain uses a magical artifact called the Bridge of Spikes - a so-called 'Get out of Hell Free card' - to rescue him, despite wanting the Bridge for himself.\|\| - In The Sight, Larka has to travel via Vision Quest to the Red Meadow (an afterlife of sorts, but populated by Living Memories rather than the true dead wolves, with the injunction to never try to call the dead by name. When she does call them by name, Kar has to call her back so she won't be trapped there forever. - In J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Silmarillion, Lúthien rescues her husband-to-be Beren, killed by wolf Carcaroth from Mandos. \|\|On the price of her own immortality.\|\| - There's a medieval narrative poem, Sir Orfeo, loosely inspired by Orpheus, where King Orfeo successfully wins back his wife held captive by The Fair Folk. He plays his harp so beautifully that the king of the fairies promises him any reward he wants. - In The Wheel of Time, Mat and company enter the Tower of Ghenjei to rescue \|\|Moiraine.\|\| - In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged tries to save a dying child, following her soul on the way to the land of the dead; but he doesn't manage to keep her from entering it and being lost. - Seamus Zelazny Harper did this a time or two on Andromeda for the AI of the ship. It included a combo Journey to the Center of the Mind that happened to be Cyberspace. - In the Arrow episode "Haunted", Oliver and Laurel get the assistance of John Constantine to successfully infiltrate The Underworld to retrieve the soul of \|\|Sara Lance\|\|, who was resurrected by a Lazarus Pit as a Soulless Shell. - The third season of Being Human (UK) included one of these early on, when vampire John Mitchell enters Purgatory to retrieve ghost Annie and bring her back to the real world. It's not without larger consequences. - Beyond the Walls: Lisa searches for Julien, who has almost turned into one of the zombie-like inhabitants. In the black room, she manages to pull him back just in time. Afterwards they search for the exit of the House with renewed vigour. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel both involve this trope from time to time. - Rescues from Hell pop up more than a few times on both shows. - Buffy goes catatonic right in "Weight of the World" (requiring a Journey to the Center of the Mind by Willow to help her snap out of it). - When Angel loses his soul (again) in "Orpheus", he and Faith end up sharing a drugged dream state where they trade barbs while observing Angel's memories from his quest for redemption as she tries to find a way to restore his soul. - The last season of Angel has a disproportionate number of these as well. - The attempt to rescue Spike's ghost before he is destroyed in "Hell Bound". - The journey to the private little suburban hell with the torture chamber in the basement (an unalterable "Groundhog Day" Loop that the person knows ends with hours of torture). Done a couple times, once to rescue someone with important info who was trapped there by the Senior Partners, then back again later to rescue the guy who had to take his place on the first trip. - Charmed: - The final episode of Season 4 has Phoebe cast a spell on herself to enter the Wasteland - where demons go when vanquished - when Cole contacts her through a medium. Subverted in that she has no interest in rescuing him, she wants him to let go and stop bothering her. - The Season 6 opener has them travelling to Valhalla to save Leo, who has been trapped there for a month. This involves stealing Darryl's soul (and then saving him too once Leo emerged). - Doctor Who: - "Forest of the Dead": Donna Noble has been "saved" into a virtual computer system world. The Doctor works to get her back and restore the rest of the planet's population, all the while fighting off the Vashta Nerada. - "Dark Water" sees an attempt to rescue \|\|Danny Pink\|\| after he passes on to an afterlife that Clara and the Doctor can't quite understand yet. - Most of the plot of The Lost Room is the lead character recovering his daughter from this situation (although she is not actually 'dead', but just trapped in whatever strange limbo is created by the titular Room, which exists outside of time and space). - Deconstructed in Lucifer (2016). The sinner \|\|Malcolm Graham\|\| is resurrected after a thirty-second dip into Hell (which felt like years). Lucifer points out that the sinner is still mortal and will return within a few decades. - Episode 4 of MythQuest sees Alex, as Orpheus, go into Hades to rescue Eurydice. - Happens a few times on Supernatural, albeit offscreen. Castiel rescues Dean from Hell \|\|and Sam from Lucifer's cage.\|\| Later, Death rescues Sam's \|\|soul from the Cage because Castiel had somehow only gotten Sam's body.\|\| A group of angels rescue Castiel from \|\|Purgatory.\|\| An onscreen example occurs in Season 8, when Sam rescues \|\|Bobby\|\| from Hell, only for both of them to be rescued from Purgatory by \|\|Benny\|\|. Then, in the Series Finale, it is revealed that \|\|Jack has rescued Castiel from The Empty and they are rebuilding Heaven together. This happens offscreen.\|\| - Mesopotamian Mythology has Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld, probably the Ur-Example. In it, the goddess Inanna descended into the underworld but angered its queen, Ereshkigal, and was trapped there. As the goddess of fertility, this was obviously bad for the living. The god Enki eventually created a being which helped her escape, but the rules of the underworld necessitated that someone must take her place. After two futile searches, Inanna found out that her husband, Dumuzid, did not mourn over her during the duration of her imprisonment. In fury, she sent him as her replacement, only to regret it later. She then decreed that Dumuzid's sister, Geshtinanna, would take his place for half a year. Thus every time he came back topside, Inanna would bring life to the world (summers), while every time he went down, she would cause the world to wither (winters). - Classical Mythology: - Orpheus is the Trope Codifier. When his wife Eurydice died, Orpheus entered the underworld and convinced Hades to let her return to the world of the living. However, Hades allowed it on the condition that Orpheus lead his wife back without looking at her until they're on the other side. Unlike the majority of the examples on this page, though, he ultimately failed in his quest. Some versions of the myth state that Orpheus was out of the underworld when he turned to look at her, but his wife wasn't. Orpheus' response to this was to either commit suicide or foresake all worship of gods but Apollo, which got him torn apart by the Maenads, female worshippers of Dionysus. - Heracles did something similar when he went to the Underworld to abduct Cerberus for his Twelfth Labor. While there, his found his cousin Theseus and Theseus' friend Pirithous, who Hades had bound to a chair as punishment for trying to kidnap Persephone. Hades said he could take Theseus with back with him - if he could. Heracles managed to wrest Theseus free, but he wasn't allowed to do the same for Pirithous. (Pirithous had been the orchestrator of the plan and Theseus was only guilty by association, so Hades was willing to let him go.) As this story and the one with Orpheus seems to show, more-or-less, even attempting a rescue like this in Classical Mythology is impossible unless you have Hades' permission. - Another possible example of this Trope regarding Heracles — depending on the version — was the story where when he wrestled Thanatos to rescue the soul of Alcestis, a brave woman who sacrificed herself so her husband Admetus (a good friend of Heracles) could live. Whether this fits the Trope or not is disputed, because some versions say the battle did, indeed happen in the Underworld, while others suggest that Thanatos had not left Earth yet; but since the myth always claims that Thanatos had already taken Alcestis' soul, it is possible. Whatever the case, Heracles was successful this time too. - According to some versions of Hades and Persephone's legend, she was literally abducted and dragged into Hades, and her mother went batshit insane, which is bad when said mother is the goddess of The Earth. Hermes went to retrieve Persephone, but discovered that she had eaten of the food of the underworld while there, which bound her to Hades. A compromise was reached that allowed Persephone to leave Hades for half the year, then spend the other half as the queen of the dead. The half which she is on earth is spring, while Autumn is caused when she leaves for the underworld and her mother grieves. - Another version has Persephone voluntarily running off with Hades, to both get away from her overcontrolling and overprotective mother and grasp power for herself, as Zeus had his eye on her (and had apparently raped her already) and Hades is quite the catch, technically speaking. When it looks like war between the gods if she doesn't come back, she eats a few pomegranate seeds deliberately to ensure she at least gets a vacation from her mom and pervert father once a year, meaning for her "purgatory" is actually the half of the year she's not in the Underworld. - Theseus also accompanied his friend Pirithous into Hades when the latter took a fancy to Persephone; they both got stuck there until Heracles freed them on a completely unrelated mission (see example above). - Another myth has Dionysus dive to the bottom of a supposedly-bottomless lake to rescue his mother, Semele, who had died while she was still pregnant with him when she had asked to see Zeus's true form. - The Thebaid has Hades/Pluto/Dis talk about this trope when a living dude crashes into the Underworld and he assumes he's here to abduct one of his subjects back to life. Amphiaraus explains he's just a dead soul with a weird death, but Hades is still wary, citing his experiences with Theseus and Orpheus, as mentioned above. - Japanese Mythology: Similar to Orpheus is Izanagi, creator-god in Japanese Mythology. His wife Izanami died giving birth to the fire-god Kagutsuchi and fell to The Underworld, The Yomotsu. Izanagi traveled down the cavernous realm of the dead, only to be repulsed by a wife who is now an eternally decaying, maggot-ridden corpse. He fled the underworld as fast as he could while being chased by the local demons and Izanami throwing lightning at him. Eventually, he made it to the surface, and closed the way to the underworld with a huge boulder. - Hindu Mythology has a female version. the princess Savitri followed Yama, the lord of death, when he took her husband Satyavan. Yama was so impressed with her wisdom and courage that he eventually let her take Satyavan back. - Christianity: In the time between his crucifixion and his resurrection, Jesus "descended into Hell". One interpretation of this is that Jesus went down to rescue all the righteous people who died since the beginning of time in an event called "The Harrowing Of Hell". - Prose Edda: After Baldr has been accidentally killed by Hod through Loki's malicious agency, Hermod (another son of Odin) volunteers to ride to Hel (the realm of the dead) and bargain with Hel (the ruler of the dead) for Baldr's release. On Odin's horse Sleipnir, Hermod rides for nine nights through "valleys dark and deep" until he reaches the hall of Hel, where Baldr is being hosted in the seat of honor. Hermod obtains Hel's promise that she will let Baldr go back "if all things in the world, alive and dead, weep for him". Having received this message through Hermod, the Aesir can persuade all things in the world (including animals, stones, and trees) to weep for Baldr, except for a giantess in a cave, Thokk, who refuses to mourn Baldr. Thus Baldr must stay in Hel. - Champions Organization Book 1 The Circle and M.E.T.E.: One of the adventure seeds for the Circle is having Oeramm attack the Circle, capture Aureole or a PC and take them back to his home plane, from which they will have to be rescued. - Chronicles of Darkness: - The supplement to Don't Rest Your Head, Don't Lose Your Mind, has a lovely example in the example Madness Power titled "O is for Orpheus": "You need to understand it wasn't her fault, alright? You need to understand none of this was her fault, but suicide means something to a Catholic. So I walked down and carried her back. She tried to fight me and run back to it. Can you believe that? She tried to run back to the eating and purging and eating and..." ... "I'm going to walk back when I get my head together a little and try and find the rest of her, but until then..." \|\|Like he said, she's got to eat.\|\| - Easily possible in Forgotten Realms, due to the ease with which the Outer Planes can be accessed via Dimensional Travel. - The Classical Mythology themed Theros cycle in Magic: The Gathering has the black card Rescue from the Underworld, which involves one of the players creatures leaving play and returning next turn along with one that was in the graveyard. The same block also has Reviving Melody, which depicts a Gender Swapped version of the original tale. - In Eurydice, Orpheus goes to save Eurydice towards the climax of the play, with the twist being that Eurydice is unsure about leaving. \|\|She ultimately calls to him to make him turn around, choosing to stay in the Underworld with her father\|\|. - Hadestown is a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth where the Underworld is imagined as a hellish Company Town that Eurydice went to on purpose in the hopes of finding food and security, instead finding endless work that will leech her memories away. Orpheus's journey to save her isn't as peaceful as his mythological counterpart's, either, as Hades sics his workers on him to beat him up and later threatens to kill him once he's done singing. - Jasper in Deadland has Jasper journey to Deadland in order to rescue his best friend, Agnes, who killed herself. - The opera L'Orfeo revolves around Orpheus's quest to rescue Eurydice this way. He makes it all the way there and succeeds in moving Hades, but fails on the way out due to hearing a noise behind him and turning around. - Orfeo ed Euridice is an operatic retelling of the Orpheus myth, with Orpheus getting past the Furies and Cerberus before leading Eurydice out of Elysium. Unlike most versions of the myth, \|\|after Orpheus turns around, Cupid brings Eurydice back to life and they depart happily\|\|. - In Orpheus: A Poetic Drama, Orpheus sets out to seek Persephone's aid in bringing back Eurydice from the dead. While she's sympathetic to his cause and pleads for leniency, Hades holds the final word. \|\|Hades sends a spy to ensure he fails and turns around\|\|. - Orpheus in the Underworld parodies the trope to Hades and back as both sides of the couple are happiest without each other, but Public Opinion demands Orpheus at least try to save his wife. - Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Similar to in the source material, Percy suspects his recently-kidnapped mother is in Hades' hands, so he does what any sensible son would do and storms the gates of hell. Unlike most Orphean rescues, this labor of love is totally platonic. And actually successful, albeit not in the way Percy expected. - The last part of Tripod Versus the Dragon has Gatesy going to rescue his love from Hades after \|\|he was tricked into killing her\|\|, with the help of his friends and terrible songs. - Adventure Time Finn And Bones: Finn fights through the land of the underworld to rescue Jake after Jake drinks the water of forgetfulness by a skeleton. - Happens in some route in Aoi Shiro. \|\|These are the bad ends.\|\| - Much of The Battle of Olympus is about Orpheus gathering the weapons and tools needed to take the fight to Hades and rescue his love. - Bayonetta 2 kicks off with Bayonetta heading off to Inferno to rescue her friend Jeanne after her soul is Dragged Off to Hell by a demon gone rogue. - Dante's Inferno has the title fallen crusader descending into Hell itself to save his beloved, Beatrice, after she is killed while he is on crusade and her soul is claimed by the Devil himself. - Your final challenge in Disney's Hades Challenge is to rescue Phil after Hades kidnaps him and takes him to the Underworld. - Don't Look Back, as the title suggests, takes Orpheus's original journey and reimagines it as a Platform Game. - A second, unrelated game also (confusingly) entitled Don't Look Back, swaps things up by \|\|having Euridice rescue Orfeo (it's based on the opera rather than the original myth).\|\| - This seems to be \|\|the entirety\|\| of Drawn to Life. \|\|The creator (seemingly the player character and the force behind the protagonist) is Heather, who in the real world was Mike's older sister. In the real world, Mike and Heather were in a devastating car crash which put Mike in a coma and killed their parents. Heather's imagination plus The Power of Love sent Mike into the world of Drawn to Life. The Next Chapter consists of getting everything together so that Mike can wake up again.\|\| - Played very straight in a quest on Dungeons & Dragons Online, where you must rescue Mistress Orphne, trapped inside her mind by a spell. Four objects are needed by the party to break the spell—which becomes a shadowy version of the rescued that tries to slay you. - Fatal Frame 2: Mio shoots her way (with a camera!) through a village worth of hordes of vengeful ghosts to save her little sister Mayu. Bonus point for (in Best Ending route) going down into Abyss to retrieve her back. She didn't come out unscathed from the whole ordeal, but at least she's now closer to Mayu than ever. - This is Arthur's goal in the second game of the Ghosts 'n Goblins series. He's still trying to rescue his beloved Princess Prin-Prin, but in this one, Lucifer kills her and captures her soul. - Kingdom Hearts sets up about six of these in Birth by Sleep. Interesting because all six are important characters whose growth, contribution to the plot, and tragic downfall took up about the space of a full game each, and each of them went in a completely different way. So it's a bit of a task for The Hero to bring them all back. Kingdom Hearts coded and Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] continue the set up for these rescues, giving the heroes the information and abilities they need to stage them in an upcoming game. - Gwendolyn rescues Oswald from the underworld in Odin Sphere. \|\|Odin rescues her when she has problems leaving again.\|\| - In Persona 3: FES, the desire to bring back \|\|the main character after his Heroic Sacrifice to stop Nyx\|\| drives SEES to splinter and fight each other in a "Groundhog Day" Loop. \|\|But even when the members of SEES come back to their senses and work together to reach the place where the MC's soul is, they find out that they CAN'T bring him back without undoing his sacrifice.\|\| Moral of the story: It's better to let go of deceased loved ones. - The protagonists of Persona 4 perform a series of Orphean rescue missions into the TV World to save people who have been thrown in by a mysterious killer. Bonus points for the hero's Persona being Izanagi \|\|and the final boss, the one behind it all, being Izanami\|\|. The Persona series loves this trope in general. - One of the challenges of becoming a king in Quest for Glory 5 involves going into the Underworld and then coming back out. While you're there, you have the option of returning to life either \|\|Katrina, the Big Bad of the previous game\|\|, or \|\|Erana, the Big Good of the series\|\|, by sacrificing half your Vitality score to do so. Notably, this is optional: you can leave both of them to their fates without consequence. - Saints Row IV sees the Boss delve into a virtual simulation of Steelport to fight his way through the Ironic Hells of their crew, all trapped in Lotus-Eater Machines, to rescue them. - In order to get the best endings of King's Quest VI, Prince Alexander has to travel to the Land of the Dead and bargain with its Lord for the souls of the King and Queen of the Green Isles, who had been murdered by Abdul Alhazred in a bid for power. Given the series' roots in fairy tales and myths, this is almost certainly a reference to the myth of Orpheus. - Touhou 07: Perfect Cherry Blossom has the three main characters going to Hakugyokurou, a realm of virtuous dead (think Elysium), to take back the Spring essence of Gensokyo which is stolen by the hungry ghost Yuyuko. - In Touhou 12: Undefined Fantastic Object, it's the followers of Byakuren who seek to liberate her from imprisonment in Pandemonium. \|\|She was imprisoned by her fellow humans for befriending the youkai.\|\| The player characters mistakenly believe they're trying to resurrect a terrible monstrosity. - Elf Blood, to restore the status quo. It turns out that the journey is a LOT easier than expected, but the Sadistic Choice isn't. And then it turns out that the Sadistic Choice was just an educated assumption in the protagonist's mind, but in any case said choice REALLY helped everyone in the story. - In Adventure Time, Finn and Jake go to the underworld to rescue the soul of Princess Bubblegum's dead plant, which they accidentally killed while taking care of it. Unfortunately they mess up, and Finn ends up having to save Jake's memory as well. - Played with in Futurama when Fry and Leela go to Robot Hell (which is underneath New Jersey) to rescue Bender after he's abducted by the Robot Devil. - Hercules: The Animated Series features Orpheus himself in need of rescue from the Underworld. Depicted as a pop-star, his fans including girls at the school and monsters alike results in him becoming a Living Macguffin for Hercules (trying to secure a date for the prom by getting Orpheus to play) and Hades (trying to recruit a powerful new minion through an Underworld concert) to clash over on the same day. - In The Legend of Korra, when Korra and Jinora meditate into the spirit world, Jinora's soul is acquired by Unalaq with the aid of Wan Shi Tong to force Korra to open the Northern Spirit Portal. Tenzin, Kya, and Bumi have to go into the Fog of Lost Souls to retrieve her. - An inverted variation occurs in the The Legend of Zelda (1989) episode "The Missing Link". During one of Ganon's attacks, he attempts to use a magic staff to zap Zelda into his Evil Jar. The blast is deflected and ricochets a few times before hitting Link instead. But only his body is captured, his spirit stayed behind, and Zelda is the only one who can both see and hear him. They travel to Ganon's underworld labyrinth to get Link's body back, and ultimately succeed. - In the Pinky and the Brain Halloween episode, Pinky sells his soul to the devil and the Brain has to go to Hades and challenge the devil to a gymnastics competition to get him back. The Devil wins but Brain then realises a loophole in the contract that enables Pinky to escape. - In a 2009 episode of South Park all the celebrities that had died that year were stuck in Purgatory, which looked like an airplane stuck on the runway, until Michael Jackson admitted he was dead. In the meantime they haunted Ike. - Teen Titans has Robin do this for Raven in the Season Four finale. (He had Slade's help.) - One episode of Thunder Cats has Lion-O venturing into the great beyond to rescue Jaga, who is being held prisoner by his old foe Grom the Destroyer. (Possibly a case of Only One Afterlife, as it's clear which side of the moral spectrum Grom is on.)	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrpheanRescue
Orphaned Reference - TV Tropes An Orphaned Reference is a scene or line that refers to something that has been cut from the final version. In milder cases, this only means that what was supposed to be a Meaningful Echo loses its additional meaning; in more severe cases, the lost background information can cause apparent Noodle Incidents, Plot Holes or Ass Pulls. Compare The Artifact, The Other Marty. See also Dub-Induced Plot Hole and Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole; all adaptation and dub examples go there. When the reference is found in licensed material, it's Early Draft Tie-In. Some video game examples may overlap with Dummied Out and Missing Secret. Development Gag is when this is done deliberately as a meta joke. ## Examples: - Dragon Half: Lampshaded, when Dug Fin is horrified to discover no one knows who he is. He gets a hold of the series' first episode on videotape and reviews it, only to discover all his scenes were cut from the final version! - Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann does this, possibly unintentionally, in the first Compilation Movie, Gurren-hen. When Kittan and his sisters show up to help the heroes, Kamina reacts with "Wait, who the hell are you?", which seems an appropriate reaction considering that the movie edited the scene where Kamina and Simon first encounter them into a Travel Montage, making this their first real appearance in the movie. "Unintentional" because this same line is present in the original series (which devoted an entire episode to meeting Kittan), but in the movie, it's made funnier. - One Piece: - The cover page of Chapter 1 features Nami alongside Luffy and the Red Hair pirates, despite not even debuting in the manga until Chapter 8. This is because the original first chapter was supposed to feature her joining Luffy as his first crewmate, before it was rewritten to instead be exclusively Luffy's Origin Story. - During Loguetown, Usopp acquires a fresh set of goggles that become part of his standard outfit from then on, but are strangely never mentioned in dialogue. This is because originally there would've been a storyline where he had an encounter with an old rival of his father that lead to him acquiring the goggles, which was cut as Oda wanted the Straw Hats to set off for the Grand Line in Chapter 100. This storyline was added in for the anime. - Jinbei's sobriquet is "First Son of the Sea", a reference to a Yakuza term that can be translated as literally "Yakuza of the Sea". The title makes very little sense to be associated with Jinbei, as he has no ties to crime organisations and is one of the kindest and most heroic characters in the series, but is likely a reference to the original plan of him being a villain, with him being the Yakuza boss to Arlong's literal Loan Shark note : He did still release Arlong into the East Blue, though not without reason. - All the English-language releases of Ghost in the Shell Bowdlerized the scene where Motoko has cybersex with two female friends, but retained Shirow Masamune's endnote explanation of it despite having reduced it to a single panel of them frolicking on a boat in swimsuits. - Godzilla: Rulers of Earth: One of the initially planned endings for the series was for Godzilla to fight a clone of himself. Toho vetoed the idea, but not before the setup for this ending already made its way into the comic in the form of Godzilla being found frozen in an iceberg after a Time Skip. According to Word of God, this frozen Godzilla was originally meant to be the clone, hence why he's in an iceberg despite being buried at the bottom of the ocean in the issue prior, and no explanation is given how he got there. - Justice League of America: - Armageddon 2001 was supposed to see Captain Atom undergo a FaceHeel Turn and become the merciless supervillain known as Monarch. Due to that twist leaking out beforehand, the finale was rewritten to have Hawk turn out to be Monarch instead. Despite this, a tie-in Justice League Europe issue still contains a sequence where Catherine Cobert has a nightmare about being attacked by an evil Captain Atom, something that doesn't really fit the rest of the story (which instead sees the League mourning Captain Atom after thinking he died). - One of the Justice League of America issues taking place in the aftermath of Final Crisis shows a depressed Red Arrow being comforted by Black Canary. The scene was written to address the absence of his girlfriend, Hawkgirl, who was originally supposed to die near the end of Final Crisis. However, this plan was changed after the Justice League issue had already been scripted and illustrated, which forced Dwayne McDuffie to do some hasty last minute rewrites to explain that Hawkgirl had left Red Arrow for Hawkman. While that would explain Red Arrow's sullen demeanor, the fact that he was inexplicably wearing black and hanging around a cemetery still makes it obvious what the original intention was. - Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): In the issue following the Endgame arc, where Sally had suffered an almost fatal fall, Sally suddenly starts acting out-of-character, which Sonic notes, but then it gets dropped and never comes up again. It was supposed to foreshadow a twist that Sally really had died during Endgame and her body had been replaced with a robot duplicate. - The Transformers - The Transformers: All Hail Megatron: During a rant, Starscream briefly mentions Scourge as a Decepticon who could potentially overthrow Megatron. Scourge was originally supposed to appear in the miniseries as a kind of Evil Counterpart to Kup, but Hasbro rejected the idea. To make things more egregious, later issues contradicted the line by showing Scourge as part of the non-Decepticon aligned Dead Universe faction. - The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: In Issue 12, it's briefly mentioned that Rewind is allergic to ultraviolet light, which was meant to foreshadow a reveal that never came to pass: \|\|Chromedome had used mnemosurgery to alter Rewind's memory—mnemosurgery scars having been established as only being visible under ultraviolet light—so that he wouldn't remember the fate of Dominus Ambus (who had infiltrated the Decepticons as Agent 113).\|\| - Young Justice: - The first issue features a buxom villainess called Mighty Endowed, who inexplicably sports a Cat Girl design. This is a holdover from when she was originally going to be called Sex Kitten, which was shot down by editorial over concerns the name was inappropriate for a book aimed at younger readers. - When the Young Justice cartoon introduced its own Aqualad, the boy's real name was revealed to be Kaldur'ahm, an Atlantean variation of the name of his stepfather, Cal Durham. The character subsequently became a Canon Immigrant to the comics during Brightest Day, but without the connection to Cal, leaving it unexplained why their names sound so similar. - In the Good Omens work "I Shall Endure to The End!", A.A. Pessimal speculates on the nature of the lost book of The Bible, the Book of Enoch (see "Mythology and Religion" below), which only exists by inference - St Paul makes approving references to a great book of a prophet of old which the believer must read, but which did not make the final cut of Biblical canon. All you get are two or three enigmatic orphaned references to a prophet called Enoch who is held to be one of the greatest and mightiest ever. Pessimal speculated that the contents of the Book of Enoch were such dynamite that the angel Aziraphale was charged with hiding it and ensuring humans never got to find it again. Ever. Aziraphale, who is temperamentally opposed to burning books, hides it in his library of manuscript scrolls, but ensures enough plausible forgeries claiming to be the Book of Enoch are released into the world to divert the wrong sorts of human minds and stop them doing anything dangerous. There is also an inference in a later Discworld fic that Aziraphale has thought creatively about this problem and has handed the Book of Enoch into the safekeeping of the Librarian of Unseen University - also opposed to book-burning and who can be relied upon to keep it both safe and "lost" - on a different world completely, thus ensuring that it remains lost on Earth and an orphaned reference forever. - Queen of Shadows has an example brought about by the original author, Nocturne no Kitsune, disappearing offline and leaving his partner Eduard Kassel to pick up the slack in writing. Early in the story, Jade finds a severed kitsune tail in a cabinet in the Queen's antechamber to the Generals' meeting room. Apparently, Nocturne had plans for it later in the story, but failed to share them with Eduard before falling out of communication. As such, the latter has had no idea what to do with it, beyond a passing reference of Jade pondering why it's there. - The Peddler in Aladdin who appears at the very beginning of the film who tries to sell the audience his merchandise before introducing the story proper was actually meant act as a full-on Framing Device. The movie would have returned to the character at the end, who would finish up the story by revealing he is the freed Genie. The idea was scrapped, hence why we never return to the Peddler despite him being the storyteller, but the filmmakers loved Robin Williams' improv for the opening scene too much to remove it. - The commentary for Atlantis: The Lost Empire tells a story about how there used to be a mystic named Zoltan (who used to speak in the third person, for some reason) along for the ride. At one point everybody sounds off after falling down a hole. For the longest time he was still there shouting "Zoltan is okay!" even after his character had been written out of the script. - From the BIONICLE movies: - Much of Mask of Light's ending is basically this. An earlier script draft had the island crumbling apart in preparation for the return of the deity Mata Nui, forcing everyone to flee underground, into the evil Makuta's lair. In the film, only two tremors happen and the island remains intact, Mata Nui does not wake up, and despite the characters making a huge deal out of having to move underground, only a handful of them do so. The climax where they rush through an underground gate and seal themselves on the other side ends up making little sense, as they'd be safe on the surface. - Some of Makuta's lines, in particular the one where he attributes his deeds to the Mask of Shadows, were meant to set up his reveal as a conflicted but not fully evil individual. This never happened, neither in the movies, nor in other media. The second movie, Legends of Metru Nui likewise referenced the idea that Makuta was originally a force of good, which was supposed to set up a Makuta origin movie that never got made. However, an alternate backstory that tied into the movie was eventually released in books and online stories. - In Legends of Metru Nui, Vakama cries that he saw a vision of the city being destroyed. He did see that in a deleted shot. In the final cut though, all he sees is the city engulfed in darkness. Presumably, the sight of the exploding and crumbling Coliseum tower was too much for a kids' film and got cut, as this was only three years after the 9/11 attacks. - In Web of Shadows, Matau stops in his tracks with his mouth agape and awkwardly tries to change the subject when Nuju mentions the "fascinating" noises he heard the night before. It's because the strange sounds actually came from Matau himself as he gave in to his animalistic urges, a scene that got cut from the film but is still in the novelization. Without this setup, it seems Matau is embarrassed about Nuju rather than himself. - In Brave, Merida was originally supposed to end up with Young MacGuffin, hence his name being a reference to the plot device. In the final film, his name no longer has any meaning. - Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within gives a lot of attention to Aki telling a story about extracting the fifth spirit from a little girl with a terminal illness. This girl was a supporting character called Meg, who had a much larger role, but was dropped from the script. - In the Rankin/Bass The Hobbit, the Elf King and the Dwarves argue about how the dwarves scared off a party of elves and stole their food. This happens in the book, but they didn't add that scene to the animated film. This also leads to their very first mention being the narrated line "the Wood Elves had returned..." - The full-length version of "Great Big World" in Hoodwinked! contained the line "They say that goodies make the woods go 'round" and a shot of Red being carried across the river by a flock of birds. While the general theme of pastries being Serious Business was kept, the exact line doesn't come up again until the climax as part of the Goodie Bandit's Villain Song. In between, Red explains the importance of her delivery job by saying "woods don't go 'round by themselves", which makes little sense without the setup. The scene with the flock of birds also comes up twice later — it's the part of the song the Wolf sees from another angle in his retelling of the story, and the detective Nicky Flippers mentions that she was "flying a flock of birds without a permit". - In The Incredibles, after Syndrome shoots down the family's plane, there's a long shot of Helen looking back at the sinking plane. Originally, Helen's pilot friend Snug (who only appears as a voice over the phone in the finished product) was supposed to be flying the plane for her and would've died when it went down. In that part of the sequence as originally scripted, Helen was looking back at Snug's hat as it floated up at her. - Many fans of The Lion King II: Simba's Pride noticed that Zira seems to be smiling as she falls to her death. That's because it was originally supposed to be a suicide; however, that was deemed too dark. They added in Zira struggling, removed the most obvious parts of the suicide, and added screaming to make it seem like she accidentally fell. Unfortunately, they failed to change her expression as she fell. - In Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, Nemo has a dream where he goes down to the pantry and sees a note on the ice box saying "Remember your promise", before water bursts out and floods the house. Viewers watching the old VHS cut would make the connection that Nemo had just broken his promise to King Morpheus, but miss out on the double meaning because of a deleted scene while Nemo was awake where he promised his mother he'd stay out of the ice box and not eat the pie she'd baked. This was fixed in subsequent ports. - Pocahontas: - The titular heroine's love of the water and hobby of canoeing originally came from a plot point where she received advice from a river spirit called Old Man River. The actor they planned to voice this character - Gregory Peck - said Pocahontas needed a motherly figure instead. Thus they created Grandmother Willow. In the film the canoeing is justified by having Grandmother Willow's tree be near the water, and Pocahontas has to row there to visit her. - The end credits have a pop song called "If I Never Knew You" playing over them. This is in fact a cover of a song that was originally a romantic duet between Pocahontas and John Smith right after he has been captured, and a reprise would be sung in their final scene together. The tune of the song can be heard elsewhere throughout the movie's score. - The Hunchback of Notre Dame, similar to Pocahontas and The Muppet Christmas Carol, used a pop version of "Someday", one of the three cut songs replaced by "God Help The Outcasts", for its end credits. The stage musical reinstated "Someday", albeit in a grimmer context, being sung by Esmeralda just before her execution. - In The Road to El Dorado, when Tulio asks why Chel would help him and Miguel steal from her own people, she says, "You've got your reasons, and I have mine." Originally, there was going to be a scene of her almost getting sacrificed to the gods, and then escaping. This is why she is seen being chased by the guards when Tulio and Miguel first meet her. This was cut out of the film for being too dark, but was left in some promotional media like the tie-in book on tape. - Sleeping Beauty was originally going to give the three fairies powers based off their names Flora had powers over plant life, Fauna had powers over wildlife and Merryweather had powers over the weather. These were eliminated from the final film, but are still referenced a couple of times - Flora's plan to turn Aurora into a flower, her transforming arrows into plants and the fairies' gifts to Aurora (Flora's sequence shows flower motifs, Fauna's birds and Merryweather the sun coming out from behind a cloud). - The closing credits sequence of Tangled includes references to scenes that were cut from the movie, including Flynn encountering a bear and Rapunzel consulting a psychic monkey. - Turning Red: The song "1 True Love" was originally written for a scene where Miriam and Mei would have had a sad goodbye after Miriam found out she would have to move away. - Up: - At one point, Carl unknowingly scares away Charles Muntz's dogs with the feedback from his hearing aid, which was supposed to set up Carl doing it deliberately later in the movie, but the filmmakers couldn't find a place to fit it in. - Muntz talks about how easy it is to get lost inside the labyrinth where Kevin lives, and that you can't get out once you're inside. This was the setup for a dropped ending where Muntz follows some balloons he thinks are Kevin into the labyrinth and ends up getting trapped inside. - Zootopia: - The movie features a meta example. One scene depicts various bootleg DVDs parodying Disney films. Pig Hero 6, Wreck-it Rhino, Meowna, etc. One of them is called Giraffic. This was a case of Production Foreshadowing for their upcoming film Gigantic, however it was stuck in Development Hell and was ultimately scrapped and replaced with Raya and the Last Dragon. This means the reference doesn't make any sense to people who aren't knowledgeable about Disney history, because the film it parodies never came out. - One of Judy's childhood friends is a cougar named Bobby Catmull. Kind of an odd name for a cougar right? That's because he was originally going to be a bobcat, but the animators didn't have enough time to build a bobcat model, so he was changed to a cougar. - Aliens: The scene where Ripley confronts Burke about being responsible for the death of the colonists doesn't make a lot of sense in the Theatrical Cut due to its context (a member of the company deliberately sent the colonists looking for the derelict ship where the Alien eggs were laid) only being previously discussed in a deleted scene. Nowhere else in the film does it explore why the colony was attacked and it's implied that Ripley (and hence the Marines) believe that it was only a matter of time due to the invasive nature of the Xenomorphs. The Extended Edition available for home viewing reinserts the scene which helps the viewer understand what Ripley is talking about. Most of the other deleted (and later reinserted) scenes are unnecessary to understand the plot and themes, so it's a little strange that there wasn't a quick reshoot or at least a brief ADR to explain this plot point. - American Beauty opens with a home movie of Ricky asking Jane if she wants him to kill her father, to which she replies yes. We see the full scene later in the film, and it turns out they're just being sarcastic. But this is a remnant of a large subplot that was filmed and cut. \|\|The video would incriminate Jane and Ricky for Lester's murder.\|\| - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World has some milder ones: - "Is that seriously the end of the story?" — Originally, this was Kim's response to Scott's flashback about how he met Knives on the bus (she dropped her books, he picked them up), later echoed by Ramona when she hears it from Knives. The flashback scene was cut in the final version. - In an early, discarded version of Scott and Ramona's first date, Ramona was seen lighting a cigarette, saying she smokes only on special occasions. Scott was supposed to be echoing her after his battle with Roxy, when he says he only drinks on special occasions. - Scott has some Adaptational Nice Guy moments with Knives that look like he genuinely cares about her, such as becoming enraged when she got the dye punched out of her hair when he just looked on in the comic. This is because one of the endings was Scott getting back with Knives, but the makers decided not to go with that. The deleted scenes are in the DVD extras. - In The Sixth Sense, when the protagonist realizes \|\|he's a ghost\|\|, there is an echo of the boy saying "I see people". The line "I see people" was not used in the final cut (he only says "I see dead people"). - Several in Monkeybone. One involves the stain on Stu's Grim Reaper costume, which is explained from a deleted scene that showed him stealing it. - In The Goonies, there is a deleted scene with an octopus. At the end of the film Data says "The octopus was scary!" while he's being interviewed, despite the fact it was cut. The octopus scene is included in the TV version of the movie, however. - Batman & Robin: The fight between Poison Ivy and Batgirl makes a big dramatic moment out of Ivy pulling out a knife. This is because in an earlier version of the script, Ivy used that same knife to kill Bruce's girlfriend Julie Madison, but this was removed due to it being too dark, which caused Julie to just vanish from the film. - An example of this trope is actually in the title of Batman Forever. The title seems odd to many audience members until they realize it is in reference to a line of dialogue that was in a deleted scene. Though the word "forever" was used in two different dialogues: Two-Face: (believed Batman was killed) Farewell forever to that pointy-eared night rat! Bruce: (to Chase about his Dark and Troubled Past) I fell. I fell forever. - Monty Python's Life of Brian originally had a whole subplot about King Otto, who was to have been A Nazi by Any Other Name. The only mention of Otto in the finished film is when his crack suicide squad show up in the final scene. - The Wizard of Oz: - There's a scene where the Wicked Witch is giving instructions for her flying monkeys to intercept Dorothy's party, and she says, "They'll give you no trouble, I promise you that. I've sent a little insect on ahead to take the fight out of them." This was in reference to a scene where a bug called the Jitterbug stings the main characters, and they break into a dance number, which was cut to avoid dating the film (the jitterbug had been a popular dance in the late '30s to early '40s, but has long since been forgotten now). - Dorothy telling the Scarecrow "I think I'll miss you most of all" makes a bit more sense if you know about a cut subplot where Scarecrow's "real world" counterpart, Hunk, was Dorothy's close friend and Implied Love Interest. - One of the Kansas scenes has Aunt Em making reference to Hickory "tinkering on that contraption", referencing a wind machine he was working on in a scene that got cut. - Suspiria (1977) was originally planned to have twelve-year-old girls as the protagonists, but changed them to twenty-somethings to avoid being banned. The script was not changed, leading to... - When Olga is introduced, she childishly says that Suzie and Sara have the "names of snakes" and sticks her tongue out. Sara follows suit. - Suzie prefers to rent a room at Olga's rather than stay at the school, because she doesn't want to feel "like a kid" at boarding school. You'd be hard pressed to find a twenty-something student who'd pass up a free room in the name of maturity. - Who Framed Roger Rabbit: - Eddie scolds Roger for dancing for the bar patrons and potentially blowing his cover while "I'm out there risking my neck out for you." It's a fairly generic line, except that the immediate events don't warrant it; Eddie went from leaving Roger in the hidden room at the bar straight to his office, where he meets Jessica, and then back out to find Roger dancing. The line makes more sense when one considers the deleted scene (included in the comic version and on later home media releases) that would have followed Roger's drop-off, where Eddie is caught snooping in Jessica's dressing room by Judge Doom and is sent to Toontown, where he is given a "tooneroo", a toon pig painted on top of his head. He goes back to his office to wash it off, which then segues to his encounter with Jessica. The removal of the scene where he washes the head off also removes the context of why he was getting out of the shower when Jessica arrived. - An early draft of the script included an extra scene where Eddie visits Marvin Acme's funeral, which would feature more animated cameos. Then, Eddie would be spying on a private conversation between R.K. Maroon and Judge Doom, which further raised Eddie's suspicions of the former's involvement and led to him snooping into Jessica's dressing room. - Star Trek: Generations: - The villain Dr. Soran makes a hammier than usual remark about Geordi's heart just not being in a conversation. Which made no sense on its own, but referred to a cut scene that involved him torturing Geordi by repeatedly stopping his heart. You can see the cut scene here. It also has Dr. Crusher saying "I removed the nanoprobe" (that Soran used to stop Geordi's heart), leaving the audience to wonder " what nanoprobe?" - The prologue sequence was originally written with Spock and Bones accompanying Kirk on the maiden voyage on the Enterprise-B. When Leonard Nimoy and Deforest Kelley weren't available the roles were given to Scotty and Chekov. It's pretty obvious that they were not meant for them, as the two take much more mannerisms of Spock and Bones then ever, including a scene where Chekov, who was the Navigator and later the Tactical Officer/Security Chief, drafts the in universe film crew as medical personnel. - In National Treasure, there's a quick moment where one character is seen grabbing a knife. It was never put to use later; the production team was planning on it, but cut that element out (partly for ratings reasons). - For National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, they filmed a scene in which the bad guy stabs the protagonist's father; however, they took this out because they felt it crossed the Moral Event Horizon and undermined his Death Equals Redemption moment later. However, there is still a shot in the film in which the actor is acting like he's injured because they didn't re-shoot that scene. - The song 'When Love Is Gone' was cut from the theatrical version of The Muppet Christmas Carol, but several references to it still appear. Most obvious are the reprise 'When Love Is Found' and the pop song version during the closing credits. It is also prominently featured in the soundtrack's overture. This applies to the Blu-ray release too, which ported over a behind the scenes extra from the extended cut DVD showing the recording of 'When Love Is Gone', even though the song is completely absent from the Blu-ray. However, in 2022, it was announced that the song would be restored for the 30th anniversary 4K rerelease. - Superman Film Series: - The Richard Lester cut of Superman II has a few examples due to discarding a number of scenes a shot by Richard Donner: - When Clark sees General Zod taking over the White House, Lois tells Clark "You didn't know", only for Clark to reply "He knew". Clark is referring to Jor-El telling him about the Kryptonian villains, but those scenes were removed from the Lester cut. - When Clark is about expose himself to red sun radiation in order to rid himself of his powers, the recording of his mother Lara warns him that the process is permanent and cannot be reversed. Bafflingly, Clark is later able to easily restore his powers during the climax with absolutely no consequences. This is because Laras warning was supposed to set up the Jor-El A.I. having to sacrifice itself to repower Clark, leading to the heartbreaking reality that Clarks decision had ultimately cost him his father. Since all footage of Marlon Brandos Jor-El was removed from the Lester cut of the film, the entire conflict makes no sense and just comes off as an Ass Pull. - Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was originally 134 minutes long before being pared down to 90 minutes. Thus, the film features several references that are almost meaningless in the theatrical cut. Most notably, Lex Luthor originally made two Nuclear Men, of which Mark Pillow's Nuclear Man was actually the second incarnation. The original Nuclear Man, played by Clive Mantle, was much less intelligent, akin to Bizarro from the comic books, and had a confrontation with Superman before being defeated by being electrocuted into ashes. Thus, the "dirt" that Lenny Luthor adds to the capsule with Nuclear Man's protoplasm was really the remains of the original Nuclear Man, and Nuclear Man II inherited Nuclear Man I's memories of crossing paths with Lacy Warfield, which was why he was seeking her in the climax, asking "Where is the woman?" and Superman answering "Give it up, you'll never find her.". - Three Men and a Baby has a deleted plot thread about Jack Holden (Ted Danson's character) appearing in a dog food commercial. This explains the cardboard standees of him that pop up in a couple spots in the final cut that inspired a famous Urban Legend. - In Wing Commander, the Pilgrim is asked at one point about his pilgrim pendant, to which he replies that he doesn't have it anymore. The reason why he lost it is never explained in the movie. The reason for that is because a scene where he stabs a traitor with the pendant was filmed but cut from the final version of the movie. - There's a deleted scene from Kung Pow! Enter the Fist where an old man writes "MOUTH" on the Chosen One's face. There's a scene or two in the final cut where this writing is still visible. - Iron Man: - Tony's hands are uncovered after Iron Monger falls. The second glove of his armor was taken off in Stane's original death scene where he has one last moment with Tony and tries to take him down with him but Tony disconnected his glove to drop him alone. - The War Machine armor was originally planned to appear in the movie, but was cut. Despite this, schematics for the suit still appear during the Creative Closing Credits. - The Viral Marketing for Iron Man 2 included a fake commercial for the Stark-Fujikawa subsidiary, which made little sense in the overall context of the film. This is because the character Rumiko Fujikawa (a Japanese businesswoman and one of Tony's love interests from the comics) was supposed to appear in the film, but was cut when the script was rewritten. - In The Avengers, Banner's line that "you could smell the crazy on [Loki]" was supposed to set up a Brick Joke of the Hulk doing just that — Loki would use duplicates but Hulk would find the real one by his scent. - In Four Rooms, Tim Roth's character is given five warnings: "Stay clear of night clerks, kids, hookers, and married arguments" and "Keep your cock in your pants." Over the course of the film he violates each of these... except the one about the hookers. They just never show up. note : There's one (alleged) hooker in the movie, but she's dead and stuffed in a mattress. Other evidence (some of the animations during the opening credits, and a group of naked ladies fleeing the room at the beginning of the last segment) suggests a fifth story was cut out late in the game. - In Terminator 2: Judgment Day: - They cut all the scenes of the T-1000's shapeshifting malfunctions before release. Only one was left in, after he neutralizes the Terminator and a single ripple of silver runs up his body, which confused audiences until the Director's Cut was released and explained what was going on. - At one point after killing Todd while assuming Janelle's form, the T-1000 is seen leaving the Voight's house, briefly looking into the bathroom as he does. While Janelle is killed offscreen (hence the T-1000 taking over her form), there was originally a scene where the T-1000 kills her in the middle of a shower. - X-Men: - At one point, Senator Kelly mentions that Jean Grey is a mutant, despite no prior indication that he knew her secret. The original script had a scene where Jean would've accidentally outed herself as a mutant in front of Kelly, which was cut just before filming was to begin. This is also why there's a deleted scene on the DVD release where Xavier scolds Jean for losing control of her powers in public, something that doesn't actually happen at any point in the movie. - The official prequel comic book shows a photo of Logan with a mysterious woman that he knew before his memories were erased, and the woman in question even appears in some of his dreams. This was going to be a minor subplot in the actual movie (and was even referenced in one of the script excerpts Hugh Jackman read for his audition), but was ultimately removed from the script. - Storm's Pre-Mortem One-Liner against Toad was meant to be the anticlimactic punchline to a Running Gag of Toad arrogantly boasting about "what happens to a toad when [x]". All of Toad's dialogue setting it up was taken out of the script, leaving us with Storm making a really weird quip out of nowhere before she blasts him with lightning. - X-rays of wings can be seen in Stryker's lab in X2: X-Men United. This is because the movie was originally going to have a subplot where Stryker would've kidnapped Angel from the Xavier Institute and forcibly transformed him into Archangel through experimentation. Though Angel was removed from the script, the X-rays were retained. - Dogma has Cardinal Glick place an odd emphasis on God being male, considering the final cut has nobody telling him otherwise. - And before that, Mallrats had a metric crapton of them-like when Mr. Svenning meets with some network executives about his game show, they mention "trouble (he had) at the Governor's Ball", referring back to a whole opening scene that was replaced due to running too long in focus testing (and in turn, a whole subplot that got removed); some dialogue elsewhere in the movie had to be ADR'd in post and new scenes were filmed to remove further references- but some were still left in (as were references to other, unrelated scenes that got cut). - One deleted scene had Brodie tell a group of reporters that he's Svenning's next door neighbor, and that Svenning is a satanist. Later, in the scene where Brodie gives Svenning the tainted pretzels, Svenning sarcastically refers to Brodie as his "neighbor" in reference to this. - The 1995 film of Casper had a Cut Song called "Lucky Enough to Be a Ghost", which would have ended with the Ghostly Trio hoisting Dr. Harvey up to the ceiling just as Kat walks in to ask him about having the Halloween party at Whipstaff. This explains Kat's line in the finished film about her father having "hit the ceiling" when he found out about the party. Christina Ricci does deliver the line in a dry enough way to make it non-obvious that this is supposed to be a pun, but it's still hard to imagine the mild-mannered Dr. Harvey hitting the ceiling in a figurative sense either. - Upon its initial release, the 1932 film Rasputin and the Empress featured a scene which implied that Rasputin had raped Princess Natasha, who was a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Princess Irina Yusupov. In 1932, the real Princess Irina Yusupov was still alive and feeling litigious. Along with her husband Felix, she sued and won, which led to the This Is a Work of Fiction disclaimer. The offending scene was removed from the movie, creating a plot hole in which it's not explained why Princess Natasha changes from supporting Rasputin to being afraid of him. - The matador scene in The Cat in the Hat was the setup for a deleted verse which can be heard on the soundtrack CD and accessed on the "Deleted Scenes" feature on the DVD. It was removed and thus it's a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. - Star Wars: - A New Hope: - Han's parting words to Jabba in Mos Eisley, calling him a "wonderful human being," made more sense in the scene as originally filmed and then deleted. At that time, Jabba was not yet the giant sluglike alien canonized in Return of the Jedi and was indeed human. The slug design was digitally edited over the original footage when the scene was restored in the Special Edition. Luckily enough, the line was already delivered in a deeply sarcastic tone, making it easy to handwave as a snarky joke on Han's part. - Luke's friendship with Biggs was completely cut from the original version of the movie along with the Tosche Station scene, where he met Biggs and discussed his deal with his uncle to stay on the farm for another season and Biggs told Luke that he was planning on joining the Rebellion. As a result, Luke mentions Biggs early on when bemoaning that he's never going to get off Tatooine with no indication of who Biggs is, the scene where he reunites with Biggs in the Rebel hangar before the start of the Battle of Yavin was also cut, his muttered "Blast it, Biggs, where are you?!" during the battle when he has a TIE fighter on his tail (before being saved by Wedge) seems rather random (although it could be interpreted as bitterness that he'd saved Biggs from a similar fate only a few minutes before and Biggs isn't repaying the favour), and Biggs' death at Vader's hands doesn't have the same impact (although Luke's horrified shock at it still made sense in the context that Biggs' death leaves him alone as the last hope of the Rebellion). The Special Edition restored the scene of their reunion in the hangar, making it clear that Luke knew Biggs from somewhere in his past, but with the Toshe Station scene still absent it came across more like Remember the New Guy?. - C-3PO's remark as he looks out the escape pod window, "That's funny... the damage doesn't look as bad from out here", originated from the rough draft script where he and R2-D2 were Imperial droids posted aboard the planet-killing space fortress not yet named the Death Star: hearing the sounds of an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to destroy the space fortress, panicking and thinking they were about to be blown up, the two droids fled in an escape pod before realising the space fortress was mostly unharmed. Threepio's line is less funny in the final film, where there wasn't the same emphasis on the Tantive IV taking external damage. - In The Empire Strikes Back, the AT-AT pilot General Veers, who disappears after the battle of Hoth, was originally supposed to be killed by Hobbie, who is named by Luke but not seen in-person, crashing his snowspeeder into the cockpit after the targeting of the power generator. A remnant of this scene can be seen when the walker that Luke plants a grenade in explodes at the head rather than the body, and it was also reinstated in the novelization. - In The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon and Anakin are inexplicably running, with Anakin complaining that he's tired no less, right before Darth Maul shows up and starts dueling Qui-Gon. In the final film, there's no explanation for why they weren't just walking at a normal pace, but there's a deleted scene in which they encountered one of Darth Maul's probe droids and started running. - The weird bit in The Last Jedi where Admiral Holdo caresses an unconscious Poe's face and says she likes him is a rather unfortunate artifact from an earlier version of the script where Poe and Holdo were the same age and had a Slap-Slap-Kiss dynamic going on. - Bill & Ted: - Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was originally going to have a random medieval guy called John The Serf played by James Bowbitch tag along with the historical characters. He was cut from the movie but was still listed in the credits. - In Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, the Evil Bill and Ted say "Good luck getting to the concert!" to the originals; while it comes off as petty mockery, in the original script they actually followed up on it by siccing real-world versions of Bill and Ted's Ironic Hells (the Easter Bunny, Bill's grandmother, and Colonel Oates) on the boys to try and stop them. This scene still occurs in the novelization and the comic book adaptation of the film. - Back to the Future: - The first film: - Ever wonder why George had peanut brittle for dinner in 1985? Originally, after meeting with Biff, Marty tries to urge George to stand up for himself when a child selling peanut brittle shows up and the child's father put him down for a case without his knowledge or consent. Instead, he gives in, buying all of it, with the child's father saying "See, I told you we'd only have to stop at one house." It was cut because the filmmakers thought the scene was unnecessary as the preceding scene with Biff already established Georges Extreme Doormat nature. - When Marty asks why George was not at school, the day following his encounter with "Darth Vader", George explains that he overslept. An extended version of the "Darth Vader" scene shows that Marty chloroformed George after their conversation and commented to Doc that he hopes he didn't overdo it. This is likely the reason why George overslept, as Marty did in fact overdo it. - A deleted scene has the 1955 Doc finding a handheld hair dryer in the 1985 Doc's suitcase, explaining where the "Ray Gun" used by "Darth Vader" came from. - In Back to the Future Part II, when Old Biff returns to 2015 after giving his younger self the sports almanac, he is in pain and collapses on the ground. A deleted scene shows that he fades from existence afterwards, with Word of God confirming that in 1996 of the new timeline, Biff's counterpart was killed by Lorraine, likely either because she finally got fed up with his abuse or because she found out the truth about him killing George. The scene was cut because test audiences were confused about why Old Biff disappeared, and there was likely no way to give the explanation in dialogue. As a result, there's no discernible reason in the final film as to why Old Biff is in pain. - Back to the Future Part III: Originally, Buford Tannen and his gang were supposed to encounter Marshall Strickland with his son before Buford's duel with Marty. Strickland lets them go until Buford shoots him in the back, killing him, then saying "I Lied!" before riding off. It got dropped because it changed the tone of the duel. This act was so heinous that it wasn't right that Buford not die (and he can't, because Buford needs to live long enough to extend the Tannen family line). This explains why Strickland's deputy, now wearing a Marshall's badge, arrests Buford and his gang, with the line "You're under arrest for the murder of Marshall Strickland" redubbed to "You're under arrest for robbing the Pine City stage!" The camera cuts away from the deputy in the middle of this line, presumably to hide the fact that his lips don't match it. - Shanghai Noon: Originally, there was a whole sequence where Chon Wang's fellow Chinese guards are discovered by a conman named Bulldog Drummond, played by Curtis Armstrong, who tries to showcase them to audiences. When they realize what's happening, he gets beaten and they take his wagon, which is what they used to travel to the church. Drummond is subsequently mugged by Wallace and the gang, who reveals where the guards are going, which explains how they show up there in the end. - Stripes: In the theatrical cut, Sgt. Hulka tells the platoon that some soldiers left the base without permission, and threatens to punish the entire platoon before John and Russell reluctantly fess up to that. If you watch the extended cut of the film, you'll find that they tried to desert during Basic, and somehow end up parachuting into somewhere in South America, before running into a group of rebels, accidentally dumping a bunch of LSD into their stew, almost getting killed, and sneaking off before getting put back on the plane and sent back to Basic. Also, Stripes was initially planned to be a Cheech & Chong movie, so such a scene would have fit their comedic style. - Titanic has one hour worth of Deleted Scenes, so it isn't surprising that the final cut has multiple instances of this. - When Jack makes Rose "fly" at the bow, he starts singing the popular 1910 song Come Josephine In My Flying Machine and she laughs. This is because she remembers singing it in an earlier, deleted scene after Jack brings Rose to a party in steerage. On their way back to First Class, the two sing Come Josephine. - When Cal finds Rose near the lifeboats, he is disgusted to see her in a poor-looking chequered blanket. In a deleted scene, she is gifted that blanket by a steerage couple after they escape the flooding hallway. The same steerage couple is seen swimming in the freezing water after the ship goes down. - Lovejoy bleeds from his head in his last scene because he had a deleted fight scene with Jack in the flooding dining room. This fight ended with Jack pushing Lovejoy's head into a glass pane. This is also why, though Lovejoys penultimate scene in the final scene had him talking to Cal, when Cal next appeared, Lovejoy is nowhere to be seen. - Before the final plunge, Rose shares a glance with a terrified blonde woman holding onto the rails. This woman, Helga, was originally a love interest of Fabrizio and a Foil to Rose - she would choose her family over her love to their mutual downfall - but her subplot was cut. The only scene that remains in the movie to justify Rose recognizing her is a brief shot of Fabrizio dancing with her when Rose goes to steerage. - A Chinese passenger appears twice in the movie: right after Fabrizio and Jack enter the ship, and again when they try to exit steerage through the fenced stairs. He never interacts with anyone but his presence is striking because he's at the center of the screen both times and the only non-white actor in the movie. The Chinese passenger is Fang Lang, a real survivor who was saved by the returning lifeboat; these appearances were meant to set his rescue scene but it was cut. - First-time watchers are surprised to see the little girl Cora and her father among the Titanic 'ghosts' in the last scene. A deleted scene showed them drowning behind a hallway fence in steerage (along with their mother and wife), but James Cameron thought it was too depressing. - Bright: - In the film's original draft, Officer Ward was going to be separated from his wife. In Jakoby and Ward's first ride together, Jakoby says that Ward doesn't know anything about love and that he hasn't had sex in a long time. However, that whole subplot is dropped from the final film, where Ward is still Happily Married, making the conversation completely nonsensical and undermining Jakoby's claim to be able to "sense" these things. - Tikka's childlike behavior made a lot more sense in the original draft, where she was a child. They made her into a young woman because a scene required her to enter a strip club, but she retains the body language of a child, which makes it seem like something is wrong with her. - Tikka doesn't speak to Ward and Jakoby until late in the movie, leading the duo to assume that she doesn't speak English until she proves otherwise—which was also a holdover from the original draft where she was a sheltered young girl who really didn't speak English. This gets the cursory Hand Wave that she pretends not to speak their language while deciding whether to trust them ("So now you speak English?" "Now I trust you."), which...doesn't make a whole lot of sense. - The first death in Final Destination featured Tod getting startled by a shadow in the mirror, and the water he slipped on in the bathroom retreating back into the toilet to make his death look like a suicide. This is left over from when all the deaths were planned this way, but the filmmakers changed their minds to have the others as accidents. - In the climax of Carrie (1976), boulders can be seen crashing through the ceiling of the house. This ties in with a planned opening showing Carrie as a child making stones rain down on the roof that was cut. Additionally, the scene would have had the house getting buried by falling boulders. But the machine malfunctioned and they had to just burn the house down instead. This is also why \|\|Carrie's grave\|\| is under a pile of stones. - Hook has a scene where Peter's daughter Maggie sings a song for the pirates. This is a leftover from when the film was planned as a musical. The school play also has a song called "We Don't Wanna Grow Up". - The Lovely Bones originally adapted the subplot from the book where Abigail has an affair with the detective. There's a lot of chemistry between the two characters in a scene at the police station - which was clearly meant to start the subplot off. And later in the scene where Jack hugs the detective, he can be seen looking a little guilty. - The Technicolor remake of Imitation of Life was planned as a musical - hence the plot point of Lora becoming a Broadway star instead of a businesswoman, the cameo of Mahalia Jackson singing at \|\|Annie's funeral\|\| and Sarah Jane becoming a dancer and chorus girl instead of a waitress. - Kingdom of Heaven's final battle features Queen Sibylla cutting all her hair off before going incognito to tend to the wounded. This act makes much more sense with Ridley Scott's planned ending where the character would become a nun - who traditionally cut their hair off as a symbol of giving up their old life to serve God now. But Executive Meddling wanted Balian and Sibylla to end up together at the end. In the Director's Cut the haircut still makes some sense too as \|\|Sibylla chose to poison her son as a Mercy Kill when she discovered he had leprosy\|\| - so it could be seen as an act of mourning. - The World of Suzie Wong's eponymous heroine speaks in broken English - which comes from her original actress France Nuyen having limited English (and having to learn her lines phonetically). Midway through filming she was replaced with Nancy Kwan - who spoke perfect English. - (500) Days of Summer has a flashback to the teenage Summer cutting her hair. In the original script, Summer is described as having short hair (making it a Visual Pun that she has a pixie haircut). But Zooey Deschanel wears her hair long, so the flashback seems like a Non Sequitur (although it does fit in with Summer's impulsive personality). - In America: - Christy narrates over her parents sleeping together "and that's when the baby was conceived". It's implied that she's narrating in the present tense at the same age she is now. She's ten. In the original script she was written to be a thirteen-year-old - explaining why she would know about conception. Sarah Bolger (who was ten) simply gave the best audition and you can just assume that Christy knows more than she should. - The film also has a couple of holdovers from when it was going to be set in 1982: - The first is the family going to see E.T. in cinemas - and the film having a recurring significance for them (Johnny nearly bankrupts everyone getting an ET doll from a carnival, another character dying pretends he's going to his home planet like ET). The filmmakers lucked out when ET was re-released in 2002 to celebrate its 20th anniversary. - \|\|Mateo's death from AIDS\|\|, given that 1982 was during the crisis, especially the film's New York setting. Given that Jim Sheridan based the film on his own experiences in New York in the 80s, it's likely a fictionalisation of someone he knew with the disease. - A minor one is the Sullivans not knowing what trick-or-treating is when they move to New York. Halloween was never a particularly big deal in Ireland (ironically it was Irish immigrants who introduced it to America in the first place), and there wasn't much of an industry for costumes (especially in the poor economy of the 60s and 70s when the parents would have grown up) - explaining why they make their own. So in 2002 (when the movie takes place) the family not knowing about trick-or-treating is especially odd. Making their own costumes, however, is justified by their poverty at the start. - Laurel and Hardy: The short Twice Two has one of the wives mention a "surprise" for Ollie. We never learn what this surprise was in the film. According to the notes on the Laurel & Hardy Essential Collection DVD set, the script states the surprise as being a 16mm home movies projector. Back in 1933, such a device would have cost a lot of money! - House of Wax (2005) had an alternate opening featuring a girl called Jennifer being killed on the side of the road. It was cut from the film, but a waxwork of Jennifer is still given special attention in the third act - as the winner of the 'Miss Ambrose' Beauty Contest. The pageant is discussed a couple of times earlier in the film at least. - Scooby-Doo (2002): - Right before she's kidnapped by the villains, Daphne is seen running out of a building and slamming the door shut. This is because of a cut scene that took place inside the girls' locker room - where Daphne encountered a possessed Velma and several other girls. They're who she was running from. - Shaggy knows to look for Daphne's soul in the pit after he's found Fred and Velma's. The reason is that he was originally going to stumble upon Daphne's soul being extracted from her body and a monster inhabiting it. This scene too was deleted. - Old Man Smithers/The Luna Ghost was originally meant to be the main villain of the movie. In the finished product, he only appears in the film's prologue, but the Luna Ghost was still featured prominently on the movie poster. - Harry Potter: - Justin Finch-Fletchley is Demoted to Extra in Chamber of Secrets, and Harry knowing who he is right before the snake incident in Duelling Club appears to be Remember the New Guy?. An extended version of the scene had Harry meeting Justin in the club and chatting about him being Muggle-born. - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: - There's one to the original plan to break into Umbridge's office after Harry's vision - where Luna, Ginny and Neville are brought in because they helped. In the film it's just Harry, Ron and Hermione breaking in. - Percy Weasley is shown accompanying Cornelius Fudge in several scenes, including one in which he's restraining Harry in Dumbledore's office. There's no in-film explanation for why Percy is in these scenes, and he never even gets any lines. These appearances are just artifacts of the book's subplot in which he got a job at the Ministry and disowned his family. - In the attack on the Burrow in Half Blood Prince, Ginny inexplicably does nothing once Fenrir Greyback shows up. As shown in the trailer, he disarmed her from afar. Ginny can be seen picking up her wand as soon as Lupin and Tonks get there too. - Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later: - The opening credits show a newspaper picture of a pair of bloody scissors - referencing the ending of the fourth film. Originally the fourth, fifth and sixth films were going to be acknowledged in a scene where one of Laurie's students gives a report on 'the Haddonfield murders'. The finished film ended up being a Soft Reboot that ignored the previous three movies. - Michael Myers notably has no burn scars, despite having been in a fire at the end of the second film. While it seems like a simple Series Continuity Error, it was originally a hint to the planned reveal that it wasn't the real Michael, but a copycat killer. - Hocus Pocus: After being resurrected, Mary says to Winnie I knew I left this cauldron on, didnt I tell you? despite Mary not having said that prior. This line is actually in reference to a bit of dialog that was cut during the hanging scene, where Mary verbally wonders if she left the cauldron on and asks the people of Salem to allow her to go back inside to handle it. They dont. - A Knight's Tale: - When Kate is teaching William to dance she asks what he's planning to do with his hair for the evening. Originally William was supposed to appear at the banquet with his hair slicked back and covered in silver after Kate restyles it for him. A single scene, which ended up being cut, was filmed with this hairstyle before the crew realised it looked ridiculous. The rest of the banquet was shot with William's usual blonde curls which leaves Kate's comment as an odd non-sequitir. - After Chaucer pays off Simon the Summoner and Peter the Pardoner the duo leave with Simon making a snarky comment that they'll see Chaucer again very soon. Originally they were supposed to appear again later in the movie to inform Chaucer that William's true identity has been discovered but that scene was cut. - In The Fly (1986), after his tryst with Tawny Seth is often clutching the left side of his abdomen for the next few minutes; some time later when he has figured out how to Wall Crawl Seth reveals to Veronica that there is a bizarre growth there and jokes "Oh, look at this. What's this? I dunno." The payoff to this scene was part of the infamous "monkey-cat" Deleted Scene that was slotted between Veronica telling Stathis about her pregnancy and her Nightmare Sequence: Seth, alone in The Madness Place and having just created and slain a hybrid baboon-cat creature with his telepods, is on the roof of the warehouse when a sudden pain from the growth causes him to tumble off. Managing to slide down the wall and land on an awning, he is horrified to see an insect leg emerge from the growth — so he bites it off. In the finished film's climax, the right-side counterpart to the severed leg emerges upon his One-Winged Angel transformation (meaning he was supposed to have six limbs, just like a fly). - Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) starts In Medias Res with Sonic attempting to outrun Dr. Robotnik and his Eggpod, then the scene freezes and after some narration from the title character, the film rewinds to the beginning of the film's story. During the rewind a brief blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of Tom Wachowski's truck driving past an "Oregon Welcomes You" sign is shown, except there's no point in the movie where Tom or Sonic ever visit Oregon, suggesting it's a remnant of a Deleted Scene. - During a montage in Ghostbusters II, there's an odd moment where Ecto-1 goes through an intersection while Peter looks surprised. This is the leftover of a deleted sequence where Vigo possesses Ray and tries to force him to crash Ecto-1 before being stopped by Winston. - James Bond: - In Goldfinger, Goldfinger's nuclear warhead is stopped with 7 seconds left (displayed as 007), but Bond quips "Three more clicks and Goldfinger would have hit the jackpot" because the bomb originally was intended to be defused with 3 (003) seconds left. - In GoldenEye, the BMW Z3 was planned to be showcased in a big action scene where Bond would use it to escape a Drill Tank. This scene was cut from the script, but the car and its gadgets still gets a grand introduction in the Q Branch scene and was all over the film's marketing, even though the only payoff it gets is a tiny moment late in the film where Bond drives it to meet with Jack Wade, and trades it for his plane. - In Tomorrow Never Dies, when Q shows Bond his BMW 750i, there's a cage with a live jaguar next to it. In the uncut scene, Q was saying "Your new car..." and opens the crate with the jaguar inside, with the exchange "Jaguar?" "Wrong assignment." preceding the proper reveal. - John Wick: Chapter 2 had a deleted scene as part of the montage of assassins going after the bounty Santino has placed on John, in which he would've fought off a pair of assassins in the streets of Chinatown. The final film however still contains a brief remnant of this scene, with the sequence of the Continental's clerks creating the bounty including a shot of John walking through Chinatown. - The original cut of Planes, Trains and Automobiles was over 3 hours long, before it was cut down to 2 hours, and then eventually 90 minutes. There are several references to the cut material in the finished product. - Many scenes on the airplane were cut, including long stretches of Del talking Neal's ear off. This is referred to in the final cut where Neal, during his first big blow-up with him, accuses Del of telling boring, unamusing anecdotes. - When Neal accuses Del of stealing his money, he mentions that Del went through his wallet to pay for pizza. This refers to a deleted scene where Del orders pizza their first night, and pays for it with money out of Neal's wallet. This also makes Neal's accusation of theft more believable. The burglar also was not just some random thief who stole Neal and Del's money by sheer coincidence. He was actually the pizza delivery guy from earlier. He broke in and stole their money in revenge for Del paying him a one dollar tip in pennies. - The exploding beer can was shown in a deleted scene while Neal and Del are eating pizza, rather than simply being mentioned after-the-fact. - The black eye that Del receives out of nowhere near the end of the trip (although implied in the final cut to be the result of an antsy truck driver) was the result of Neal punching him in a deleted scene upon discovering that Del had accidentally driven past Chicago the previous night. This would also explain why the state trooper that pulls them over has a Wisconsin badge. In the original cut, he's the one who informs them of the overshot. - An entire subplot was cut where Neal's wife suspects that he's having an affair and that "Del" is merely a persona he's created to explain why he hasn't arrived home yet. The tears of joy when Neal finally comes home was originally supposed to be elation upon discovering that Neal was telling the truth the whole time. - The Breakfast Club: - The movie has a deleted scene where Allison breaks into a teacher's locker and, finding a copy of 1999 (Album) by Prince, tells Andy "You know what this means? They're human." The final version of the film has a scene in the library where Allison is shown, in a reaction shot, to be inspecting the album, with no explanation of where she got it or why she has it. - There's a deleted scene in which Clair acts out a parodied conversation with her parents, to go along with Bender's "A Night at Big Bri's House" bit, and Brian's response (which was also deleted). What she says informs Bender's later statement about her "Poor, rich, drunk mother in the Caribbean" which otherwise just seems like information he's pulling out of nowhere. - In The Big Lebowski, Walter Sobchak is a Vietnam War veteran, but in the original draft, it was revealed that Walter didn't actually serve in Vietnam. Following \|\|Donny's funeral\|\|, the Dude was going to yell at Walter, "You were never fucking in Vietnam, Walter". We still see shades of this as the Dude gets angry at Walter for ranting about Vietnam during \|\|his eulogy for Donny\|\|. - Dead Poets Society: After Todd finds out that \|\|Neil's dead\|\|, he despondently runs towards the school's dock, screaming \|\|Neil's name\|\|. In a deleted scene, \|\|Todd and Neil were at the dock helping him rehearse for A Midsummer Night's Dream\|\|, showing Todd more open and at ease with himself, which was why Todd ran there. - The Incredible Melting Man was intended to be a spoof of 1950s monster movies, but the executives insisted that the director make it a straight horror movie. The result is that there are many odd scenes that clash horribly with the film's serious tone, which—along with the film's ridiculous title—are all holdovers of the original comedic premise. - Spider-Man: J. Jonah Jameson mentions that "Eddie" has been trying to photograph Spider-Man for weeks, referring to a version of Eddie Brock played by R.C. Everbeck whose scene was cut from the film. Eddie Brock would later appear in Spider-Man 3, played by Topher Grace. - The Lord of the Rings: - In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Faramir's lines "A chance for Faramir, captain of Gondor, to prove his quality," and "Tell him I send a mighty gift" were supposed to be Meaningful Echos of what his father Denethor says to him earlier, in Osgiliath. The scene in Osgiliath was deleted, though it can be found in the Extended Version of the film. Granted, in the book, Faramir did say the first line at about the same point in the story, and Denethor did refer to the Ring as "a mighty gift" that Boromir would not have let slip by in The Return of the King, so the references are merely demoted to "shout-outs to the source". - At one point in development, it was planned to have Sauron himself appear at the Black Gate, having regained his physical form, at which he would duel the surviving members of the Fellowship. Ultimately, this was discarded (and fairly late in production, to the point that it was already shot and ended up being repurposed into a battle with a troll-chief), but some scenes that seem to have been intended as foreshadowing stick around. For instance, Saruman at one point claims that Sauron "cannot yet take physical form" (which carries the implication that he'll be able to do so soon enough), and there's a scene in the extended cut where Aragorn confronts Sauron through the palantir that shows a clearly physical Sauron (albeit in the form of stock footage). - One paying attention during the scenes of the elves joining the defense in The Two Towers that Haldir claims to be bringing word from Elrond, yet the army appears to be made up of elves from Lothlorien, which is hundreds of miles away from Elrond's lands. Shouldn't he be bringing word from Galadriel, his actual leader? This is orphaned from an earlier cut where Arwen (who, being Elrond's daughter, would be in a fine position to bring word from him) would also be present at the battle and bringing elves, but the whole idea tested very poorly and Arwen's scenes were cut. This is also likely the reason for why the elves seem to vanish from the battle after Haldir's death. - National Lampoon's Vacation was intended to take place at Disneyland, but Disney rejected the filming request and thus the fictional Wally World was created, represented by Six Flags Magic Mountain. This may explain why a reference to "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" remained in the final cut during Clark Griswold's determined tirade after wrecking the car. - The film adaptation of John Dies at the End faithfully adapts the gag that the novel opens with, in which Dave breaks an axe, replaces the head, then asks the audience if it still qualifies as the same axe. While the joke still works well enough on it's own, it's also rendered meaningless because the film cuts out the whole subplot and big reveal that the joke was foreshadowing in the novel; \|\|the Big Bad and his minions are creating monstrous clones of people that Kill and Replace the originals and Dave is one such clone, having murdered and impersonated the real Dave before the story began, but he is pretty much doing what the real one would have because the cloning is so accurate that Monster Dave Copied the Morals, Too.\|\| - Super Mario Bros. (1993): The film has a minor Running Gag of the Big Bad Koopa attempting to order a pizza, but he never gets it in the end. Many viewers were confused what the point of the whole thing was, but it was because originally it would've ended with the pizza finally arriving \|\|after Koopa had been defeated and devolved into primordial ooze, with the delivery boy tossing the pizza box onto the slime puddle\|\|, but the punchline was cut in post-production. - Jurassic Park: - Jurassic Park (1993): The neck frill of the Dilophosaurus (a made-up invention of the films, which was neither present in the novel, nor known from any real dinosaur) apparently came about from a discussion between art director Rick Carter and concept artist John Gurche about a scene where two male Dilophosaurus use some sort of fleshy display structure to intimidate one another, which would set up a later scene where Dr. Grant scares off a Dilophosaurus with a colourful umbrella that resembles the display structure. The scene never made it past brainstorming, but the anatomical feature made it into the final film. - The Lost World: Jurassic Park: When the protagonists rescue the baby T. rex from the hunters' trap, it inexplicably has a broken leg. This is left unexplained in the movie, but a deleted scene showed that it got this injury after Ludlow tripped and accidentally fell on it while drunk. This was originally meant to set up the Karmic Injury at the end, when \|\|Ludlow has his leg broken by the Tyrannosaurus buck to soften him up for the baby to kill him\|\|. - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: The Arcadia ship manifest lists Pachyrhinosaurus as one of the dinosaurs onboard, despite this genus never appearing in any movies. This is because the new ceratopsid in the movie, Sinoceratops, was originally meant to be Pachyrhinosaurus, as the latter's name is repeatedly referenced in production notes and concept art, the early merchandise depicts Sinoceratops with a nose boss rather than a horn, and its hole-in-frill design is obviously influenced by the Pachyrhinosaurus main character in Walking with Dinosaurs. note : Although in that movie it was individual-specific and the result of an injury, while in Fallen Kingdom, it's a naturally-occurring feature of the entire species. It was changed after the first trailer for the movie released, presumably because fans complained about how it didn't look much like Pachyrhinosaurus (the design has a large nose horn despite the fact Pachyrhinosaurus is most well-known for not having a horn on its nose, hence its name "thick-nosed lizard"). - "Is this something you could share with the rest of us, Amazing Larry?!" This sudden, bizarre appearance of some random older guy with a mohawk in Pee-wee's Big Adventure was supposed to be a Brick Joke. The setup was that Amazing Larry is a magician friend of Pee-wee's that he ran into at the magic shop, who asked Pee-wee for some style tips to help liven up his act. That scene was cut out, but the eventual payoff of him deciding on a loud suit and ridiculous, multi-colored mohawk was left in. - The first Guardians of the Galaxy film includes a brief moment late in the film where Drax refers to Gamora as a "green whore", much to her annoyance. As revealed in a deleted scene, this was supposed to refer back to an earlier moment where Drax hears one of the other inmates in the Kyln calling Gamora a whore, and (being Literal-Minded) doesn't understand that it's a pejorative term—leading him to assume that Gamora is actually a sex worker. In the final version, it just makes him look like a misogynistic jerk. - In the original Igdoof comics that Diary of a Wimpy Kid is based on, Igdoof draws a comic called "Remedial Ralph", in which his roommate Ralph is depicted as an absurdly overweight idiot. Most Remedial Ralph jokes made it into the main series as Greg's "Creighton the Cretin" comic, but the "The Boy Whose Family Thinks He's a Dog" scene in Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules scene is re-used verbatim. This includes the scene where Ralph/Rowley says that he's not pregnant but just has "a slight weight problem". Rowley is drawn the same way as the book's regular art style, making the joke somewhat lost. - The 2012 edition of The Discworld Companion contains a version of Dr. Andrew Millard and Prof. Terry Tao's rules for Cripple Mr Onion, with a note that this was intended to tie in with an official Caroc deck. As of 2021, there is no official Caroc deck. - Dracula essentially created a part of vampire lore as a result of this. In Bram Stoker's earlier drafts, one of Dracula's abilities was that he couldn't be shown by any method apart from looking at him straight-on: he could not appear in photographs (they either come out black or depicting a rotting corpse), and any attempt to paint him never gets his appearance right, usually depicting entirely the wrong person. However, most scenes involving this were cut (presumably, they would have involved the camera Jonathan is mentioned to own), and the only one left over ended up being the revelation that he cannot cast a reflection. - An interesting example happened with an issue of People magazine where Betty White was interviewed concerning her 100th birthday. Said issue wound up being released on the day she passed away. - The Fathom Event that was held to celebrate her 100th birthday averted this trope. The title was changed from Betty White: 100 Years Young A Birthday Celebration to Betty White: A Celebration to reflect the fact that she had died. - A Woman's World magazine that was published on January 17, 2022 also featured a piece on Betty White turning 100. - In The Lord of the Rings, there's an anomaly when Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin first leave the Shire on their quest to Rivendell. They need just one pony apiece to ride, plus a fifth to haul their luggage—yet the narration states they have six ponies prepared. This was a leftover from an earlier draft where Frodo's other friend Fredegar "Fatty" Bolger accompanied him on the journey as well, making for a party of five. In the published novel, Fatty Bolger instead stays behind to manage Frodo's affairs and cover for his absence—yet the number of ponies wasn't corrected to five until the 50th Anniversary Edition of LOTR in 1999. - American Horror Story: Murder House: In the second episode, Constance Langdon mentions having four children but is then only seen with three (Tate, Adelaide and Beauregard) with no further mention of a fourth sibling. The line was a holdover foreshadowing an albino man who was eventually axed in production. This was eventually resolved years later in American Horror Story: Apocalypse where the missing child is instead revealed to be an eyeless girl named Rose. - Angel: In "A Hole in the World", Angel is having a phone conversation with Giles, trying to get a hold of Willow to help solve the Fred/Illyria problem. Before the show was cancelled, Willow was planned to show up in Season 6 to help separate Fred and Illyria's souls. - Better Call Saul: Midway through the fifth season, it's revealed through crime scene pictures and a witness that Mike tracks down that Lalo had burned down the Travel Wire after he killed Fred Whalen, the innocent clerk, in the season 4 finale. Lalo setting the fire wasn't shown in the season 4 finale when it aired, but the footage was filmed and can be seen in the deleted scenes. - Charmed's fifth season premiere has Phoebe and Cole mutually agreeing that their relationship is over - which is very inconsistent with Cole's attempts to win her back for the rest of his time on the show. This is because the episode was going to start an arc with Cole falling in love with Paige instead. When both actors protested the storyline, it was dropped. - When the first few hour-long episodes of Cheap Seats were cut down to a half-hour, a few references and jokes were left orphaned. Example: in the "Superdogs/Superjocks" episode, there was a warning in "What 2 Look 4" for an obscene number of dog-puns. The subsequent edits chopped out the majority of them. (there were still some groaners, but not enough to justify a warning.) - Chernobyl: In the early minutes of the disaster, Dyatlov mentions that he's "seen worse" but the show never follows upon. Another episode was going to reveal that he had survived a nuclear accident two decades prior, but the relevant scene was cut. - The penultimate fight in Season 3 of Cobra Kai was intended to be at the Myagi-Do dojo, but was changed to the Larusso house at the last minute. If the former location had been chosen, it would explain how the Cobra Kai students knew at least a good portion of Myagi-Do would be there, and thus why the entire dojo went to a place where they could only anticipate Sam and possibly Miguel being. A dojo is less sacrosanct than a place of residence, and Hawk and some of the other Cobra Kai's had also previously vandalized it (so invading it wasn't unprecedented,) but but in the finished product, Tory and the Cobra Kais, many of whom are new recruits, seem horrifyingly eager to to to brutalize and possibly kill Sam in her own house because of Tory's vendetta. A break in at a garden-dojo with short fences and likely no security system is also a less serious offense and harder to prove than a balatant break-and-enter in a modern upper-class home, so Daniel would seem far less stupid for deciding to confront Kreese on his own, then accepting the challenge and word of a man who'd just seemingly crossed the Moral Event Horizon, rather than calling the police and getting all of Cobra Kai sent to juvie. - Doctor Who: - Dialogue in "The Macra Terror" refers to the Macra as being "insects", having apparently not been rewritten when they were changed to giant crabs (or in a couple of cases rewritten as "an insect like a crab"). Parodied in Doctor Who Magazine's "Blogs of Doom" feature, in which the Pilot says that Medok's claim he saw a giant insect that looked exactly like a crab is perhaps less likely than that he saw a giant crab. (Although he didn't see that either, obviously.) - In the first episode of "State of Decay", the peasants greatly fear something called "The Wasting", which they all refuse to explain what it is.... and then it's never brought up again for the rest of the serial. It was apparently a holdover from an earlier version of the story. - In "Castrovalva", the newly-regenerated Fifth Doctor mentions sensing an malevolent presence at the center of the Tardis. This would've been followed up on later in the season, but the planned story ("The Enemy Within" by Christopher Priest) got dropped, leaving the reference sticking out as an odd aside. - In "Survival", when his motorcycle duel with Midge takes place, the Doctor is survives because he is thrown clear of the collision and lands on a pile of rubbish, including an old sofa. As scripted, the duel was meant to take place on a building site or near a disused block of flats, but filming ended up taking place in a wide open field, making the rubbish pile totally inexplicable in the episode as broadcast. - Robert Shearman has stated that the reference to Van Statten's birthday at the start of "Dalek" was supposed to be set up for an ultimately cut plot thread that the Dalek had been tortured just to make it say "Happy Birthday" to Van Statten. - In "The Doctor Dances", when Captain Jack arrives at the climax, the Doctor shouts to him "Change of plan!", but they never actually made a plan. In the script book, Steven Moffat explains that the plan was in an earlier draft of the script and got cut because it was slowing the episode down. - From the same episode, the exchange between the Doctor and Rose near the end of the episode (Rose: "Look at you, beaming away like you're Father Christmas!" Doctor: "Who says I'm not, red-bicycle-when-you-were-twelve?" Rose: "What.") is the remnant of a dropped storyline that would've revealed that the Doctor had been secretly using time travel to alter Rose's life in order to mold her into the perfect companion. - In "The Eleventh Hour", the Eleventh Doctor suddenly takes an interest in a duck pond, noting that there aren't any ducks. This was supposed to set up a Brick Joke in the series finale where, as the Doctor, Amy, and Rory take off in the Tardis, the duck pond would've been shown again—this time with ducks, implying that they'd been removed from history by the cracks in time. This got cut after the scene was moved to Amy's garden. - In "Twice Upon a Time", during the Twelfth Doctor's speech for his future self, he tells them to "never ever eat pears". This is a reference to "Human Nature", where the Tenth Doctor leaves a list of instructions behind for Martha to follow to make sure his human self doesn't do something bad, including a very passionate speech about how much he hates pears and to never let him eat one. The only problem being that this speech was never audible in the final episode, and ended up in the fast-forwarded bit. This is a bit of an edge case, though, since "Human Nature" aired years before "Twice Upon a Time" was written, and so the reference was already "orphaned" even before it was written. The writers may have intended it as a Mythology Gag, since the full cut of Ten's "pears" speech has become quite popular online, and originally came from the much shorter list in the Doctor Who New Adventures version of Human Nature. - Firefly: Inara's syringe in the pilot and her comment in "Out of Gas" about not wanting to die at all were meant to hint at her having a terminal illness, which would have been revealed had the show not been cancelled. It was eventually addressed in the novel "Life Signs". - Friends. In "The One With the Kissing" there was a scene where Joey tries to imitate Chandler's "European Greeting" on Monica, the scene was cut but later a scene in the episode had Monica get locked out of the apartment and Joey told her he'd "Knock down the door if she gave him some sugar". Feeling very random and out of nowhere. - Game of Thrones: - Season 1 features a cameo for Jeyne Poole and a couple of lines alluding to her. She gets a big role in the book A Storm of Swords where Littlefinger passes her off as Arya and marries her to Ramsay Bolton. By the time the show came around to adapting this plot, the writers had decided to give the story to Sansa instead, and thus this Early-Bird Cameo amounts to nothing. - In Prince Oberyn's first appearances, he writes a poem for his daughter Elia and tells Cersei he has eight bastard daughters. This is true in the books, but when the show introduced the Sand Snakes next season, they only used the three eldest (Obara, Nymeria and Tyene). Tyene is also combined with Elia, who never appears in the series. - Parodied in Garth Marenghis Darkplace. The theme song of the Show Within a Show includes an inexplicable clip of the protagonist running away from an exploding ambulance while cradling a baby. We never see any sort of context for it, until one of the interview segments reveals that Garth somehow managed to blow the budget for an entire episode on that one shot, forcing the crew to cut the episode. - The Haunting of Hill House originally had the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue \|\|revealed as just another illusion created by the Red Room - showing that they were all still in the house.\|\| This explains why the sequence is a lot more sentimental than the show is known for. - After Season 4 of Lucifer (2016) was cancelled, two episodes from it which had already been filmed were aired as "specials". Eventually, a different Season 4 was produced by Netflix, which rendered the placement of these two specials as post-Season 3 untenable; Word of God gave both fo them new official places in the timeline, prior to the finale of Season 3. This causes an issue with a beat in Boo Normal: when Ella asks Chloe if she deems Ella "crazy" for her claims that she can see a ghost, Chloe denies it and explains that she's seen "much, much crazier things". This was clearly scripted as a reference to her having found out about Lucifer's true nature in the Season 3 finale. If the episode takes place in Season 3, i.e. before Chloe gets conclusive proof of the supernatural, it's not clear what she might be referring to or why she's so accepting of Ella, possibly giving the unfortunate impression that she doesn't believe Ella and is patronisingly humoring her delusion. - Once Upon a Time: - Season 1's "Skin Deep" has a flashback to Regina walking into Rumpelstiltskin's castle saying she has a problem with a certain mermaid. This is because Ariel was down in the plans to show up in Season 2, but had her debut pushed back to Season 3. In Ariel's actual episode, her flashback doesn't involve Rumple at all. - Another Season 1 episode "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree" mentions that the genie is from Agrabah, which was meant to be Foreshadowing to Aladdin's planned debut in Season 2. Like Ariel, he was pushed back and didn't show up until Season 6! - The Season 5 "Broken Heart" has a flashback where Snow White sends Lancelot to get help from his mother, who is the Lady of the Lake - and Lancelot's debut episode was indeed titled "Lady of the Lake". He's never seen again. There was a deleted scene showing him seeing the Dark Curse being cast from far away, but be powerless to help anyone. The next episode cut all scenes resolving the Camelot arc, and it went in a different direction in the second half of the season. - The producer's cut of the Parks and Recreation episode "Halloween Surprise" includes a scene where Chris recommends that Ann try "dating herself" instead of getting involved with any more men, but this was cut from the aired version. In the next episode, "Ben's Parents", Ann mentions that she can't date Chris because she is dating herself. Although she explains what she means, it comes slightly out of nowhere. - Person of Interest: In "Aletheia", when Finch tells Shaw to plan an escape route like Reese would, he says, "As you've said, you're a hammer." Shaw did refer to herself as a hammer, back in "Liberty"...or at least, in its trailer. - Red Dwarf: The name of the spaceship the Dwarfers discover in the eponymous "Trojan" was meant to be foreshadowing for a later episode which would have revealed a monster on board the Trojan had stowed away on Red Dwarf, which ended up not getting produced. - Sabrina the Teenage Witch's "When Teens Collide" is about molecular instability causing things to go haywire in the Spellman house - including the sofa sucking in anyone who sits on it, and a black hole opening in the kitchen sink. When Hilda references these things, she mentions keeping their guests "out of the chair" - referencing another case of molecular instability that was presumably cut for time. - The Sarah Jane Adventures: In "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?", Maria is wiped from time and only Alan remembers her. Chrissie pays Alan a visit after time has been altered and tells him they never had a daughter. Alan protests that Chrissie was at their house earlier and saw Maria. This refers to a cut scene earlier in the serial where Chrissie does indeed visit the house and sees Maria. - Seinfeld: At the end of "The Frogger", Kramer tries to block off the street so that George can move the Frogger machine to the other side, but runs out of police tape. This is part of a cut storyline where Kramer uses the police tape to attempt to woo a woman. - Star Trek: The Next Generation: At the end of "Relics", as Scotty prepares to depart, Troi gives him a kiss on the cheek, which seems odd as she's had virtually no interaction with him. However, there was originally a scene between them earlier in the episode, in which she tried to draw him out but he reacted poorly when he realized she was a therapist. - This can occasionally happen on Wheel of Fortune, of all shows. Typically, the producers will edit out a cycle of turns if it doesn't affect the score or the puzzle (for instance, if all three players consecutively call wrong letters, hit Lose a Turn, and/or hit Bankrupt when they have nothing that they can lose to it). In some instances, host Pat Sajak has made reference to such turns most often in the form of telling a player that a letter was already called, when the first such instance was edited out; saying that a player hit Bankrupt X amount of times; or making some comment conducive to finally uncovering a letter after several wrong ones were called, even though the home viewer only saw one or two at best. - One episode of Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger has a Callback to a deleted scene from The Movie. Apparently someone didn't get the message that that scene would be important later on. - In The Bible: - St. Paul refers approvingly to a work called the Book of Enoch, which he recommends to true believers as an edifying work of faith and religion which can only deepen the reader's understanding of the ways of God and His working in the world. In context, Enoch was a prophet of old Israel - there are several stray references to him in the Old Testament as one of the mighty prophets of old who was righteous in the sight of G-d and who is seen as in the next tier down from Abraham and Moses. But go to the Old Testament to look for the book which St. Paul all but says is indispensable to an understanding of faith...not a trace. Not there. Just these orphaned references to a lost prophet and a lost book of the Bible. Luckily the Ethiopian church kept some copies around (originally dismissed as fakes but confirmed as genuine when fragments were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls) so it's widely available now, although most churches don't consider it canon. - There is the lost "Book of Jasher", which is mentioned in Joshua 10:13, which talks about a time when the sun stayed up longer than usual and ends with "Is it not written in the Book Of Jasher"? as a rhetorical question, implying said book would be well-known to the original audience (the ancient Israelites). Alas, nothing of the book has been found, other than what is almost certainly a forgery. - In Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes several times quote and borrow elements from a set of three short stories: Broadalbin, Ambrose, and Sosostris, all written by Delta Green co-creator and lead writer Jonh Scott Tynes. The problem is, those three stories were published in a very limited run back in the 90s and reprinted to a few obscure anthology books and magazines. The Delta Green: The Conspiracy kickstater finally financed the re-release of those stories so fans won't be lost on the references. - BattleTech: - Fans were left scratching their heads over the Liberator, a mysterious 40-ton 'Mech that showed up in the assignment tables in early sourcebooks, most notably the first edition printing of the Mechwarrior RPG. Unlike all the other 'Mechs that appeared in the source books, no reference sheet for the machine ever existed, nor could anyone actually place where the thing came from. Some argued that it was meant to be an early version of the Sentinel, but the Sentinel did not appear in any form until nearly 3 years later. Someone on the design team caught on to this mystery 'Mech and finally gave it an identity after twenty-seven years: the Liberator ended up being a Flawed Prototype that suffered from such devastating Overheating problems that it violently exploded from an ammunition rack detonation within a minute of firing its weapons in earnest. - The entry for the Vixen in Technical Readout: 3055 mentioned a mech called the Matador, another mech that fans were left scratching their heads about. There would eventually be a mech named the Matador released seven years later in Technical Readout: 3060, but Word of God from one of the writers would eventually reveal that "Matador" had originally been the name used for the mech that was labeled the Phoenix Hawk IIC in Technical Readout: 3055 and the reference had been missed after the name was changed. - The Margaret Weis Marvel Heroic Roleplaying books mention certain characters as being included in supplements that either only existed briefly in PDF format (Professor X in Civil War: X-men Supplement), or never appeared at all (Black Bolt in Annihilation: War of Kings). - The Mutants & Masterminds Second Edition Silver Age book has a reference to a Supervillain's Handbook that never materialized. According to Steve Kenson, most of the material got turned into the 3E Gamemaster's Guide instead. - The Avalon sourcebook for 7th Sea has a Destiny Spread that grants the character a "1 Point Druidic Secrets Advantage." But Druidic Secrets didn't make it to the printed book. - The Second Edition Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Imperial Guard made reference to allying with units from Codex: Squats. The Squat race were an embarrassment that Games Workshop struggled to make work, and were unceremoniously removed from the setting with their planned codex canned just after the Imperial Guard codex came out in print. Something similar happened in fifth edition; Ultramarines (and no other Imperial armies) had a rule that they could ally with Tau to the same degree as with other Imperial armies. GW never did really explain what that was supposed to be about. Creators: - William Shakespeare had to deal with it (or at least his literary executors did): In the First Folio there are various references to things which were changed from the original "final" texts. For example in Henry IV there's a reference to Oldcastle in the stage directions, which is the name Falstaff first had until some descendants of the real Oldcastle complained. There's also a punny line that only works with the name Oldcastle. - There is also Hamlet's "I am but mad north-northwest. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw". No-one today has any clue what he is referencing, but scholars figure that it references something common in the 1600s that has been lost to time. - In The Merry Wives of Windsor, the Host of the Garter Inn repeatedly references a subplot about three German guests at his Inn. These German characters are never seen in the play, but oddly enough, they eventually steal the Host's horses, thus providing poetic justice for the Host's earlier pranks on Caius and Evans. This detail is so odd that it is only reasonable to assume that some material was cut. Either these Germans befriended Caius and Evans, or, as many scholars theorize, they were simply Caius, Evans, and perhaps Bardolph in disguise. Works: - In "Wonderful Music" from 110 in the Shade, Lizzie ecstatically sings, "Now I'm no longer alone" on a soaring phrase that seems to have been inserted to cover a modulation. In fact, it derives from one of the show's many Cut Songs, File's "Why Can't They Leave Me Alone?" - Usually, Anne of Green Gables has Matthew sing a song called "The Words," which is reprised by his sister Marilla near the end. However, an alternate song is provided with the book for amateur productions to use as needed if they want to buy more time for a wig swap for Anne in the next scene. Productions that use "When I Say My Say" instead of "The Words" often keep the latter's reprise intact without any context to what it's supposed to be alluding to. - Trekkie Monster from Avenue Q was originally a Trekkie but this was changed to avoid copyright problems. The name remained unchanged. - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had a scene deleted after the show had been up and running for a while that resulted in this. Willy Wonka's introductory song "It Must Be Believed to Be Seen" has the lyrics "Beyond this door's a factory/Begat from just a bean". Originally, the phrase "just a bean" — referring to the humble cacao bean that serves as the first ingredient in chocolate — turned up in the Opening Narration of the animated prologue "Creation Overture", so the lyric was a Meaningful Echo further strengthened by the audience realizing that the offscreen narrator was actually Mr. Wonka. "Creation Overture" was cut when the show had its first major cast change, so the echo is now lost. - Frozen (2018) - The melody of the Adapted Out opening number "Frozen Heart" can be heard as background music in several instances, notably during the new opener "Let The Sun Shine On" when Queen Iduna warns Elsa against using her ice magic in public. Said number also incorporates Elsa and Anna's "One two three together, clap together, snap together" chant from the Cut Song "We Know Better". - "True Love" was cut from later productions but its lyrics and melody are still heavily referenced in Reprise Medley song "Colder by the Minute". - In Fun Home, Alison's line in "Telephone Wire," "I really tried to deny my feelings for girls," is meant as an echo of an earlier song that was omitted from the Broadway version and its soundtrack. - In Gypsy, while most of the music and lyrics of "Rose's Turn" are based on or allude to earlier numbers, the "Momma's talking loud" section is a reference to the Cut Song "Momma's Talkin' Soft". - Jasper in Deadland originally had a song called "Agnes", involving Jasper singing about his best friend Agnes and why she was so important to him. The song was eventually cut and replaced with "The Killing", however the much later song "Lifesong" suddenly plays the same melody with similar lyrics when it mentions Agnes. - In the second act of Lady in the Dark, Liza picks up a book on astrology Allison had left for her, and starts hearing voices mocking her: "Astrology! The stars! And you're clutching at it! Helplessly! You're clutching at anything!" The third Dream Sequence soon ensues, and Liza was originally to have defended her indecisions in a Western Zodiac-themed Cut Song. - In the finale of Little Shop of Horrors, Audrey and Seymour (now part of the plant) sing, "We'll have tomorrow!" This was the title of a Cut Song. - Madama Butterfly has a modulating theme heard at two different points in the Intermezzo, which derives from a usually-cut portion of the love duet where Butterfly sings it to the Italian lyrics: "Ma, vi dico in verità, a tutta prima le propose invano." - In the final number of My Fair Lady, most of the patter section (starting with "I can see her now...") is a Dark Reprise of a section of Higgins' first-act Pep-Talk Song, "Come To the Ball" ("I can see you now..."). The song was cut during tryouts due to overlength, but the reprise worked well enough on its own and remained. - In On the Town, the verse to "Lonely Town" begins with Gabey singing, "Gabey's comin', Gabey's comin' to town." Both the words and the tune of this were an ironic Call-Back to a song cut from the original Broadway production, though later productions have frequently reinstated it. - The Ring of the Nibelung: Drafts of The Young Siegfried had Alberich bringing a horde of Nibelungs with him to claim the Ring after Fafner's death, and Siegfried, once he emerges from the cave with the Ring, using its power to order the Nibelungs to disperse (as Alberich does in Das Rheingold). Wagner ultimately decided not to include a Nibelung ensemble in Siegfried, but this helps explain Hagen's otherwise mysterious explanation in Götterdämmerung that the Nibelungs have become slaves to Siegfried. - Ruddigore: Originally in the second act, Old Adam was to have changed his name to Gideon Crawle when he turned evil along with his master. This change of name was undone, but one reference to Gideon Crawle inexplicably remained. - Due to time constraints, many stage productions of Sweeney Todd cut the second part of the contest scene between Todd and Pirelli, where they compete to pull a person's tooth quickly and cleanly. However, few if any productions alter Todd's line before the contest, that he "can shave a cheek and pull a tooth with ten times more dexterity" than Pirelli. Or even Pirelli's singing "To shave-a the face/to pull-a the toot." - In Vanities; The Musical, the intro melody of "Fly Into the Future" is a vestige of the cut song "Nothing Like a Friend". Likewise, the coda of "Looking Good" from the Off-Broadway production and cast album has the line "Hey there, beautiful", the title of another cut song. - Wicked: - One Cut Song was called "I Hope You're Happy". "Defying Gravity" contains references to the song at the start and end with the "I hope you're happy!/I hope you're happy now!" lines. - A deleted song, "Making Good", is referenced by Madame Morrible in the intro of "The Wizard and I", the song that replaced it. - The line "We deserve each other" in "Dancing Through Life" is a leftover reference to its precursor, "Which Way is the Party?". - To this day, Disney's Animal Kingdom contains several references to Beastly Kingdom - an area in the park that was going to be themed around mythical animals, but was scrapped at the last minute. References to this area include a "Unicorn" section in the parking lot, a dragon silhouette appearing in the park's logo, a stone dragon head on the entry gates, a dragon-shaped fountain that can be seen from the bridge to Pandora The World of Avatar, and lastly a dragon cave that can be viewed along the long boardwalk from Pandora to Africa. - In E.T. Adventure at Universal Studios, Bontanicus tells the guests to bring E.T. home with either a spaceship or their bikes. When the attraction first opened, there was a special vehicle for disabled guests that resembled E.T.'s mothership, which is what Bontanicus is referring to when he says "spaceship". For unknown reasons, the special vehicles were taken out at some point note : There's still vehicles that disabled guests can use, they just look like bikes now., leaving this part of his holographic distress call a bit of a headscratcher. - The queue music for Splash Mountain includes an instrumental version of "Sooner or Later", the Cut Song that was replaced by "Burrow's Lament". - The name of The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash was a bit more relevant earlier in the design process, when it was originally envisioned as a trackless dark ride. It was changed to a tracked design later, making the "Off the Leash" part lose its meaning as a pun. - In the original release version of A Hat in Time, the Mafia Boss's pre-fight dialogue included a line about how he hadn't seen a Time Piece in over a hundred years, an odd detail that was never brought up again and raised more questions than it answered. This was likely a leftover from the game's scrapped Time Travel mechanics — the player would have originally been able to visit the game's stages across different time periods, including a version of Mafia Town in the distant past. Without that context, the line no longer made sense and so was quickly patched out. - The Binding of Isaac: - Lil Dumpy debuted in the Antibirth Game Mod as a friendly version of the Dumpling enemies that the mod also added. When Antibirth was officially ported into the main game with Repentance, Lil Dumpy was added but the Dumpling enemies were cut, leaving the reference stranded. - Antibirth added an item called Jacob's Ladder, a reference to the Biblical story of Jacob seeing a ladder that leads to Heaven. However, Afterbirth+ already added an item called Jacob's Ladder, based on the electric phenomenon. The Antibirth one was renamed The Stairway when it was ported, but the sprite is still obviously a ladder and it's still unlocked by playing as Jacob & Esau. - In BioShock, the crawlspace behind a stall in the Farmer's Market contains two corpses hanging on meathooks. This was supposed to relate to a plot about a serial killer operating around the time of Rapture's fall that never went anywhere. - Child of Light's map includes the Isle of Nereida, which was supposedly planned to be the location of the Very Definitely Final Dungeon, but was left out of gameplay due to the game being Christmas Rushed. In the released game, following the battle with Nox in the Palace of the Sun beneath the Cynbel Sea and Aurora's death/resurrection cutscene, the party goes straight to fighting the Final Boss Umbra in some sort of airborne castle ruin. - Dawn of War: In the first game, stealth units couldn't attack while hiding, and could be detected by squad leader units along with minefields (as the tooltips said). In the second expansion (Dark Crusade), stealth units can attack invisibly, but there are only a few units capable of detecting them (and few commanders among them), but the tooltips still say heroes and commanders can detect stealth units and minefields. - Deltarune: - In Chapter 2, Berdly's first boss fight takes place on a roller coaster. If you use the Bump command, the text says "[member] will attempt to bump into Berdly's car!", and they hit his car. This act can never fail or miss, and there are no obstacles, despite the wording of "attempt" making it seem as though it won't always work. The game has unused graphics and code for randomly-spawning obstacles on the track that the characters would ram into instead of Berdly, which aren't in the final version. - After defeating Spamton NEO, Susie mentions something about seeing weird "hands" during the fight. An unused attack actually featured hands coming up from the sides of the screen. - Destiny and Destiny 2: The lore includes periodic mentions of a location known as "Cassini" or "the First Fleet", which is apparently the wrecks of a bunch of ancient, Pre-Collapse colonial vessels in the rings of Saturn that got wrecked while trying to flee the Collapse and have been there ever since. These sparse mentions of them are all we ever get and the only evidence they even exist because Cassini was originally one the areas the player was able to visit before it got cut during production. - In Deus Ex, three in-game newspapers (written by in-universe publisher APR) refer to a place called the "Zhou Enlai Lunar Mining Complex," which is detailed as a place that was fully-staffed and running normally... until an unspecified incident onboard the station led to one of its payloads crashing back to Earth, killing 2,000 people in the Nigerian city of Ibadan. The newspapers are the only reference to an unimplemented "moon" mission, which would have seen lead character JC Denton travel to the complex to face off against a hostile AI named "ADA". This was initially intended to be the last mission of the game, but was cut prior to beta versions, though elements of it remain in the game — notably, enough evidence exists to state that the Ocean Lab level is a repurposed "moon" stage, now set underwater instead of within a crater, as the outside of the facility shows. - In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you were originally going to have the options to kill or spare some of the main bosses of the storyline, but this feature was ultimately dropped. Despite this, at the end of the fight with Yelena, she's still alive for a bit and a character asks Adam if he's going to try to resuscitate her, and he says he'll think about it... and then the cutscene ends with her already dead. - Disco Elysium: - The stripy yellow and blue background to the Detective's portrait was the pattern of his tie in his first revealed design, from before it was reimagined as the paisley, potentially animate Horrific Necktie. - The Detective is noted at several points to have heavily scarred hands, but no explanation is given for them (other than that some of it is nicotine damage). A Dummied Out piece of Visual Calculus in the first release of the game is the only explanation for them: Perception (Sight) - But the most vicious mark hides inside your weaker hand, as you open your palms — a scar on the left covers your life line, its contour so freakishly pale. Visual Calculus (Medium 10) - It could be a defensive wound, i.e. from grabbing a knife. - There's a running theme of the Detective noticing unsafe buildings around him, such the high Visual Calculus check on the wooden bridge towards Rue de Saint Ghislane, and the Perception orb warning about the crumbling arch on the rooftop accessible through Cuno's hideout. The Dummied Out Ledger case file "THE COLLAPSING TENEMENT" reveals that members of the RCM are required to take a 'civic specification' in order to round out their skillset, and the Detective's was building safety regulations, explaining why he's so knowledgeable about these. - At the end of the game, when Kim describes your behaviour to Jean, he will tell him you haven't been drinking in the past week if you either 1) have not used alcohol ever in the game, or 2) have the Thought "Wasteland of Reality" internalised - even if you had used alcohol before (or even after) you did that. Considering the level of Developer's Foresight in play, this seems like a weird inconsistency. This is because, earlier in development, the "Wasteland of Reality" Thought would be gained if the player did not drink in the first two days of the game, then agreed with Endurance to carry on being sober - so it wouldn't have been possible to have internalised the "Wasteland of Reality" thought if you had used alcohol. In the finished game, "Wasteland of Reality" is earned by agreeing with one of two NPC characters that you need to quit drinking, which is more forgiving to players who wanted to experiment with alcohol before discarding it, but also means Kim's line is a seemingly out-of-character lie. - A more detailed summary of the story of "Sixteen Days in Coldest April" (and therefore the history on the Yugo-Graad riots) is only available when looking at the jacket of the book in a Dummied Out scenario where the book is purchased at the bookshop than in the scene where you, er, actually read the agonising, enervating book. - When looking at the pile of books in the island fortress, there's a surprisingly tricky check to determine what of any interest is in them, and the check's result isn't anything particularly interesting (all it allows you to determine is that there's a lot of academic theory books from Communist presses). At some point the check would have allowed you to find and take a book to actually read ("Un Pays Infernal") which would have given you a Communism point if you read it, not that your character can make any sense of it. This was cut (possibly making inventory assets for the book was too much?), making the check a bit anticlimactic. note : There were also similar books which would have changed your political affiliation, such as "World Domination Through Consecration" and "The 'Great Ideas' of Mass Murderers Debunked", but nothing of these remains in the code other than references to them existing as actors. - In Driver, the music tracks "Los Angeles Day" and "Los Angeles Escape at Day" are never used for their intended purpose, as LA lacks a daytime setting in-game due to graphical limitations, though they still play during certain Undercover missions in the other cities. - In Duke Nukem 64: - The gun shop in the second level, which was originally a porno bookstore, still has a peep show in its back hall, albeit with more modestly dressed women. - The Alien Queen is Adapted Out, but her Protector Drones appear as "Alien Beasts" in a few levels. - The Elder Scrolls: - Morrowind has an Imperial Legion quest which is only partly removed. It is possible to have the dialogue options for the quest appear when speaking with the quest giver, but as the rest of the quest has been cut, you can never actually complete it. - Oblivion: - There's a quest hook that can be added to your list about the Black Horse Courier needing more staff. The quest itself was never added to the game. - There are also references scattered in odd places (a journal entry here, a sign there) of a town called Sutch, near Kvatch. Sutch never made it into the final game, but not all references of it were scrubbed before launch. - In Escape Velocity Nova, the Universe Chronology included in the bundled documentation mentioned something called TCTLIDS being discovered and used to create a Fantastic Drug called FATE. The game's FAQ reveals that TCTLIDS was supposed to stand for "The Creature That Lives In Deep Space" before being removed from the Nova universe during its development. - In Euro Truck Simulator 2, most cities contain a bus station you can enter and drive around. This is a very odd inclusion for a game about trucking; entering the bus stations are required to achieve 100% map exploration, but otherwise they have absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Their inclusion is a leftover from the original plans for the game; the intent after the game's release was that its map could be recycled to create an "Euro Coach Simulator", hence the inclusion of places you can park coaches. Since Euro Truck became a big Sleeper Hit however, SCS Software instead chose to focus on expanding the game and left the coach simulation in the dust, only very occasionally teasing the idea that they might eventually add coaches as DLC at some point. - EverQuest has a few odd examples: - In the Misty Thicket (the Halfling newbie area) there are several quests involving killing goblins and retrieving items from them. One Quest Giver says something about goblins using some kind of grappling hooks to scale the great wall that bisects the zone, and asks you to give him one if you find any. After more than two decades no one has found a device that matches what he describes, meaning it was likely Dummied Out and this line was left in by mistake - There is one quest where a character asks you for "bull elephant tusks". While bull elephants do exist in-game, there is no such item as "bull elephant tusks". However, mammoth tusks, in addition to being dropped by wooly mammoths, are also dropped by bull elephants, and players correctly inferred that that was what the Quest Giver really wanted. The text was later fixed so she asks for mammoth tusks instead. - In Fallout, a holodisk in the Glow details Forced Evolutionary Virus experiments on raccoons and mentions that two pairs escaped. This hints at the Tribe of the S'Lanter, intelligent mutated raccoons which were cut from the game. - Considering the sheer amount of content cut from Fallout: New Vegas, there are quite a few of these: - The developers created an elaborate series of symbols◊ based on actual "hobo code" that were to be placed on various walls of buildings and settlements, indicating whether an area was dangerous, was worth looting, had clean drinking water, etc., with the player presumably learning the meaning of the symbols somewhere in the game. For whatever reason, the "hobo code" system was cut, but not before someone on the dev team placed a large "Doctor here" symbol on the side of the New Vegas Clinic. - Besides Jane, Mr. House originally had another female-programmed private Securitron named Marilyn based on Marilyn Monroe in the Lucky 38 penthouse, who was cut late in development due to issues with her voiceover. However, Veronica still says "I was surprised [House] only had the two robot sex slaves." Marilyn and Jane also both appear on the 2 of Diamonds card in the Collector's Edition card deck. - After killing the Fiend leader Driver Nephi, Bert Gunnarsson says he hopes his soul finds peace, even though the dialogue option where Bert talks about his past with Nephi was disabled. - One of Rotface's tips is "There's a guy out on the main drag who sells second hand adventuring gear. He's got an okay selection, but where does it come from?" which refers to a cut merchant in Freeside named Tom Dooley. - In Fe, singing near one of the stranded fish in the drained swamp brings up a song icon that doesn't match any of those that the titular protagonist learns, likely indicating a Dummied Out animal language. - The Final Fantasy III 3D remake had a large amount of cutscenes scrapped prior to the final release. While the game's light plot means that most of these aren't too noticeable, they do explain some things about the final game: - At one point, in response to Arc mentioning how he would like to ride on an airship again someday, Luneth mutters that he doesn't have too fond memories of their last ride. While the context makes it sound like Luneth is referring to earlier when the party crashed their airship, the unused text implies that it is instead a reference to how Luneth gets sick on airships, which would have been a Running Gag throughout the game. - After crashing Cid's airship, Luneth mentions that it feels like they've done it before, despite having never rode in an airship before. Later, Cid reveals that he and the party are actually from the surface world which was cut off by the darkness, after which that entire plot thread is practically dropped. Unused text suggests that it was meant to continue further, with Luneth getting deja vu from the Wrecked Ship and Ingus discovering his home town on the surface world, culminating in Luneth and Ingus privately discussing their vague memories of the airship ride later. - Paying close attention to the scenes with the Four Fellows shows Ingus interacting with them the most, both in Amur and in the sewers. This is because an earlier version of the arc had Ingus, fed up with the party's light-heartedness, go into the sewers alone, where the Fellows would serve as a contrast. - Towards the end of the game, One of the Warriors of The Dark makes a speech about how light used to exist around a core of darkness and now darkness exists around a core of light. In context this seems to refer to the Cloud of Darkness being a Yin-Yang Bomb. However, this is actually a reference to the backstory's Flood of Light, and describing how the Sun used to revolve around the Earth until it happened and reversed the relationship. This was primarily exposited by Doga and Desch, but the cuts mean that only a single reference from the latter, a mention on how the Floating Continent will be "flung away from the sun" if the Tower of Owen's reactor fails, survived. - Final Fantasy IX: - The optional Memoria boss Hades has a lot of eye imagery on his design - which resembles the motifs found in Terra and Memoria. This is left over from when Hades was planned to be the final boss, but he was replaced with Necron late in development. - Mt Gulug uses a remixed version of the theme of Gurgu Volcano from Final Fantasy. This is because Gurgu was mistranslated as 'Gulug'. - Final Fantasy XIV has a questline in which you can receive the Haurchefaunt emote which makes you do a huge grin. This was a behavior Haurchefaunt would do when he's excited to see the player character in a cutscene that was removed from non-Japanese versions to make him look less like the Chivalrous Pervert he was supposed to be. - Fire Emblem: - Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade has a line claiming that Lloyd's sword can drain the life from those he faces in both the Japanese and international versions. In the Japanese version, he has a Runesword, which does indeed have Life Drain properties, but the international release changed it to a Light Brand (likely to make the fight less annoying), which has no such properties. - Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn features a localization-only example. In a base conversation explaining the weapon forging system, the merchants mention selling unneeded weapons for scrap metal, and offer to not charge you for the materials of the first forged weapon you make. In the Japanese version, forging weapons required "forging points" in addition to gold, and these were obtained by selling weapons. The English version decided to remove the forging points mechanic entirely, but didn't alter this conversation. Similarly, the description of the Silver Card item (buy items at half price) says "Does not earn any Training Points" in the English version, which is a reference to an Obvious Rule Patch on the item in the Japanese version (otherwise you could get infinite forging points by buying a weapon, selling it, buying it again for the same price, repeat) that is meaningless with the system removed. - Fire Emblem: Three Houses - The Flame Emperor bears the Crest of Flames, but never puts it to practical use outside of its minor in-battle effect, its significance to the plot being only thematic. The developers revealed that in the original concept, they were supposed to be a direct rival to Byleth and could interfere with their Divine Pulse ability. - If any students fell in battle during Part 1 and the player chooses the Silver Snow route, at the start of Chapter 13 Edelgard will mention that some of her former classmates defected to her side. It was originally planned that any student defeated during Part 1 would become an enemy in Part 2 of Silver Snow, but this ended up being cut. - Forza Motorsport 4 Dummied Out Forza 3's Rally di Positano course, which was a 7.5-mile tarmac rally based on Amalfi Coast, but reassigned the Rally di Positano name to the normal Amalfi circuit for some reason. - Through no fault of the developers, this is now the case with Uber Jason and the spaceship Grendel being accessible in Virtual Cabin 2.0 of Friday the 13th: The Game. Because of a lawsuit surrounding the legal status of the franchise, all future expansions and content for the game have been cancelled, among them a stage based on Jason X and its particular incarnation of Jason. - In the original version of Freedom Planet's script, Carol and Milla didn't get along, and later Lilac commended them for agreeing on something for once. While the relationship was revised to be more cordial, Lilac's comment remained in the game, making no sense at all. A later patch removed this line as well. - In GoldenEye (1997), the briefing for the Frigate mission says that Xenia Onatopp is on the boat, but the player never encounters her here. - In Gran Turismo 5 and 6, the downloadable track Special Stage Route X has a strange infield course featuring cylindrical tunnels, half-pipes, banked turns, and spiral ramps that was unfortunately never implemented as a playable circuit, but is partially visible from the main oval (as well as in certain promotional videos) and has a number of leftover assets in the game's code, including a track map and a loading screenshot of the half-pipe section. In GT Sport, the visible portions of the unused infield are still modeled, complete with the "End of Cant" signs, though the other assets have since been removed. - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: - The mission "Doberman" was repurposed from a completely different mission that was cut, which would've seen Tenpenny ordering CJ to murder an informant named Poncho to prevent him from potentially talking to the DEA about C.R.A.S.H.'s corruption. This was changed to Sweet asking CJ to help kill a drug dealer who had been selling to the Grove Street Families. Two major aspects from the original mission remain despite now lacking their necessary context. First, the name "Doberman" references the original introductory cutscene, where Tenpenny gave it as a nickname for CJ. Second, after finding the drug dealer, he exclaims that Tenpenny set him up. This dialogue makes perfect sense for Poncho, but is an odd non-sequitur when said by the drug dealer. - In the mission "Photo Opportunity", CJ and Cesar are shouting at each other while doing the stakeout, which stands out as bizarre given that they are trying to sneakily take photos of a meeting across the street. In the beta, you were supposed to take photos from a helicopter, where the shouting makes more sense. - In the last mission, main villain Tenpenny angrily calls CJ a "motherfucking piece of shit gangbanging cocksucker." While funny on its own, it was originally a Call-Back to a Dummied Out line in the first cutscene of the game where after hearing Carl swear in anger, Tenpenny sarcastically replies with "Don't swear Carl, you motherfucking piece of shit gangbanging cocksucker." Since the prologue line was dummied out, the final mission line becomes this. - Halo: - In Halo: Combat Evolved, Cortana's "This cave is not a natural formation" line was often mocked for being a case of Captain Obvious, as the cave in question is very obviously artificial. This was a consequence of the game's script being handled by Microsoft's Franchise Division, who were tasked with completing it within a few days only using descriptions of each level and without even being able to look at the game itself. In this case, a writer only had outdated concept art that showed a more natural-looking cave to go by, and felt the clarification was necessary. - In Halo 2, the chapter where the Flood first appear is titled "Juggernaut", which was the name of a Dummied Out Flood monster. - Also in 2, Tartarus captures Commander Miranda Keyes and Sergeant Johnson. The Chief at one point says of this "That brute has the Index. And Miranda and Johnson." Originally there was going to some Ship Tease between her and the Chief, with him eventually being on First-Name Basis with her. The ship tease was dropped, but the line was kept; leading to the otherwise stoic and professional Master Chief referring to his commanding officer by her first name. - In Halo 4, one idea for the Promethean enemies was that they would have Chess Motifs, with each enemy type representing a chess piece. The Knights are the only remnant of that idea. The Pawns and Bishops were rechristened as the Crawlers and Watchers respectively, while the Rook, Queen and King were all cut. - In Halo Infinite, one of the audio logs makes reference to the Banished running supply convoys using a vehicle called a "Skiff". The Skiff was intended to be a Banished troop-transport vehicle usable in-game, but it was cut. That isn't the only reference to the Skiff either: There's a Mega Construx set based on it, and you can still find the odd mangled wreckage of it scattered around the map. - Heroes of Might and Magic III: The opening cinematic for Armageddon's Blade shows Gelu, Catherine, and Roland entering an underground bunker that's lit with electric lamps and finding the titular blade in the bunker's center. This makes no sense with the final campaign, where Armageddon's Blade was forged by demons and the heroes take it after defeating them. However, the original plot was completely different; originally it would've centered around the Necromancers of Deyja uncovering Lost Technology from the Ancients and using it to try and take over the world. Armageddon's Blade was also Ancient technology, and the good guys would have to go on a quest to retrieve it and use it to destroy the Heavenly Forge. The entire plot was scrapped due to heavy fan backlash, but it was too late to make a new cinematic by that point. - Hi-Fi RUSH: The giant robot that Kale uses in a cutscene to attack Chai and \|\|Korsica\|\| is The Unfought because it's boss battle was cut from the game for time and budget reasons. It still appears in that cutscenes obviously, and there's still heaps of Foreshadowing for a big fight with it just like all the other bosses, but you will never see it in-game. In fact, the devs even went out of their way to add more foreshadowing for it after they cut the boss, simply because they thought it was funny to do so. - Hunt Down the Freeman is filled with these, but the most notorious involves the cut character Brad, who was originally supposed to be Nick's foil, having all his lines given to Nick regardless of context, resulting in Nick constantly flip-flopping on his opinion of Mitchell. - Journey to Silius was originally developed as a Licensed Game of The Terminator, but converted to an original IP after the rights were yanked. A few references to the license remain in the game, including the intro cutscene and music, the helicopter boss resembling an Aerial Hunter-Killer, a Tank-Tread Mecha that looks like the ground-based HK's, and the SkeleBot 9000 Final Boss. - The Legend of Zelda: - The instruction manual in the English version of the first game states that the Pols Voice enemy hated loud noises. Most players had assumed that the monster in question was weak to the Recorder, but when they used it, the monster wasn't affected. This is a case of a literal translation from the Japanese version of the game where Japanese players had to shout into the microphone on one of the Famicom's controllers in order to defeat Pols Voice, a feature that American NES controllers did not have. This was changed in the American and European versions so that a single arrow can kill a Pols Voice instantly and you can kill multiples at once if they're lined up. - In the original version of Link's Awakening, one part of the Chain of Deals has you returning a bikini top to a mermaid, and if you try to dive underwater in the area immediately around her before getting it, she'll call you a pervert. In the English translation, the bikini top was bowdlerised into a pearl necklace, and her message for diving underwater near her has her instead simply tell you that she's already checked the immediate area for it. The narration text still stutters and acts embarassed when you acquire the pearl necklace, however. - Still on Link's Awakening, one Hippo in the Animal Village in an artist's house sits down after Link enters the house. In the Japanese version, she was posing nude for a painting, and wearing a robe around her, leading to her covering herself up once Link enters. - In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the Wind Temple and the Ice Temple were respectively replaced by the Forest Temple and the Water temple during development yet their respective Medallions still have a whirlwind and a snowflake on it. Their sections in Ganon's Tower also feature fans and ice. - Four Swords Adventures was meant to be a prequel to A Link to the Past and feature the Imprisoning War before Miyamoto nixed that idea late in development and Hyrule Historia would officially put the two games in different timelines. Besides the graphical style and the soundtrack of Four Sword Adventure that pay homage to A Link to the Past, the final game still has references to the original plan such as the origin story of Ganon's Trident, the presence of the Knights of Hyrule and the last level being the Dark World. Dummied Out dialogues also mention the Master Sword. - Although the Fire Rod was scrapped from The Minish Cap in favor of the Flame Lantern, the European version of the Ice Wizzrobe's figurine still advises you to "hit them with your Fire Rod!" - A screenshot from the boxart of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is from a beta version and displays the scrapped Magic Meter. This also explains the otherwise useless Green Chu Jelly you can get by killing a Green Chu in the Cave of Ordeals in the Wii version of the game. - In Breath of the Wild, Link acquires the Sheikah Slate at the beginning of the game; a tablet-like device which gives him access to his rune powers and the game's map in-universe. The Sheikah Slate was envisioned when the game was still a Wii U exclusive with significant gamepad integration; the player would be able to quickly switch between runes and look at the map on the gamepad without pausing, making the Sheikah Slate a Diegetic Interface for those functions within the game. When Breath of the Wild was ported to the Switch, the gamepad functionality was completely gutted, but the Sheikah Slate was so integral to the game's design by that point that it stuck around, just without the obvious parallel to the gamepad. - The Lion King contains several levels and enemies inspired by concept art that never made it into the film, including the scenes that were eventually truncated into "Hakuna Matata". You can see a bit about it here, with Louis Castle of Westwood Studios (who worked on the game). - One of Marathon's manual images is a Hunter accompanied by a rejected creature known as the Hound. A wall texture resembling this creature can be seen in the Pfhor Ship levels. Also, the Hunters' alert howl was originally intended for the Hounds, while the Hunters themselves would have used a different sound. - Mass Effect: - Saren's Obviously Evil Borg-like appearance that just goes inexplicably unmentioned and the subplots about proving his guilt and him letting Sovereign implant cybernetics in him are all the vestiges of an aspect that didn't make it into the final game. Originally, Saren's transformation into a cyborg/Turian-Geth-Reaper hybrid was supposed to be gradually occurring over the course of the game; at the start he'd look like a normal Turian, by the time you face him on Virmire (where he has dialogue about upgrading himself but refusing to let Sovereign touch him) he would have rudimentary cybernetics, and then during the big finale (after Sovereign has almost fully indoctrinated him and manipulated him into accepting Reaper-tech implants) he would have the look he does in the final game, a half-man-half-machine abomination with exceedingly obvious and destructive "upgrades" that make him look like a monster. Essentially, you would watch Saren's indoctrination in the process of it happening. Time and budget restraints put a nix on that, so Saren ended up using his final, post-indoctrination model for the entire game, which has the unfortunate result of making the Citadel Council look like blithering idiots for not being able to discern that something is up with Saren, Shepard's team to not look much better since they never acknowledge the obvious while trying to prove Saren murdered Nihlus and is working with the Geth, and Nihlus himself to seem downright crazy for not noticing that his longtime friend, mentor, and colleague looked blatantly different. As originally scripted, Saren looked perfectly normal during the Eden Prime incident and first Council meeting, and with this in mind all those scenes make much more sense; Nihlus let his guard down because Saren looked and sounded like he always did so there seemed to be nothing wrong, Shepard and company had no physical proof of Saren's corruption without him looking different, and the Council had no reason to doubt the word of their old, trusted agent when he seemingly hasn't changed at all. - Tali's recruitment mission and the Arrival DLC side-quest both have lots of discussion about strange "Dark Energy" phenomena that has odd effects on suns, amongst other things. This inexplicably never comes up again afterwards. That's because the whole Dark Energy thing was supposed to be a major plot point and an important part of the Reapers' motivations, but was largely written out after series creator and original lead writer Drew Karpyshyn left and was replaced with Mac Walters. Tali's recruitment and Arrival ended up being the only vestiges of it that made it into the finished games. - MediEvil: - the cutscene at the start of the Ghost Ship level shows Sir Dan fleeing from a dragon and ends with a purple worm coming out of Dan's skull to warn him about a vulture. The worm never appeared before nor again making its presence a borderline Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. Morten the Earthworm was meant to play a larger role in the game, and was even supposed to have his own level to himself, where he would help Dan unlock the door to the Asylum by going through the keyhole and getting the key from inside. In the PS4 remake, he gets his own entry in the Book of Gallowmere. - A book in the Sleeping Village mentions the cut level "The Silver Woods". - Neverwinter Nights 2 features Deadpan Snarker wizard Sand and Pyromaniac sorceress Qara as companions who detest each other. Just before the Final Boss, whichever one of them you have less Influence Points with will betray you to join the bad guys. For Qara, who loves burning whatever gets in her way and hates being told what to do, this makes perfect sense. If Sand betrays you, however, he will weirdly insist that Qara is somehow more dangerous than the Big Bad. This refers to a Dummied Out scene where he confronts her and she reveals that she is significantly more powerful than she appears the rest of the time in order to intimidate him. - In Ori and the Will of the Wisps, the Windswept Wastes has a hidden area with a non-functional elevator, which likely would have been the entrance to the Dummied Out Gorlek Mines shown in the 2018 gameplay trailer and mentioned by a couple NPCs. - Paper Mario: The Origami King: One room in Bowser's Castle contains weapons used by Spikes: their spike balls, and their spiked rollers from Super Mario 3D World. While origami Spikes in this game can spit up and throw spike balls, the rollers are never seen. Despite this, there's a Dummied Out model associated with them that depicts this same roller. - Pizza Tower: At the end of the game, the player is judged by Peppino on their completion percentage, with a different End-Game Results Screen depending on how well and/or how fast you did it. A number of judgement screens seem like non-sequiturs, because originally the player would have also been graded on specific gameplay statistics instead of merely completion percentage and speed. "Confused" (which has Peppino asking the player if they thought not killing enemies granted points), was meant for players which actively avoided killing enemies. "That's the One, Officer!" (a battered Peppino identifying the player to a pig cop) was originally given for players that hurt Peppino a ludicrous amount of times. No Judgement" (Peppino just shrugging), was originally given for players that did not fulfill the requirements for any other Peppino Judgement. In the final game, all three are just given to certain completion percentages (50% to 61%, 61% to 72%, and 72% to 83%, respectively). - Pokémon: - The Raichu trade in the Cinnabar research building in Pokémon Red and Blue was a combination of this and a translation gaffe. The guy says that the Raichu you traded him went and evolved. Though it sounds like a reference to the scrapped Gorochu, its actually because the Japanese versions had a Kadabra as the Pokémon being traded. It appears the translators just translated the dialogue without realizing the Pokémon species had been changed. - Trainer classes like the Rocket Grunts, Tamer, and a couple others having whips in their sprites was a holdover from scrapped ideas about trainers fighting after all their Pokémon fainted. - The Goldenrod Pokémon Center in Pokémon Crystal was originally a large building called the Pokémon Communication Center which allowed pseudo-online trading and battling via a mobile phone adaptor. Because mobile phones weren't nearly as widespread outside of Japan at the time, this entire feature was cut and the PCC became a regular Pokémon Center. However, a few characters still mention the Goldenrod Pokémon Center having been renovated recently, and all dialogue from the PCC was fully translated into English, just Dummied Out. - Pokémon Diamond and Pearl: The Hall of Origin is an unused location where you can find (and catch) Arceus, which was meant to be accessed via the Azure Flute, an event item that was never distributed because it was thought to be too confusing to use. However, the Wonder Card for the 20th Anniversary Arceus distribution, nine years later, explicitly mentions that "Arceus could first be encountered in the Hall of Origin in Diamond and Pearl". - Pokémon Black and White has an NPC in Castelia City named Mr. Lock, the "magical clown who can open anything." He has no function in the final game, but he was supposed to be part of a scrapped download event that would've started in HeartGold and SoulSilver. The event would give players an item called the Lock Capsule, which could be transferred to BW via the Relocator, where Mr. Lock would open it, giving the player TM95 Snarl. The event was never released, not even in Japan, so Snarl remained an elusive Dummied Out move, until Black 2 and White 2 gave the Snarl TM through normal means. - Several Pokédex entries in the first two generations reference cut elements that were removed during development. For example Ledyba is the "Five Star Pokémon" because it originally had a star pattern on its back, Umbreon's entries mention poison because it originally was a Poison-type rather than a Dark-type, and mentions of Vulpix being born with one tail, apart from being a reference to the mythology which inspired the Pokémon in question, were also there because Vulpix originally had a pre-evolution with three tails. - The finalized designs for Remoraid and Octillery don't look particularly like they have anything in common besides being water creatures, and although their English names are derived from "raid" and "artillery" and Octillery's Japanese name is often romanized as Okutank (and it learns the move Octazooka), they barely look like they have any connection to military stuff even if you squint. The connection was far clearer at an earlier point in the design process, when they more obviously resembled a gun and a tank, respectively. The Hoppip line, meanwhile, was heavily based not only on dandelions as per their final designs, but also cats, explaining why Hoppip itself has some vaguely catlike traits (which its evolutions now lack) and why its Japanese name includes the word "neko". - In Portal 2, while \|\|fighting Wheatley\|\|, he will comment that he didn't expect you to survive up till then because \|\|all the others he tried to escape with died\|\|. This was a reference to a subplot that was ultimately dropped, but they kept the line because they thought it sounded fitting and might incite curiosity into what happened while Chell was asleep. - In Rainbow Six, the Red Wolf mission originally involved the Free Europe terrorist group taking hostages in a Belgian bank. In the Nintendo 64 port, Free Europe was replaced in this mission with the Phoenix Group, but the building still sports a "Free Europe" banner on its front colonnade. The N64 manual also has a screenshot of the mission briefing for Blue Sky, which was cut from this version. - Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando: - When you meet Angela on Grelbin, she mentions Yeedil having "nasty orbital defenses". This was meant to tie in to a final Star Explorer level that occurred there, but in the final game the orbital defenses are nil and you can just land on Yeedil without hazard. - At the end of the game, it was originally going to be revealed that the Protopets are weak to water. This is referenced in a room in the final level, Yeedil, that has a floor made of ice that you can melt into water with the Thermanator, killing several Protopets on it. However, the "weak to water" plot point was removed from the story, making this room come off as a weird Non Sequitur since the Thermanator has no other uses but melting ice and freezing water, and it doesn't solve any puzzles or help with traversal in this room, unlike every other time you used it before. - Rayman - In Rayman, there are bonus levels where you pay ten tings to The Magician to have a chance at an extra life. However, if you look at Rayman's sprite while paying, he's clearing handing over Electoons rather than tings. Originally, Rayman was to give Electoons to The Magician in exchange for a scroll, but while this was changed the sprite work was never redone. - The cover of Rayman Origins features some scrapped enemies: a plucked bird with an eyeglass, an early design of the Golem, a blue ant-like creature, and a zombie chicken, though the last two are barely visible. - Resident Evil: - The original had an entire subplot dedicated to the architect behind the Spencer Mansion, George Trevor, which was completely scrapped from the game, though the developers left his (now nameless) tombstone to be found after defeating Yawn the Snake. His entire subplot was restored in the 2002 Nintendo GameCube remake. - Similarly, numerous additional areas were all planned that weren't able to be included due to limited disk space and never actually saw the light of day. The only remnant of these was during a pre-rendered cutscene where you can catch a glimpse of the door on the entryway stairs that would have led to the graveyard which is missing in the actual game. Again, like Trevor's subplot, these areas (and then some) were restored in the remake. - The description of the Colt Python informs you it is loaded with "magnum" rounds, implying there to be different kinds of ammunition like the Bazooka. While there are fully functional "Dum Dum" rounds in the game, they were Dummied Out and are only accessible by hacking them into the inventory, and were meant to be slightly more powerful against zombies but weaker against other enemies. The beta and demo versions show that the Magnum originally worked like a somewhat stronger Beretta, able to kill most enemies in 2-3 shots but occasionally scoring a One-Hit Kill against zombies; in the final release, they simply gave the Magnum a huge buff to let it one-shot zombies from the get-go, as well anything else that isn't a boss, and dropped the dum dums for being redundant. Oddly, the 2002 remake contains the same description on the weapon, and the same fully functional but dummied-out rounds. - There is a bed in the 2002 Remake that, when examined, informs you there are footprints that appear to pass right through it. Rumor is there was originally an escape route that came out from under the bed that was ultimately scrapped. A common Fan Wank is that the mansion is riddled with secret passages only accessible by Wesker and this is one of them. - Resident Evil 2 has Sherry remark that she can hear "the monster", a mutated version of her father, calling her name. Originally William was to be able to speak but this was Dummied Out, instead leaving fans to wonder if perhaps he was able to speak before they showed up or if Sherry was just imagining it. The remake expands on this by having his roars very vaguely sound like he's screaming for her, and adding gestures and body language like clutching his head that make it clear he's still somewhat conscious and trying to resist the influence of the G-Virus (you also hear roars that sound somewhat like "help me" as well). - Shadow: War of Succession, an obscure Mortal Kombat Mockbuster for the 3DO, has a "Finish Him/Her" prompt when the opponent is near defeat, but no finishing moves were programmed. - The Simpsons Hit & Run has the Ferrini - Red, which is the default car for Bart in his second mission. It has this name rather than just "Ferrini" because the Ferrini - Black, the alien car that chases you in the final mission, was originally intended to be unlockable as well. - Sonic the Hedgehog: - Hill Top Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has near-identical graphics to Emerald Hill Zone, and has a robotic dinosaur enemy. This is a remnant of the prototype storyline for the game, which would've involved time travel. Hill Top would've been the "past" version of Emerald Hill. - The animated cutscenes for Sonic the Hedgehog CD show a scene where Sonic jumps from tile to tile in a ruin-like area not seen in the game. The scene is from a cut level (dubbed "R2" by fans, due to the naming scheme of the folders used by the PC version of the game). - The intro to Sonic Adventure shows an early version of Windy Valley that looks very different from the final version. That version was removed a few months before release and replaced with the finalized version. - A recurring idea in Sonic Adventure 2 is that Sonic and Shadow look almost identical, to the point that Sonic is arrested for crimes committed by Shadow and even people who personally know Sonic can confuse them. This is rather offputting to a lot of players, as they're pretty easy to distinguish, even at a glance. However, concept art suggests Shadow was originally going to be a lot closer in appearance to Sonic, with streamlined quills, a navy-blue color scheme, and no ruff on his chest. - In Shadow the Hedgehog, Shadow proclaiming "This is who I am" in every single ending would have made more sense if they had kept the original theme for the game. Alas, Executive Meddling by the band's producer prevented Sega from using "Who I Am" by Magna-Fi, leading to "I am... All of Me" by Crush 40 becoming the game's theme at the last minute. - Sonic Boom contains several echidna and hedgehog statues that no one comments on. These are remnants of an older plot for the game that delved into Sonic's backstory and the history of hedgehogs. Sega vetoed it because they prefer for Sonic to have a Mysterious Past. - Splatoon: - One of the Sunken Scrolls prominently features an unused shirt. - The large kitsune and tanuki statues in Inkopolis Plaza are holdovers from when the game focused on Asian mythology (including Moon Rabbits, who served as the player characters - this is also why the moon tends to be so prominent during Splatfests). When the focus shifted to evolved sea creatures, and cephalopods in particular, the statues remained. - There were two different versions of Splinter Cell: Double Agent, one on sixth-generation consoles like the Nintendo GameCube and one on PC and seventh-generation consoles like the PlayStation 3, each with distinctly different plots and some characters that are In Name Only to one another. Only the seventh-generation version features Enrica Villablanca's Anti-Villain qualities that make her sympathetic and her budding friendship/romance with Sam, \|\|but both games have Sam's fierce objection to killing her and his Heroic BSoD when she dies. This makes it seem completely out of character and out of nowhere when Sam suddenly cares immensely about her well-being in the sixth-generation version. Ironically, the game where she does have these qualities is also the game where framing her for the failure of the cruise ship explosion is an option (and the canonical events, no less), and doing this has Sam stand by and watch her get shot in the head without even flinching.\|\| - Spyro the Dragon: - Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!: One NPC accidentally calls Cloud Temples by its original name "Mystic City". This was corrected in the remake. - Spyro: Year of the Dragon contains an unused island out in the distance of the Midnight Mountain home level. The only thing on it is three butterflies (life-ups). The island was originally supposed to have a bonus round on it accessible via a tall whirlwind after beating the Final Boss, but the artist went on vacation, the round was moved to another location, and no one ever bothered to delete the leftover island. The island was made accessible again in the remake, though the Super Bonus Round still retains its original location. - Super/Return of Double Dragon, which was rushed out as an Obvious Beta, has several. - The glass elevator in Mission 1 is cracked when you board it. The enemies jumping onto the lift to attack you were supposed to break the glass. - Mission 2 takes you through a baggage claim area with several idle conveyor belts. These were planned to move and drop the player into pit traps similar to the conveyors in earlier DD games, but the coding was lost. - At the end of the truck ride in Mission 4, Duke and his henchmen show up, but then disperse without further word. A cutscene would have taken place here, followed by a boss fight with Jeff, who is reduced to a Mini-Boss in the final game, after McGwire fled the scene. - In Mission 5, you enter a building at the end of an alleyway, and immediately exit into another alleyway. An indoor factory area was designed for this section, but left unimplemented. - In the English script of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, the boss Punchinello introduces himself with the line "The name's Nello...PUNCHINELLO!" This is because translator Ted Woolsey had wanted to rename the character to "James Bomb". The name change was ultimately "nixed" by Woolsey's superiors, but the now rather random James Bond Shout-Out was kept in nonetheless. - Noki Bay from Super Mario Sunshine contains a book that doesn't do anything and is mostly hidden from view. The book was originally meant to serve as a way to get a Shine Sprite but was replaced with getting red coins instead. The book itself was never removed. Contrary to urban legends, the book is also left unused in the Japanese version. - The "Special Video" in Super Smash Bros. Melee shows unused elements of the game, such as the Temple stage including an extra platform. - The 2003 game of The Hobbit originally featured a boss fight with a cave troll near the end of "Over Hill and Under Hill", which was scrapped, although references to it are found throughout the level. - Tales of Symphonia has a lighthouse in Palmacosta which is blocked off by an NPC who won't let you enter because "anyone who goes up there gets sick", which basically screams out loud of "subquest". However, partway through the game \|\|Palmacosta gets destroyed and becomes inaccessable\|\|, and you never get the chance to enter the lighthouse. What was up there and making people sick is never revealed, though it's believed there was originally a sidequest there to get the Heart of Chaos weapon, before this was dropped in favor of getting it from Koton instead. - Tomba! had a number of levels removed from the game late in development, and notably did a poor job cleaning up any leftovers: - Early in the game you find a telescope and peer out over the water, seeing a pair of Koma Pigs rowing toward an ominous-looking pig-shaped island that just screams "The Very Definitely Final Dungeon". This entire area was removed from the game, and instead you face the final boss in The Underground Maze. "Pig Island" is never so much as mentioned ever again save for a brief clip of it collapsing in the end cinematic, unless you have the Japanese version of Tomba!, where it's visible on the world map (it was removed from the US and European versions). Taking a peek at the game's code features an area named internally as "Outer Wall of Pig Island" but it is actually a completely different area in the game (atop the giant flower). - Masakari Jungle and The Village of Civilization were hit hard by this. There's an entire village visible on the map in the jungle that can never be visited note : With a walk-through-walls cheat you can pass the Tree of Knowledge and access what's left: a desolate glitchy area full of drums and a large podium not seen anywhere else in the game, and an entire underground area in the Lumberjack Factory that is blocked by an invisible wall and contains only a single berry. - Undertale: - Sans's theme song plays at Napstablook's snail farm, even though he never actually appears there or has any involvement with it besides an optional phone call where Papyrus compares the snails to him. This is possibly because he was originally intended to appear there, as the game has some unused dialogue from an unknown NPC who mentions that "that skeleton over there" told them about how orange attacks work, which was likely cut because said attacks don't appear until Hotland, where Alphys explains them to you instead. - After the "Undertale: The Musical" sequence, calling Papyrus and Undyne will have them mention that you danced with Mettaton even though you could only walk around the stage. This is based on some unused dialogue where Mettaton describes your dancing, indicating that you would have originally danced with him during that scene. - Vexx originally consisted of 6 worlds with three levels each, until time and budget forced only 9 of the 18 levels to make it in and the world idea to be scrapped. However, one of the cutscenes has Reia tell Vexx that he has to "activate the outer three structures of Astara," with those outer structures most likely being the three outer worlds of Astara that would be unreachable until a way was found somehow. - WarCraft III: - Several missions gave you hints on what to do, such as loading Goblin Sappers into Zeppelins or throw a Storm Bolt at a mechanical ship. Being major Game Breakers, this was removed in the expansion, and trying it with the expansion installed gets an error message even as the hint is being displayed. - Poking the Dreadlord enough will have him say "No, this is not a dress! It's the standard Dreadlord uniform!". However, he's clearly wearing a suit of plate armor that in no way looks like a dress. This line was a reference to an older model for the Dreadlord that had him in a robe that never made it to the live game. - In Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap, the Sega Master System sequel to Wonder Boy in Monster Land, the Mouseman dungeon reuses the cave theme from the arcade version of its predecessor, which was absent from the SMS port. - Yo-Kai Watch: The important-looking orb on Jibanyan's collar is a remnant of an old ability of his. He originally could transform into humans using a "Transform Orb". In another case of this, his haramaki/belt was originally made of cursed seals that could be peeled off like sticky notes. Jibanyan using seals was scrapped, however his Japanese inspirit still mentions that he uses paralyzing seals. - The eighth Episode of Umineko: When They Cry makes a reference to Land of the Golden Witch, an arc which was supposed to be the original Episode 3 of the series. When the author saw that everyone found both Legend and Turn to be too difficult, he scrapped Land and released Banquet of the Golden Witch instead. In-universe, Land of the Golden Witch is the third message bottle from Rokkenjima that was never found. - Partway through the final trial of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Dual Destinies, the Big Bad tries to escape from the courtroom, Phoenix yells at them, and they stop the attempt and say "I'm not going anywhere". This is a reference to an earlier draft of the script, where they did escape the courtroom, which would've led to another investigation sequence. - You get much advice on how to fight Kofo-Jaga scorpions in the Mata Nui Online Game, even though their minigame has been scrapped from the final release. - Images adorning the Great Telescope's base were meant to foretell significant events or characters that would appear during the game. Most of these are pretty straightforward, though fans can only speculate about some, including a pair of cryptic face or mask-like carvings. Bionicle was originally planned to be much more spiritual with more overt inspiration taken from real life Polynesian cultures and god figures. These were removed due to complaints from actual Maori tribes, leaving parts of the game's imagery without clear-cut explanations. - The mechanical circuitry pattern that briefly appears in the background when the Toa Kaita show up were an orphaned reference for about 17 years, until unfinished alpha versions of the PC game The Legend of Mata Nui got leaked to the net, revealing there was an actual area under the island that looked like the inside of a giant computer which the Kaita had to traverse. Without this info, it seemed the pattern seen in the web game was just a random artistic choice. - On This Very Wiki... - Tropes are frequently named in reference to other tropes — and sometimes, that other trope ends up renamed or cut. - Sometimes, an example will claim to be the source of a page's image ("As you can see in the page image, this character is a good example of this trope"). If the image is changed via Image Pickin', but the example isn't, this can lead to some confusion. This is why it's a bad idea to write such examples. - Examples might have wording that puts them in reference to another example on the page ("As stated in the previous example...", "See this other trope for more details."). If that other example is found to be misuse and gets removed, the trope is deleted via Trope Repair Shop, or gets renamed and moved to a different position, this might make the example nonsensical. Our How to Write an Example page specifically advises against this. - Aaron has Adam comment on Chris's house being messy. This line was written for the original house they were going to film in, but they had to change locations at the last minute. The kitchen itself is much cleaner and tidier. - Dragon Ball Z Abridged has their version of Dragon Ball Z: Broly The Legendary Super Saiyan tease an abridged version of the next movie, Bojack Unbound, by having Goku break the fourth wall to tell Gohan that it'll be his movie next. That project was was eventually cancelled on September 2019, due to the crew experiencing burnout from the source material being difficult to work with. - In season 4 of Red vs. Blue, when Church asks Sheila where Simmons - who had defected to the Blues earlier - had gone to, she tells him to ask their captured Warthog jeep in an agitated tone. This is a nod to an earlier plot point where Sheila would have been upset at Church for valuing collecting the team's vehicles instead of worrying about the other Blue Team members who were on their own plot. The vehicle scene in question was in the episode proper for the web release, but was relegated to a deleted scene in the home video version as the plot point didn't go anywhere beyond that. - Late into Act 1 of Half-Life but the AI is Self-Aware the Science Team meet up with Benrey again, but he introduces himself as "Stong" and acts as if he's never met Gordon before. In the commentary streams, the cast allude to this being part of a Running Gag that never took off where Scorpy would keep showing up as different security guards who all happened to look, sound, and act the same, but had different names. - When Inugami Korone of hololive played Actraiser, the game's composer, Yuzo Koshiro, created a remix for her off the game's sound found. Known as "Koroneraiser Inu-more", the song is popular with her fans (even scoring a metal cover from Jules Conroy). However, the original Actraiser streams have been taken down following a massive legal obstacle that required every game to get permission from the publisher to stream it. Some older streams got restored, but Korone's Actraiser stream still remains missing. - Vinesauce: The highlights video for Vinny's New York City Bus Simulator stream has a segment where he goes exploring the game's rendition of Times Square, poking fun at all the legally distinct store names scattered throughout. When he comes across an "Old Con Creamery", a piece of fanart is shown of him being served some disgusting-looking ice cream while an offscreen clerk cheerfully informs him "I'll be four dollars!". That last bit was a reference to a similar mistake in the subtitles when Vinny tried to order a beer later in the stream, but that part ended up getting cut from the highlight reel. - Amphibia - The three human girl main characters were intended as being 15-16 years old, but Disney insisted on calling them 13 to be more relatable to younger audiences. Pretty much nothing in the show itself was changed to account for this, so there are lots and lots of holdovers that make it apparent how old the characters were actually written and designed as being, to the point that a viewer going in blind would probably assume they were all 16; the girls have tall spindly teenage-looking designs, Anne mentions taking driving lessons and playing varsity tennis, Marcy is shown studying for SATs, and \|\|the Distant Finale that skips ahead ten years portrays the girls in established, long-term careers that aren't totally out of the realm of possibility for 22 year olds right out of college, but would still probably make more sense for 26 year olds that had been working for a while, like Anne being a herpetologist.\|\| - In the flashback to Anne stealing the music box in the second episode, Marcy has a smug expression on her face, which doesn't fit the affable, nerdy personality she had for the rest of the series (even taking into account the later reveal that \|\|Marcy knew what the music box could do\|\|). According to Matt Braly, Marcy was originally intended to be a more cold and calculating character, but after Haley Tju was cast in the role in season 2, she gave a much warmer and more playful performance as Marcy, which caused the creative team to rethink her character. - Beast Wars usually has the characters use weapons that look like they came of the beast mode of the transformer and only characters that have flight capable beast modes can fly, a distinction stretched when Inferno came but flying ants aren't unheard of. This means that Optimus Primal's twin swords and jetpack look out of place on a gorilla but would have been more appropriate for the bat form he was originally conceived with. It looks less out of place after the upgrades when more once earth bound bots got flight modes. - Early episodes of The Cleveland Show had a few of these on account of certain scenes getting deleted from the final cut, while still leaving behind a few callbacks that seem like non-sequiturs out of context. - The title of the episode "The One About Friends" was obviously a reference to the idiosyncratic episode naming of Friends, though there's not much of a reason that justifies why they chose to make that reference. The Season 1 DVD shows that there were supposed to be a number of scenes throughout the episode, featuring a miniature "C-Story" of Rallo getting addicted to watching Friends, which got cut from the final product, likely due to time constraints. - In the episode "Cleveland Live!", the entire cast of the episode gathers together at the end for a celebration, including a drill sergeant who never appeared at any point in the show. A deleted scene exclusive to the Season 2 DVD showed that there was originally supposed to be a cutaway gag where Cleveland went to boot camp and this drill sergeant was his instructor. - In this same episode, Cleveland also mentions Roberta's Iranian friend, Tassie, who had never appeared before. A deleted scene from the Season 1 episode "Love Rollercoaster" showed Tassie made her on-screen debut, telling Roberta that she was a fan of an Iranian terrorist comedian named Jad Astro Vani. Apparently, this "Tassie" was intended to be a recurring character but she sort of disappeared from the show before she even debuted on account of her debut scene being cut. - In the Danny Phantom episode that introduces Vlad Masters, Danny somehow knows that he uses "Plasmius" as a supervillain name, though Vlad never calls himself that in the version that aired. This and many other things about Vlad (both names, plus the overall look of his ghost form) are leftovers from the original plan of him being a vampire. - The Fairly OddParents!: - In "Timvisible", Cosmo and Wanda are seen as students in Spanish class. The teacher asks, "Where is the government cheese?" (in Spanish), and Cosmo takes it out. It's a funny Non Sequitur in the final episode, but in an earlier version, there was a scene where a disguised Cosmo and Wanda eat lunch with Chester and AJ. Chester takes out his government cheese, and Cosmo trades for it (he wishes up a brand new car for Chester, which he then drives out of the school and crashes), making it a Brick Joke. Later reruns would change the phrase to "Where is the stinky cheese?". - In "Oh, Brother!", the people seen admiring Timmy's new wished-up brother Tommy are Chester, AJ, and Sanjay. While AJ and Sanjay appeared as people with big brothers that led Timmy to make his wish, Chester wasn't. In an earlier draft of the episode, there's a scene where Chester has signed up for the Big League Brothers of America program and got Mark McGwire. - Futurama: In "Parasites Lost", Hermes is shown scooping some of Amy's popcorn with a cesta (a scoop-like device used in the sport of Jai alai), referencing a deleted scene where he announces that the crew will be using alternative utensils due to the kitchen's plates going missing. - Gargoyles: the villain of the third season John Castaway who leads the Quarrymen in their crusade against the gargoyles was intended to be revealed to be Jon Canmore who continues his father's vendetta against the Gargoyles. In the final version, Castaway's motives are never explicitely revealed but there are a few references notably in the final episode when Goliath berates Castaway for destroying innocent lives for a mere "ancient hatred". The Comics (that ignores The Goliath Chronicles past the first episode where the Quarrymen are introduced) explicitly identifies John Castaway as Jon Canmor. - Gravity Falls: - At the end of Bill Cipher's introductory scene in "Dreamscaperers", he randomly rattles off conspiracy-theory nonsense ("Reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold, BYE!"). This was a holdover from his original (vastly smaller and less malicious) concept as a prankster who fed Dipper cryptic information that was actually nonsense. - Gideon Gleeful's suit and American flag pin are a holdover of the original concept for the character (as seen in the pilot) where he and his father were government agents. - In "Scary-oke", Stan's biker helmet can be seen in his room, which was meant to foreshadow an ultimately scrapped episode where Stan's old biker friend comes to visit. - In the Infinity Train episode "The Corgi Car", the Steward demands that Tulip "return to her seat." It's an odd line, since assigned seating isn't exactly a thing on the train. When the show was in development, however, Tulip would have started her journey in such a seat, waking up alongside other passengers who were stuck gazing at hypno-screens that prevented them from trying to explore the train. This was still the intended plot when the pilot was written, of which "The Corgi Car" is a reworked version. - In the Invader Zim episode "Tak the Hideous New Girl", we get a commercial break after The Reveal that Tak is an Irken trying to conquer the planet. Upon returning, we get a few seconds of Zim defeating a ham demon. It's the kind of non-sequitur you'd expect from the show normally, but that particular gag was a reference to a scrapped B-plot from when the episode was intended to be an hour-long special. - Jem: - In one episode, Stormer has a line that love has been hard for her. This was originally supposed to lead into a song, however the song was scrapped. - In "Culture Clash", Pizzazz records "Surprise Surprise" in a studio and sings "Wait'll you see, what's in store for you". This line isn't in the actual song. It was originally in the song and exists on the mastertape, but the song was shortened in development and the line was cut. - Justice League Unlimited has "To Another Shore", which was written as an Aquaman episode initially, but had to change things up due to WB planning a TV series based on him at the time (WB had a policy of not featuring the same characters on multiple shows). They changed it to Wonder Woman, due to the two having relatively close powersets and the plot hinging on them being a representative of a fantastical nation. Despite this, it's still pretty darn obvious that it was an Aquaman episode: most of the action takes place by the water, Wonder Woman is unusually aggressive and isolationist, and most importantly, there's a clear Captain Ersatz of Aquaman's main archnemesis Black Manta, going by Devil Ray, who spends most of the episode fighting with her. - The Legend of Korra: The entire Love Triangle subplot in the first season is a giant artifact from the original plan of the season's plot, in which Asami was the Sixth Ranger Traitor working for the Equalists instead of her father Hiroshi, with her suspicions that Mako had feelings for Korra being the final push into villainy and Mako rejecting any possible relationship with her in response, leaving him free to get with Korra instead as her Love Interest. The writers decided against this for a number of reasons (concept Asami was too much of an Obvious Judas, wouldn't have had much story use after The Reveal, and was felt to be too cool and likable to waste that way), so late in production, her and Hiroshi's roles were more or less flipped, which unfortunately resulted in the romantic drama both losing much of it's purpose and having to be a extensively rewritten into an actual Love Dodecahedron instead of a subversion of one. This also adds an additional layer to the fact that Asami is voiced by Seychelle Gabriel; Gabriel had portrayed Yue in the ill-received live action adaptation of the original series, making her playing a new character who seems like a hero but is really a villain into a Mythology Gag and Take That! at the aforementioned live-action film. Once the season was rewritten, this joke was lost. - In The Lion Guard, the Villain Song in the opening movie is Tonight We Strike. It doesnt seem to fit because the attack happens in daytime. Thats because the song was written for a version of the plot that was ultimately scrapped. - Scooby-Doo: Velma and Shaggy were originally intended to be brother and sister. It's why Velma has Shaggy's cough medicine with her in "What a Night for a Knight" and why Shaggy is the one carrying Velma's spare glasses in "A Decoy for a Dognapper". - The Simpsons: - "Homer's Odyssey" was meant to air before" Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire", which ended up being the pilot episode. Not only is this the intended introduction of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, but Bart asking Otto about his tattoo was meant to foreshadow his own attempt at getting one in the Christmas Special. - In "Who Shot Mr. Burns? Part One", Mr. Burns stomps on scale models of Springfield landmarks, saying "Take that, Bowl-A-Rama [Barney's Bowl-A-Rama]! Take that, convenience mart [Kwik-E-Mart]! Take that, nuclear power plan- Oh, fiddlesticks.". The producers originally intended to have Barney Gumble be the one who shot Mr. Burns, so Burns stomping on Barney's Bowl-A-Rama was meant to foreshadow this. - In "You Only Move Twice", there's the Running Gag of Marge taking a sip of wine... which is then followed by a Scare Chord. Originally, Marge was going to become The Alcoholic (due to having nothing to do in a house that cleans itself), but that was deemed too depressing and much of the family's subplots were cut down to make more room for Hank Scorpio. In the final episode, the plotline ends anticlimactically when Marge mentions she only drank one glass all day (even though her doctor recommended she drink two). - In "Lisa's Date with Density", when Marge is driving Lisa home, she occasionally squints out the window, the remnant of a deleted scene where she turns out to have night blindness, bad enough she can't tell whether she's on the road or not. - In "Brother From Another Series", the original script included a scene where Cecil speaks to a woman he identifies as Maris, referring to Niles' unseen wife on Frasier. The producers of Frasier, who were allowed to review the script before production, asked for it to be cut. He still makes reference to her when Bart covers his eyes. - South Park: The episode "An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig" has a scene where Stan is lying down in a puddle of water. This is a reference to a deleted scene where his sister Shelley set him on fire and threw a bucket of water to douse the flames, only for her to repeat the process over and over again. - Steven Universe: Despite the Crystal Gems generally distancing themselves from humanity and getting around by Warp Pad, Pearl knows how to drive a car without explanation. This is a remnant from an abandoned idea where the Crystal Gems would hang out among humans incognito, and Pearl drove them around. - In TaleSpin, Kit was originally intended to be Rebecca's son. While this got changed, some remnants of this idea can be seen with Kit's design having a resemblance to Rebecca and through his sibling-like relationship with her daughter Molly. - The Transformers: - "It's a miracle we survived that blast," says Optimus Prime in the episode The Key to Vector Sigma, Part 1, in reference to an explosion that was cut from the finished episode. - When Rodimus Prime appears to be dying in "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 2," he says to his comrades that his "time in the light is short," which Arcee remarks is what Optimus Prime said on his own deathbed... except he didn't say that. This is meant to be a Call-Back to a line from an early version of Prime's death scene in The Transformers: The Movie—it was cut from the film, but not the show. - The episode "Starscream's Ghost" contains a number of odd lines and sequences that seem to indicate the episode was originally written to star Blitzwing, but was hastily rewritten to feature the newer character Octane instead. Most notably, when the eponymous specter first appears, a frightened Octane becomes stuck in a malformed state halfway between his truck and robot modes, which is consistent with Blitzwing's official bio but has no basis in Octane's. Starscream also disparagingly refers to Octane as an "older model", which works as a bit of meta humor in regards to Blitzwing (his action figure was over a year old at the time) but seems a bit inexplicable for Octane. The episode is meant to follow on from the end of "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 5", which concluded with Galvatron banishing Blitzwing from his ranks (Octane even quotes this dialogue word-for-word when discussing his own banishment); the final episode references the events of the episode "Thief in the Night" instead, which had yet to air and didn't actually end with Octane leaving the Decepticons in bad faith. It all makes for some pretty significant Continuity Snarl in a series that tended to be very light on continuity anyway. - Transformers: Animated: - The first season finale was meant to have a scene where the rebuilt Megatron fights the Dinobots, but it was cut for being poorly animated. The final episode still has a scene reintroducing the Dinobots in the first part and the Autobots fighting the Decepticons on their island, leaving their absence rather conspicuous. - The Grand Finale has a rather strange scene where Slipstream appears, mentions she's looking for Starscream, shoots Optimus Prime out of the air when she realizes he isn't him, and is never seen again. This was meant to set up a scene where she would find Starscream's body and revive it with a piece of her AllSpark fragment, which was cut when the crew knew for certain the third season would be the last. - Transformers: Prime: Breakdown was originally drafted as a new version of the transforming bomber Lugnut from Animated but was changed when the writers wanted more ground based Decepticons. Breakdown's characterization still has elements that would be Lugnut's, for one Starscream never disapproves of his alt like all the other non jet based Decepticons, his rivalry with Bulkhead was a carryover and his entire personality of being a hard hitting bruiser is much more Lugnut then Breakdown, whose schtick is that he is always about to have a breakdown rather then cause one. This is particularly notable if his history in War For Cybertron is taken into account where he was G1 Breakdown to a tee. - Wallace & Gromit: Feathers McGraw's entire presence in The Wrong Trousers is one to the originally concieved premise of the short, which would've saw a flock of penguins taking up residence in Wallace and Gromit's house during a bad winter.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanedReference
Conveniently an Orphan - TV Tropes Refia: I am thankful to Father for taking care of an orphan like me for all these years, but... this is something I have to do. Luneth: Wait... you're an orphan, too? Refia: "Too"? You mean— Arc: I'm one, too! Ingus: Wait a minute... I, too, have no parents... All people come with a past, a family, friends, a heritage, and more. Every person has roots! This past can become a large burden on the character: They need an excuse to leave their family behind, or need to constantly visit their parents and other family members in between adventures. Otherwise the hero can't believably be a social, likable good guy. Orphaned heroes, on the other hand, never have to deal with all that. They do not need an excuse to go on wild adventures or stay away for days on end, they don't have anyone waiting around for them to come home! Conveniently, these heroes can answer the Call to Adventure because they don't have other responsibilities. Often used as character backgrounds in tabletop adventures: Such a character's background often consists of "My parents were killed by (insert Always Chaotic Evil race here), so I'm out for revenge." Aside from conveniently leaving no 'annoying' ties to the past to keep the character away from the Call to Adventure, it can also result in a You Killed My Father moment should the villain race (or the Big Bad if he's responsible) appear. Handily prevents the sadistic Game Master from exploiting 'weak links' that can get kidnapped or killed off. If the fates of the missing parents are left nebulous, it also opens the door for that infamous twist where one of them turns out to be a villain. You know the one. Oddly enough, family outside of parents is never mentioned. Apparently no one ever has grandparents or cousins, although having an uncle (and sometimes aunt) as surrogate parents is common. Siblings (if they exist at all) seem to only show up for plot-based reasons — and not Promotion to Parent, which would give them responsibilities. One wonders how the world manages to get populated when every couple only has one child. Surrogate parents show up more regularly in the form of Raised by Natives, they tend to die a lot too. The hero's orphaning is also a nice triggering point for the hero's journey. This part of the Hero's backstory is often covered in a Flash Back. If the orphaning happens at the very beginning of the story, instead of in the background, it's usually covered by Doomed Hometown. If the character does have parents, but they have so little influence on their life that they behave as if they have no family responsibilities anyway, or it just isn't talked about period, it's Parental Abandonment. May lead to Tell Me About My Father. Contrast with Orphan's Ordeal, where the loss of parents is the plot (or at least a subplot), rather than simply enabling the plot. If the parents happened to be Good Parents before their death, so much so that they continue to affect the main character even after they're dead, then you've got Deceased Parents Are the Best. Not to be confused with Self-Made Orphan. ## Examples: - In Berserk, all of the main cast have Parental Abandonment issues, but Griffith is the only one who has absolutely no mention of any sort of guardianship in his early life. This makes it quite convenient for him to up and decide that he's going to become a king someday and that to get there, he needs to start a ragtag bunch of misfit mercenaries. - Black Butler: The loss of his parents trigger Ciel Phantomhive's motives and lead to the plot. - Applies to most of the main characters in Chrono Crusade: - Rosette and Joshua's parents died in a ship wreck when they were young children, and after that they spent most of their life in an orphanage — until Joshua is taken by Aion (and the orphanage is destroyed in the process), which causes Rosette to join the Order to try to find her brother again. - Azmaria's parents either abandoned her because of her powers, or were killed during the war, depending on which version you're following. - Satella's parents were killed by a demon when she was a child. Her sister was also kidnapped by the demon — leading her on a journey similar to Rosette's. However, since her parents' deaths are such a turning point for Satella in her backstory, she leans closer to Orphan's Ordeal instead. - Combattler V: Hyoma Aoi, the captain of Combattler team, lived in an orphanage after his parents' deaths. Seeing someone killing the parents of a child — or even an animal cub — is one of his Berserk Buttons. His Love Interest, Chizuru Nanbara not only was an orphan girl but also her only grandfather died shortly after the beginning of the series. - Cutey Honey: Honey Kisaragi lost her father early on the series. His death triggered her war against the terrorist group named Panther Claw. - Daimos: Kazuya lost her parents before the start of the series. Erika's father died shortly before Kazuya's father, and THAT is what starts off the history. - Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, none of the main characters have living parents or relatives: Tanjiro and Nezuko's family was slaughtered early on, and Inosuke's mother was slain when he was an infant, and not much was known about Zenitsu's parents as he spent his entire life alone mooching off other people before he met his master. This does grant them the freedom to go out and slay demons. - Son Goku of Dragon Ball. Some time before the series began, he accidentally killed his adoptive grandfather after transforming into a giant were-ape. As for blood relatives, Dragon Ball Z reveals that his race was wiped out along with their home planet. - For that matter, Raditz himself is an orphan, but unlike Son Goku, their father Bardock was alive by the time their planet was obliterated, yet he took little interest in the well being of his sons. Raditz himself failed to earn respect from any of his fellow Saiyan survivors. However, a recent Retcon has their parents send Goku to Earth in order to ensure his survival. - Vegeta himself is also an orphan who was in turn was adopted by the tyrant that killed his father and ended his race. - Most, if not all Z warriors have no parents whatsoever; Yamcha is introduced as a teenage desert thief with no parents or guardians mentioned; Krillin was raised by a monastic order on where he was bullied; Tien Shin-Han and Chaotzu seem to have been raised by Crane Hermit; Yajirobe was introduced as a teenage wanderer without mentioned family. - The unnamed Namekian (the original Namekian survivor that later divided himself into Piccolo and Kami) is himself an orphan who is mentioned to be the son of an individual named Kattas. He spent a great deal of his youth waiting for his parents (or parent, for that matter) to no avail. After he becomes whole once again, he becomes disinterested in his past and even keeps a distance from the remaining survivors of his race. - Fullmetal Alchemist: - Ed and Al's mother is dead, and their father left them at an early age, leaving the two free to pursue their ambitions. Their mother's death is the Plot-Triggering Death that leads to Alphonse's soul in armor. - Chapter 15 of the manga reveals that this is also Roy and Riza's mutual backstory. - Riza's mother died when she was a little girl, leaving her to be raised by her Mad Scientist father, who died of a lingering illness not long after his alchemy apprentice — Roy — left to join the military. With both parents gone and no other relatives of whom she's aware, there was nothing to stop her from following Roy, which she's done ever since. - Roy himself is implied to have been orphaned, as the woman who raised him is eventually revealed to be Chris Mustang, his paternal aunt. Exactly what happened to his parents is never made clear, but it's indicated that Riza's father, as his alchemy tutor, is the closest thing he's ever had to a father figure. As an adult he does his best to hide his relationship to Chris (for her safety), making it look as though he has absolutely no one in the world besides his underlings, which helps with his carefully constructed reputation as a womanizer and gadfly. - Sousuke Sagara of Full Metal Panic! being rendered an orphan helps justify why he can keep risking his life with no regard for consequences. Although his mother dying for his sake and her dramatic Last Words telling him he must "live," "never give up," and "fight!" does have the other purpose of making him the Crazy Survivalist he is today, it mainly seems to serve as a plot device to allow the readers to realize he simply has no one waiting for him. - All over the freaking place in Gundam. - Kamille Bidan starts off his story with both parents alive and well, but quickly loses them within a few episodes. His mother is loaded into a transparent capsule by the Titans and chucked out into space in front of Kamille as bait so that Jerid will have a clear shot at him — except Jerid, having been falsely briefed that the capsule contains a bomb instead of a person, shoots the capsule instead of Kamille in an attempt to catch Kamille in the nonexistent bomb's explosion and wonders what the heck is going on when there's no explosion but there is one royally pissed Kamille screaming bloody murder at him. Kamille's father is also taken into custody by the Titans and told that he'll be let free if he infiltrates the Argama; unfortunately for him, his attempt to hijack a mobile suit and escape back to the Titans is cut short by Kamille. Aside from allowing him to work full-time for AEUG without having any relative the Titans can go after, his mother's death in particular sets up the Cycle of Revenge between Kamille and Jerid that kills several other people down the line on both sides of the conflict, ending with Jerid himself. - Banagher Links has been living on his own even since his mother took him and ran away from his father and died a few years later. He runs into his father after all those years, only for the man to \|\|die right in front of him after biometrically locking the Unicorn to Banagher\|\|, making him an orphan for real. - For that matter, Mineva is an orphan too, being the daughter of Dozle Zabi whom Amuro killed all the way back in the original series. While her mother survived the war and made it to Axis, she fell ill and died a few years later; Mineva then got under the care of Haman, only for her to send the girl down to Earth and subsequently get killed by Judau at the end of ZZ. - Kira Yamato seemingly has both parents alive and well, only to find out later that \|\|the woman who raised him and whom he believed was his mother is actually his aunt; both of his parents died when he was a baby, with at least his father being murdered by Blue Cosmos\|\|. By virtue of \|\|being Kira's twin sister\|\|, this applies to \|\|Cagalli\|\| as well. - And in the Astray mangas, \|\|Canard Pars\|\| joins them as third, being \|\|one of Kira's failed prototype clones\|\|. - Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny begins with Shinn and his family fleeing from a mobile suit battle and Shinn going back to get his sister Mayu's phone when she drops it, conveniently putting him outside the blast radius when the others get blown to pieces by a stray shot and providing him with a Tragic Keepsake. This event ends up defining his personality for the rest of the series. - Every single Gundam Meister in Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is an orphan: Setsuna gunned his parents down to go play Child Soldier, Lockon got his blown up along with his sister in a terrorist bombing, Allelujah was picked up from somewhere by the HRL Super Soldier research program and Tieria never had any in the first place. Nor did the Trinities for that matter. Lichty is an orphan too, his parents having died in an accident that \|\|required him to get extensive cybernetic reconstruction\|\|. - Feldt's parents are revealed by supplemental materials to have been Gundam Meisters who died from GN particle poisoning caused by a drive malfunction in the Virtue's predecessor unit Plutone. She never found out about this but it may have contributed to her Emotionless Girl phase in the first season. - 80% of all characters in Mobile Fighter G Gundam are orphans, major and minor characters, and a few of them have only one parent. The rest are undetermined. For many of them, this plays a role in why they became Gundam Fighters. - In Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, most of the Tekkadan and Brewers members are orphaned children, they were considered expendable to a degree people called them "human debris" or "space rats". There is no in-universe explanation of how they were orphaned. - Gunslinger Girl: Done plausibly, as the Social Welfare Agency only selects girls for its secret killer cyborg program who don't have extended families who would be concerned about them. As a victim of child sex trafficking, Triela's background is unknown even to the Agency. Henrietta's entire family was murdered, and Angelica's parents are in prison. Petra's family is too poor to travel from Russia to see their daughter, which is just as well as her appearance has been altered completely. It's eventually revealed that they were told she had died. As Rico is one of the few cyborgs who retains memories of her previous life, the occasional visit from her estranged parents is no doubt enough to reassure them that their Delicate and Sickly daughter is receiving the best of care; the Agency would have no trouble getting Rico to play along. - Happy Lesson: Chitose's orphan-ness serves as the paper-thin justification of the Excuse Plot, namely, that five of his teachers think he needs a mother in his life and all move in with him; Hilarity Ensues. - At one point in Hellsing, during the Quiet Drama Scene, while discussing Seras's, progress Alucard asks Walter how they covered up her death and how her family is taking it. When Walter replies that she has none and is an orphan, Alucard sardonically replies, "Of course she is". However, since Seras was already an adult by the time she died, the circumstances and consequences of her parents' deaths are shown to be a major part of her character; given that the series veers into Crapsack World territory and runs on Black-and-Gray Morality, it's a justified trope. - In Is Kichijoji the Only Place to Live? Miyako and Tomiko's parents died in a car crash a few years earlier, which lead to them taking over their real estate business and sparking the story. - Kimba the White Lion: Played straight with Lyra who is able to play and go on adventures with Kimba, but the trope is deconstructed with Kimba due to his "Well Done, Son" Guy relationship he has with his father who was killed off before Kimba was born. - Kotetsu Jeeg: Hiroshi's father dies in the first episode. - Lyrical Nanoha: - Hayate's parents died an unspecified amount of time before the series began, which allowed her to raise a family of sentient alien programs on her own since the age of nine and, as mentioned in the supplementary comics, move to Mid-childa before she even graduated from high school. Like most orphans, she does have an "uncle" who was a friend of her father's taking care of her, although it's only financially. \|\|It turns out that he never even knew her father, and believes that because she is an orphan, few will have to mourn her once she's sealed away with the Book of Darkness.\|\| - Fuuka and Rinne grew up together in an orphanage, and no mention is made of what happened to their biological families (biological being the operative word, as Rinne's adoption into the Berlinetta family plays a major role in the backstory). - Mazinger Z: Kouji and Shiro's parents died in a lab experiment gone wrong \|\|or so they were told. In reality, only their mother died. Their father would die for real at the end of Great Mazinger, though\|\|. Sayaka also lost her mother before the beginning of the series. - Great Mazinger: Both Tetsuya and Jun are orphan kids, taken in by \|\|Prof. Kabuto.\|\| And the end of the series his adoptive father \|\|would also die\|\|. - UFO Robo Grendizer: All relatives from Duke \|\|and Maria\|\| got brutally murdered before the start of the series. - In Mission: Yozakura Family, Taiyo lost his parents and younger brother in a car accident that left him the Sole Survivor. Not only does this bring him closer to Mutsumi as the only person he can confide in without having a nervous breakdown, it also lets him marry into her family without worrying about pesky things like parental consent. - Neon Genesis Evangelion: - Having a dead mother is practically a prerequisite to pilot the titular Evangelions (and for good reason: \|\|the souls of each pilot's mother has been incorporated into the machine as to weaponize their maternal instincts\|\|) - Of the rest of the NERV staff, Misato lost her father, Ritsuko her mother, and Kaji (at least in the manga) grew up in an orphanage/refugee camp. - Given that the Second Impact killed two thirds of the world's population, non-orphaned people are probably the exception rather than the rule. - One Piece: - Most of the Straw Hat crew are victims of this trope, often more than once. Both Nami and Franky, for example, were orphaned at a young age, but taken in and raised by a kind foster parent... only for them to die as well. But they've still got it better than Robin, who didn't just lose her parents, but HER ENTIRE HOME ISLAND, of which she is the only survivor. Most of the others seem to have absentee parents of one form or another; the only member whose mother and father are both seen is Usopp, a victim of both this trope AND Parental Abandonment (his dad left to become a pirate, and his mom died shortly after). - For a while, it seemed that Luffy was a victim of this trope as well, his lack of parentage explained with a throwaway remark that "that kid has no parents" in the first chapter. Years later, we learned that Luffy was actually raised by his grandfather, and that his dad, at least, is alive (he's just the most wanted man in the world, which can make it tough to raise a kid). - \|\|Momonosuke\|\| is also an orphan, his parents having been murdered by the \|\|Beast Pirates on Kaido's\|\| orders when they took over \|\|Wano Kingdom\|\|. - In Pokémon Adventures, Red is the only Dex Holder to have no family even alluded to, leaving him free to travel the world where ever and whenever he wants. - In Rurouni Kenshin Kenshin, Kaoru, and Yahiko are all orphans. Kenshin being an orphan leads him to be trained in the Hiten Mitsarugi style of swordsmanship by his master. Kaoru being an orphan leads her to letting her open her dojo for Kenshin to stay in. Yahiko being an orphan lead to him meeting both Kaoru and Kenshin. Not to mention other side characters they meet that are orphaned as well such as Yutaro, Eiji, Misao, and others. - In Sailor Moon, both Mamoru and Makoto's parents are dead, long before the start of the series. In the manga it's used to handwave why they live alone, but in the anime any mention is quickly swept under the rug. - Almost everyone in Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas, justified since it's set in the 18th century Europe. - Nearly all of the members of the Gatchaman team are orphans, except for Ryu \|\|and Ken prior to his father's Heroic Sacrifice\|\|. This is the main reason Ryu is usually left tending the Phoenix while the others get all of the action; he still has a family that would miss him if anything happened to him. - In Slayers, Zelgadis and Gourry both have no parents (Zelgadis's great-grandfather Rezo killed his, and Gourry's were killed during a family feud), and Sylphiel, Filia, Pokota, Amelia, and \|\|Naga\|\| only have one parent each (a father, actually); in Sylphiel's case, she falls under this trope when her father is Killed Off for Real in the third Light Novel/late first season of the anime in a town-wide explosion. Ironically, the main protagonist's (Lina) parents are both alive and well. And the status of the parents of Lina's later allies in the novels (Luke and Milina) is unknown. - Simon of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann lost his parents in an earthquake before the start of the series, so when his blood brother Kamina decides they're going to the surface, he doesn't have anything holding him back. In a twist, Gimmy and Darry are chosen to be exiled to the surface explicitly because they don't have family who will mourn their departure. - In The Titan's Bride, both of Koichi's parents are subject to Death by Origin Story. This was likely to mitigate the obvious Fridge Horror that would come from the story ending with \|\|all evidence and memory of Koichi's existence being permanently erased from the timeline of his old home world so he can live happily ever after with his Isekai husband\|\|. - This trope played so straight in Toriko that almost no named character has living parents. Even Teppei (who at least is very close to his grandfather) never said who his father is, despite the presence of only 3 people in the story who have his family trademark hair. And at least Jirou (Teppei's grandpa) and Midora are adopted by animals before Acacia found them. - Batman is quite famously an orphan, as are the first two Robins. For years Tim Drake was unusual among the Batclan in having a living parent, but eventually the temptations of orphanhood overcame the writers. - In Brat Pack, the kid sidekicks all lose their parents just before becoming superheroes. This is because \|\|the adult superheroes killed their parents to make the kids more dependent on them\|\|. - In Divinity, one of the reasons Abram was selected for Russia's secret deep-space exploration program was that he had neither biological nor adopted parents, and thus the government reasoned that nobody would miss him if he went off into space for a few decades. - Golden Age and Silver Age Superman is orphaned by both his biological and adoptive parents. Other versions have Martha and sometimes Jonathan alive as well. Superman's Teen Sidekick Jimmy Olsen is also sometimes written as parentless. - Hal Jordan and John Stewart's parents are all dead. - The debut issue of The Incredible Hulk makes it clear up front that Rick Jones (Bruce Banner's newly-acquired teenage sidekick) is an orphan. Much later, we learn that Bruce is also an orphan; Bruce's mother was killed by his father when he was a child, and Bruce (accidentally?) killed his father shortly before the explosion that made him the Hulk. - Iron Fist loses both of his parents at the age of nine, while on his way to K'un-Lun. - The Plutonian of Irredeemable is yet another convenient superhero orphan. The series actually deconstructs this Trope, examining the effect it can really have on a little boy with superpowers. The Plutonian was also abandoned by his subsequent foster parents, after he accidentally crippled their biological son. They even devoted themselves to never speaking again just so he wouldn't pick up their voices by superhearing. - Orphans were extremely common in Golden and Silver Age Marvel Comics, in addition to those already mentioned for example Sub-Mariner, Captain America, Bucky, the Fantastic Four (Reed Richards' father reappeared in the 1980s, though), Alicia Masters, Daredevil (although Frank Miller would eventually change that, revealing that his mother had actually become a nun), Iron Man, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Black Widow, Professor X, and Cyclops. Angel became one before long. - Pyrénée: The titular character's mother dies in the same earthquake that enables the bear to escape from the circus, meaning that nobody is looking for Pyrénée when the bear takes her up into the mountains. - Somewhat deconstructed in Relative Heroes. The kids would never have taken up superheroics or been able to travel across the US and have adventures on their own if their parents weren't dead. However, their entire driving motivation is reviving their parents and the reason they have to do so much traveling is that they're being chased by Social Services and Government Agencies that deal with meta-humans due to their runaway orphan status. - Shazam!: In every continuity, Billy, Mary, and Freddy are orphans. Sometimes, they have foster parents; other times, they'll live on their own, and Billy will use his Captain Marvel form to pose as their guardian. - Spider-Man has his beloved aunt, and his uncle lived long enough to say the thing that has shaped most of Spidey's career. Also, more than a few members of the supporting cast have lost one (Mary Jane Watson, Harry Osborn, John Jameson) or both (Betty Brant, Gwen Stacy) parents. - Tintin: Most members of his recurring supporting cast come without familial attachments. - One reason Hergé abandoned Jo Zette Et Jocko — suggested by his editor, who wanted a series about a regular family — was that it became difficult to come up with stories where the two main character always had to be separated from their parents in time for their adventures. - Tom Strong was orphaned at around age 8, after being raised in a gravity chamber by his parents. - Wonder Woman: Warbringer: Jason would never have been able to make his plans, travel, and experiment with his abilities if his parents hadn't died, which, once the full extent of Jason's plans come to light, makes their "accident" rather suspect. - Several mutant characters from Marvel's X-Books are orphans; sometimes by abandonment, sometimes by death, by murder, or by parents becoming a demon bear... Wait, what was that last one?! \|\|Danielle Moonstar, known as the illusion-casting Mirage before House of M, lost her parents to the 'demon bear' and knew it would come for her. After her big confrontation with it, it turns out that they were the bear and she was able to free them. No, they haven't been properly killed off since... yet. This makes her one of the exceedingly few X-characters to have both parents, despite having a standard-issue dead parent origin when we met her!\|\| - Subverted twice in X-Force (Milligan & Allred) and its sequel, X-Statix: - Mr. Sensitive, who once called himself The Orphan, spent years thinking that his parents had died in a fire when he was a baby. He later discovered that not only were they alive, they were also bigots who'd deliberately staged the fire to kill him. - For many years, Venus Dee Milo believed that she'd accidentally killed her entire family when her powers first manifested. It later turned out that she'd merely teleported them to a surprisingly hospitable pocket dimension, where they were all still alive. - In The Jezinkas, Johnny is an orphan and so looking for work. - Firefly, one of the main heroines of Ace Combat: Equestria Chronicles, lost her parents as a filly (\|\| they were killed by Black Star\|\|). - A Crown of Stars: As Shinji nicely and concisely put during a conversation with Asuka, their mothers died and both of their parents practically dumped them by the side of the road before they were four. Later they found out they were chosen to become pilots for that reason, but that knowledge came too late to help them to survive the war and save the humanity. - Advice and Trust: Shinji and Asuka are both orphans. And Rei. And Hikari \|\|who also becomes a pilot.\|\| And all of their classmates. Eventually Shinji and Asuka start to suspect it is indeed very convenient all pilots are orphans whose surviving parental figure works for NERV. When \|\|they compare notes on their mothers' deaths\|\| and after \|\|Hikari tells them she felt her mother inside her robot\|\| they realize what has happened to their mothers and that NERV is behind their deaths. - Subverted by Cream in Always Having Juice, Cream was an orphan before being adopted by Vector. - The Child of Love: When he was four, Shinji lost his mother, and his father abandoned him shortly after. During a conversation with Misato he learns Asuka went through the same thing than him (but her ordeal was harsher). At the end of the story he also learns they are mecha pilots because they are orphans \|\|since their mothers are inside their robots\|\|. - Children of an Elder God: Shinji, Asuka, Rei, \|\|Touji, and Hikari\|\| are motherless. They are also giant robot pilots and fight cosmic horrors. - Doing It Right This Time: In the original timeline Shinji and Asuka spent a long time mourning their deceased mothers as they fought space aliens. Ironically they — and Rei — now know that their mothers were always with them. - Evangelion 303: Shinjis mother died when he was a little kid. - Subverted in the Mass Effect fic series Uplifted. Joachim Hoch's mother is alive, but he was adopted by Gerald Langer after he ran away and hasn't seen her in years. Even after she is \|\|killed in an Allied bombing raid\|\|, Hoch's roots are still an important plot point. - HERZ: All pilots are orphaned children. As they discovered after the battle against SEELE in 2015, it was NOT a coincidence. - Higher Learning: All Eva pilots (Shinji, Asuka, Rei and \|\|Touji\|\|) lost their mothers a while before becoming pilots. \|\|Kaoru's\|\| parents also died a while before the beginning of the story. - Last Child of Krypton: Shinji's genetic donor \|\|Jor-El or Kal-El depending on what version of the story you are reading\|\| sent a sample of Kryptonian DNA to Earth before dying. Yui Ikari used it to modify her unborn baby and several years later she died. Gendo abandoned Shinji after her death, entrusting him to the care of an uncle of his. When Shinji discovered his powers and started to use them to help other people, nobody found out, and he kept his secret for years. - Once More with Feeling: Has Shinji telling Asuka about his mother's death, Asuka finds the similarities with own background suspicious (and with good reason). - The One I Love Is...: As per canon, all Evangelion pilots \|\|but Kaoru\|\| are orphans. - Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: Asuka was conceived by donor sperm. Her mother's husband hated her for it, and when Kyoko died, he remarried and abandoned Asuka, who then devoted her life to piloting mechas to try to overcome her abandonment issues. She never knew who her biological father was, but she always assumed he was someone extraordinary. Ten years later when she starts to manifest strange, formidable powers, she realizes she was very, very right, and her father was an alien of planet Krypton. So she became Supergirl to try to become the hero her deceased biological father was destined to be. - In A Far Green Country, both main characters are orphans! - Elden's mother died by giving birth to Elden, and Elden's father died in one of King Éomer's wars. - Nellas was still a child when orcs killed her parents. - In Gensokyo 20XX series, we have Maribel and Renko; apparently, the fates of both of their parents are unknown but it can be assumed they died and they don't seem to remember them, as noted in 20XXIV and 20XXV. However, the fact that both were well fed and healthy when Yukari finds them means someone had to have taken care of them and we don't even know what happens to that person, though the two did state they weren't far from a food source, having survived on scraps. - In Thousand Shinji, Shinji, Asuka and Rei status as orphans results in no one noticing them being corrupted by dark gods. - The Second Try: Shinji, Asuka and Touji's mothers died several years before the beginning of the story. Rei has no mother because she's a clone. All of them are Humongous Mecha pilots. - In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, Keiko, in keeping with all pilot candidates, is also an orphan. - It's mentioned at one point in Son of the Sannin that both of Fu's parents were killed in a skirmish with Iwa. Her lack of an immediate family was part of the reason why she was chosen to be Chomei's jinchuriki. - Many a protagonist on Website/Wattpad lacks parents, for purposes of angst, and to justify why a teenager is allowed to go on such adventures - Vow of Nudity: Spectra's parents were executed by the magistrate for a failed bank robbery on the same day she was born. - Anastasia: It's very convenient for Vlad and Dmitri — in Dmitri's own words, it's "perfect" — that Anya grew up in an orphanage and has no memory of who she was before she was taken there. It means they can pass her off to the Dowager Empress as the Grand Duchess Anastasia, in order to collect the six million rubles she promised as a reward for her grandchild's safe return, and there will be no one who can contest the identity. Of course, what the audience knows (but none of the characters do) is that Anya really is the Grand Duchess Anastasia. - Red from The Angry Birds Movie; as the beginning of the movie shows, his egg was left unattended in a lost and found room when he hatched. - A frequent trope in the Disney Animated Canon: - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Snow White's mother died when she was a baby, and at some point her father remarried the Wicked Stepmother. The film doesn't make it explicitly clear that her father has since also died, but the Queen is always seen ruling by herself (and it's hard to imagine that the King would allow his only child and heir to be turned into a scullery maid), so it's heavily implied. - Cinderella: The title character's mother died when she was very small, and she was indulged by her doting father, who eventually remarried in order to provide her with a mother's care. He, however, died some time afterward, at which point her stepmother's true colors were revealed. - Sleeping Beauty: Aurora is raised by three fairies and, as far as she knows for the first 16 years of her life, has no living parents. Subverted on her 16th birthday when the fairies reveal her true heritage to her, and that her parents are alive. It was necessary for her to be separated from her parents for so long, because an evil sorceress was out to kill her. - Aladdin: The original folklore version had a dead father but a living mother. The Disney Aladdin has neither parent, which makes it even easier for the audience to empathize with him for his harsh life as a "street rat". Subverted in the third movie when it's revealed that his father only disappeared. According to Word of God, Aladdin was originally supposed to have a mom, who functioned as his conscience of sorts; however, it was decided that the Aesop would be more meaningful if he learned it on his own. - Tangled: \|\|Flynn Rider\|\| has this trope as part of his backstory. His motivation behind \|\|being a thief\|\| is because of growing up poor in an orphanage. Subverted in the series, when he finds out \|\|his father's still alive, but had to give him up when he was a baby\|\|. - Frozen: The sister protagonists become orphans within the first ten minutes, thus allowing them to have a strained relationship with only each other. This serves as a major plot point, exacerbating the loneliness of the leads. - Big Hero 6: Hiro and Tadashi are orphaned at a young age and raised by their Aunt Cass, but then Tadashi is also killed. - The two aliens of Megamind are both orphans in the extreme, given that their entire home planets have been destroyed. This allows them to experience two very different childhoods upon arriving on Earth. - The Sea Beast: Maisie's parents were both monster hunters who died in the line of duty, giving her an excuse and a drive to run away from her orphanage and join Holland's crew to become a hunter herself. She apparently has no other family. - The Dark Crystal: - Since Jen's parents were killed by the Skeksis, he was raised as an orphan. - Kira was also orphaned in the same Gelfling purge that killed Jen's parents, although she was then Happily Adopted by the Podlings. - Dredd. Like all orphans in Megacity One, Cassandra Anderson is given a Judge Aptitude Test at age nine, though in her case she was rated unsuitable and only let in because of her abilities as a telepath. It's not stated why the Hall of Justice prefers orphans as Judges, but the job has an extremely High Turnover Rate and requires a ruthless detachment that Cassandra lacks, at least at first. Cassandra's family is shown to be a motivating factor for her decision to be a Judge — her introductory scene shows her holding a well-worn picture of her parents and smiling at the associated memories. - In Ex Machina, Caleb's parents died in a car accident when he was fifteen. \|\|Which is one of the reasons why Nathan chose him for the experiment as he wouldn't have anyone looking for him. Caleb even brings it up during his final confrontation with Nathan.\|\| - It's mentioned very briefly in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them that the Goldstein sisters' parents died of Dragon Pox when they were kids, leaving them to raise each other. - In Idiocracy, Joe is chosen for the freezing experiment partially because he is orphaned, so nobody would come ask questions if something went wrong with the experiment. \|\|It does.\|\| - James Bond is an orphan. Used as a (possible) plot point; he was chosen because he's an orphan, so family is not a factor upon training/traveling, nor will it be leverage should he be captured. The Daniel Craig films suggest that MI6 recruits orphans because they can exploit the particular brand of psychological scarring that results. It makes recruits more malleable to training and conditioning, since the bosses can frame themselves as a Parental Substitute — the Judi Dench version of M very explicitly does this with Bond. - Discussed in Moonrise Kingdom. Suzy, who's an avid reader of children's fantasy stories, says that all her favourite protagonists are orphans, and sometimes she wishes she were one too. Sam, who is himself an orphan and has lived a miserable life because of it, simply responds: "I love you, but you have no idea what you're talking about." - Operation: Dumbo Drop: Deconstructed with Linh. At first, being an orphan seems like the simple reason he gets to go on all sorts of exciting adventures with the team. Then it's revealed he had to watch his father get shot in front of his eyes. - The protagonist of Predestination is a Doorstop Baby devoid of history, and this is why they are recruited for the Time Police. \|\|Exaggerated with The Reveal that the protagonist has—thanks to a sex change and Time-Travel Romance—conceived themself. Their entire life is a Stable Time Loop making them the perfect Temporal Agent.\|\| - A great many of the main characters in Star Wars are orphans. Anakin Skywalker is technically not an orphan because his mother survives until Attack of the Clones, but he is taken from her at age nine to become a Jedi and doesn't see her again until she dies in his arms ten years later. Han Solo is an orphan, and Luke and Leia think they're orphans until the truth is revealed (and both get orphaned a second time when the Empire kills their respective guardians). Jedi younglings are taken from their parents to become Jedi as very young children, and First Order Stormtroopers such as Finn are similarly taken from their families, though more forcefully. Finally, Rey is left by her parents on Jakku to fend for herself, believing they will one day return for her \|\|before learning the Awful Truth, and later, an even worse truth: that her parents were filthy junk traders who sold her for drinking money, and that she is actually the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine\|\|. - In Beautiful Losers, every major character in the book (F., the narrator, Edith, and Katherine Tekakwitha) is an orphan, conveniently limiting the cast of characters. - In The Belgariad, Garion's parents are killed by a servant of the enemy before the story starts. - Number Ten Ox in Bridge of Birds is an orphan, raised by an aunt and uncle. - The two assassin protagonists in Brotherhood of the Rose, by David Morrell, initially meet in an orphanage from which they're recruited by CIA chief Elliot, who presents himself as a surrogate father figure. They later discover that Elliot (and other members of his worldwide conspiracy) have done the same thing with other orphans, in order to create a team of Elite Mooks who will have Undying Loyalty and obey their orders without question. He's not the only one to use the orphanage as a recruiting ground, as all the children are raised on war movies and Patriotic Fervor so they'll become unquestioning Cannon Fodder for the US military. - In the CHERUB Series books, every character as part of CHERUB is an orphan. This means they can be trained up as spies without parents wondering what's going on, although in the later books the rules are changed slightly so the children of staff members can become CHERUBs as well, partly because it's hard to find conveniently orphaned/abandoned children that fit CHERUB's other recruitment criteria. - In The Chronicles of Prydain, it's a plot point that Taran does not have parents, nor a name or title of his own, and his master Dallben will tell him nothing of his history. He is eventually known as "Taran Wanderer," when he spends the fourth book on a quest to find his heritage. It's not until the very end of the last book, however, that the truth is revealed. \|\|Or rather, unrevealed. Taran really is an orphan, but even Dallben doesn't know who his parents were — he found a baby alone near a battlefield where there were no survivors. Having no family meant that he fit the parameters of the Book of Three's prophecy that Prydain would be ruled by a great king who had no origins, so Dallben took the baby home and raised him in the hopes that this was the great king. It was.\|\| - Circleverse: Of the four main characters in Circle of Magic, three are orphans. Briar grows up in a street gang, Sandry is sent to live with her uncle after her parents die, and Daja becomes an orphan at the start of the series and goes straight to the Temples. It's in a medieval-ish society, so they could have been taken on as apprentices around that age anyway, but instead form something of a magical Super Family Team. Tris Chandler, the only one who actually does have biological relatives, is an emotional orphan, if not a physical one. Her parents didn't want her because of the destructive power of her untrained magic, and by the time she comes to the Temples, she's spent years being dumped on various relatives who either didn't want to take care of her or who treated her as an unpaid servant. \|\|And the one relative whom she likes ends up trying to kill her.\|\| - A Cry in the Night: Played for Drama in the case of protagonist Jenny. She was adopted from a children's home and so never knew her biological family, her adoptive parents died decades ago and her grandmother recently died too. Her only family now are her two young daughters and her loser ex-husband. As a result, she's very susceptible to Erich's charms, especially as he offers her a chance for a loving family again; it also makes it much easier for Erich to isolate her after she marries him. - Rincewind from the Discworld novels has no idea who his parents are/were. - His mother left before he was born. - Lampshaded/mentioned in Unseen Academicals when only people with a note from their mother are excused from playing football. Rincewind asks the Arch-Chancellor for permission to go ask his mother for such a note. "I thought you said you didn't have a mother." [beat] "Permission to go find her, Arch-Chancellor?" - In Going Postal, Moist von Lipwig lost his parents at an early age and was raised by his grandfather, who died some time before the actual start of the story. Having no family connections is, indeed, convenient for Moist, who makes his way in the world as a Con Man. - Doc Savage lost his father in his very first adventure, The Man of Bronze, and his mother had died at some point prior to that. Which begs the question, if you're full grown when your parents die, are you still an orphan? - Per Word of God, virtually everyone in the web-novel Domina. "If a character's parents aren't mentioned, it's safe to assume it's because they're dead." That's what happens when you live in a Wretched Hive. - Stephen R. Donaldson has stated that family is such a complex and messy issue that it's hard to keep it from taking over the story if it's brought in, which is why his characters rarely seem to have parents unless the story is in some way about their family. Thus, for example, Brew in the The Man Who... series is haunted by the fact that he accidentally killed his brother, but nothing is said about their parents' reaction to the incident; likewise, Thomas Covenant apparently had no parents to appeal to for help as his leprosy made him increasingly isolated. Equally often, characters have dead parents, in which case the memory of them haunts the character either as an impossible example to live up to or as a spectre of abuse and emotional scars — Linden Avery had her father commit suicide before her eyes and years later had to Mercy Kill her mother, Morn Hyland had her mother killed by pirates and her father raise her to devote her life to hunting pirates as revenge (and then he got killed by a pirate at the start of the series). And the less said about Angus Thermopylae's family tree the better. - Harry Dresden, from The Dresden Files. His mother died shortly after he was born, and his father died when he was around 7. Later, while living with Justin DuMorne, he's orphaned again when \|\|he kills Justin\|\|. Later still, he discovers that he does still have surviving family, in the form of \|\|his half-brother Thomas Raith\|\| and \|\|his grandfather Ebenezer McCoy\|\|. - Subverted in Feliks, Net & Nika with Nika. Her mum died at childbirth, her dad died when she was eleven and she's afraid of going to orphanage because she would lose everything and because Polish orphanages are terrible. While nothing holds her back, she must constantly pretend her father exists, she must work illegally (in Poland you can't work under the age of sixteen) to pay for her house and school and she has to hide all that from her classmates. The only situation when this is played straight is when characters need a safe hiding spot in alternative reality in which Nika is still an orphan. - This trope is zigzagged in Harry Potter. Harry of course is an orphan, raised by his aunt and uncle, but his parents' lives and deaths, particularly his mother's self-sacrifice, do serve the plot in important ways throughout the series. However, J. K. Rowling has admitted in interviews that she originally killed off Lily and James mainly so their presence wouldn't hamper Harry's adventures, and that the original drafts of the first book killed them off rather anticlimactically; it wasn't until she lost her own mother that Harry's parents' sacrifices became an important plot point. - The Heroes of Olympus: None of the major demigods have any sort of family to go back to, unless it's a sibling. The only exceptions are Percy, Piper, and Annabeth, and even the latter two don't have the best relationship with their muggle parent — Annabeth ran away from her father and stepmom while Piper's father is neglectful, although he tries his best. Percy's the only one with Good Parents waiting at home. - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy: Ford Prefect is not only an orphan but the Last of His Kind, which provides a convenient explanation for why his original alien name is forgotten. - Thomas Theisman from Honor Harrington was raised in an orphanage in the People's Republic of Haven, which quite conveniently means the government doesn't have any loved ones to hold over his head. Not so coincidentally, once he gets the chance, he \|\|puts a brutal and awesome end to the Committee of Public Safety and resurrects the old Republic, elected President and all, that had lain in ashes for two centuries\|\|. He does not, however, \|\|become President, being quite content to stick to the military side as Secretary of War and Chief of Naval Operations; that lovely duty goes to Eloise Pritchart, Theisman's fellow conspirator and firm believer in the old Republic and the Constitution\|\|. - The title character in James and the Giant Peach was orphaned at a young age, and is being raised by his two evil aunts until they get squashed by the peach. - In Bryan Miranda's The Journey to Atlantis, one of the characters is this. It is \|\|Mickello, whose dad died in the plane crash that landed Mickello on the island, and whose mother apparently has no idea what the hell happened to him\|\|. - Kinsey Millhone loves being an orphan (was raised by her aunt). - Subverted in Land of Oz; Dorothy is stated to be an orphan, but lives with her maternal aunt and uncle in Kansas. She loves them enough that, despite all the beauty of Oz and the friends she made, she is determined to go back anyway. Eventually, her aunt and uncle move to Oz with her and they permanently stay there together. - In The Legendsong Saga, Glynn and Ember's parents died in a car crash a about a year ago. Despite being only 17, they live alone. They also have almost no other friends or connections, making it less complicated when they are stuck in Keltor (Ember was the only reason Glynn wanted to return to Earth; Ember doesn't care about anything except her death and her music.) - With his parents having died a few years ago, Daniel from The Leonard Regime is able to go off and fight. It later turns out \|\|his parents died after founding the same rebellion he is fighting for\|\|. - The Lord of the Rings: Frodo Baggins was orphaned at twelve, but was raised in his family's home by said extended family; when he turned 21 (adult-ish but not yet legally adult for hobbits) he was adopted by and went to live with his 'uncle' Bilbo (who conveniently leaves once Frodo is legally an adult). Bilbo himself is technically an orphan (his parents died of natural causes after he was fully grown) and manages to avoid marriage, and thus has no family ties holding him back when he goes on his adventure. - Simon from Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is an orphan. Adopted and raised by the mistress of chambermaids, he has no family to pine for when evil comes and he is forced to flee his home. His orphaning becomes a plot point later. - Molly Moon, as well as most of her friends. \|\|It's later subverted in Molly's case when she finds both of her parents, who were hypnotized into giving her up and forgetting about her, and are both still alive.\|\| - Mr. Benedict from The Mysterious Benedict Society requires children who are all alone in order to help his cause. Kate considers herself an orphan, though technically her father is a deadbeat (\|\|or so she thought, since it's later revealed his absence is explained by amnesia\|\|) and both Constance and Reynie are orphans. Sticky is a runaway though. Mr. Benedict: For one thing, children without guardians happen to be in a peculiar kind of danger that other children are not — this I shall explain later, to those of you who join the team. For another, it would be simply impossible for me to put at risk any child who wasn't alone. No matter how important the cause, parents are disinclined to send their children into danger, as well they should be. As it so happens, however, I now find myself in the presence of the best team of children I could ever hope for — indeed, have long hoped for — and with not a minute to lose. In other words, you are our last possible hope. You are our only hope. - Newsflesh: In How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea, Mahir is told that only those with no living close relatives who are not in committed relationships are eligible to work in a particular research center. This was why Rey and Olivia broke up, so that he could pursue that career opportunity. - Subverted in Ordinary People (the novel more than the film, though it's mentioned in both). Calvin, the father, grew up in an orphanage in Detroit. While he lives a very stable life as a successful tax lawyer with a wife and children, he's haunted by his past and admits to feelings of rootlessness when he talks to his son's psychiatrist. - Catherine, Villain Protagonist in A Practical Guide to Evil is an orphan. She never knew her parents and grew up in an orphanage. When adventure and the chance to change things come a-knocking in the person of the Black Knight, she doesn't look back. Her unclear parentage leaves other characters wondering about her heritage (a popular myth is her being the daughter of the aforementioned Black Knight who was raised and trained in secret). In an universe running on stories, being an orphan can also help with other things: While in Arcadia Resplendant, the land of the fey, Catherine finnagles her way into a story of her being the lost daughter of a duke, prophesized to kill him — all to gain an advantage in a duel against him and eventually inherit his title and powers. - In the Replica series, Nancy Candler is an orphan with no living relatives, making it easy for her to pass off an adopted genetically altered clone as her biological daughter without anyone raising eyebrows. - In The Riftwar Cycle, Pug may or may not be an orphan by the start of the first book, though he definitely is by the last (From old age if nothing else). Later books state that his mother was a servant who left him at the nearby temple for adoption shortly after birthing him and his father was a traveler who never knew that he'd fathered a son. Since Pug never knowingly meets either of them, he is effectively an orphan even if his parents are technically alive. - A Series of Unfortunate Events has many orphans, including the three main characters and \|\|Count Olaf, whose parents may have been killed by the Baudelaire parents\|\|. - Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: Okay, Nikki Quinn's parents are dead. Kathryn Lucas's parents are dead. Isabelle Flanders's parents are dead (maybe). Yoko Akia's mother is dead and her father is evil. Abner Tookus's parents are dead (maybe). There's certainly a lot of orphan characters to go around! - In A Song of Ice and Fire, Yoren deliberately invokes this, telling \|\|Arya\|\| to claim to be an orphan, since no one will give an orphan taking the Black a second glance. - Star Wars Legends: You would not believe how many characters are orphaned. Wedge Antilles lost both his parents when he was around twelve, Tycho Celchu was a pilot for the Empire whose entire family was on Alderaan, Corran Horn lost his mother to a speeder accident and his father to a criminal. Most of these characters are adults, and the loss of their parents spurred them to join the Rebellion. While her parents aren't dead, Mara Jade was taken from them at an early age and never looked back. The Essential Guide to Characters (first edition) says that Palpatine had her parents killed. There you go; Ben's never going to meet his grandparents now... - The Power Trio in Tailchaser's Song are all orphans, including Tagalong Kid Pouncequick. Tailchaser and Roofshadow's parents disappeared in relation to the main villain, which gives them both a reason to go out and find out what is causing the disappearances. - Warhammer 40,000 features many of them. - Commissars are required to be orphans. As a consequence: - Ragnor Blackmane, of William King's Space Wolf novels, is orphaned in the opening of the first. A major motivation for him is desire for Revenge on a fellow Space Marine who had been part of the opposing force. - Where I'd Like To Be subverts this trope. Most of the characters foster kids living in the East Tennessee Children's Home. Upon arriving at the Home, new girl Murphy calls them "a bunch of orphans" and Maddie tells her no, that's not really the case. Murphy: I can't believe I ended up here, stuck in with a bunch of orphans. Maddie: I don't think very many people here are orphans. Most people have at least one parent somewhere. - Arrow. After the Queen's Gambit sinks, Robert Queen shoots himself and another man on the life raft so his son Oliver will have enough food and water to survive. This has a profound affect on Oliver as he spends the rest of his life trying to make his father's death meaningful via his own actions as the Arrow. \|\|When Oliver remakes the entire universe in Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019), his father's death is the one thing he can't change as it was crucial to making him the Green Arrow.\|\| - The Barrier: - A character who catches noravirus and then goes missing conveniently doesn't have any living relatives, which limits both the places where she can take refuge and the number of people who need to be put in the loop about the event. - The fact that this is not the case for many of the children detained for the purpose of Alma's research eventually becomes a plot point. When she first tells her husband about the children, she claims most of them are orphans she's providing for. Her husbands reply is to bring up \|\|their adoptive son who's being passed off as Alma's nephew, whose biological parents were told he died in the hospital and were killed soon after they found him again by chance\|\|. - Bones: Dr. Brennan's emotional interface may be glitchy, but anyone she deals with who comments on her inability to sympathize gets slammed when they find out she lost her parents at a young age, conveniently explaining why she might come off disturbed but assuring everyone that she understands. - Doctor Who: - Companions in the classic series are often orphans — sometimes with Death by Origin Story, or else have Parental Abandonment. Companions in the new series have parents. Oh man, do they have parents. - The Doctor themself was basically orphaned by the Time War, providing buckets of angst. We still don't know what happened to the Doctor's parents following Gallifrey's restoration. - Amy Pond has an aunt, but is essentially a orphan. \|\|At least up until "The Big Bang", when it turns out her parents got erased from time, and the Doctor uses the Reset Button to bring them back.\|\| - The Outpost: Talon's family and everyone else who lived in their village were killed, so she's left free to go on adventures. Gwynn's \|\|foster\|\| father is killed as well, right as she takes up her role as a hero too. - In The Passage, Amy becomes an orphan at the same time that Project Noah happens to be looking for a young test subject with no parents to get in the way of their experiments. - Revenge (2011) is centered around this trope. Amanda/Emily's whole purpose is to avenge her father, who was framed for aiding terrorists and later died; her mother passed away when she was a small child. - The three protagonists of Rimini Riddle live with their Aunt Vera after the deaths of their parents. - Star Trek: Picard: No normal Romulan would ever want to be part of Jean-Luc Picard's motley crew, but Elnor has undergone unique circumstances which would eventually lead him to accept Picard's offer to join him on a rescue mission. He's an orphaned refugee who is being cared for by the Qowat Milat sisterhood, whose members are friends and allies of Picard, so this creates the opportunity for the young Elnor to bond with his idol as a surrogate son since the Admiral (who happens to be childless) is the only positive male role model in his life. Although Picard would abandon Elnor for fourteen years, and the young man is very resentful over this long neglect, he nonetheless changes his mind after his initial refusal of Picard's request when his father figure's life is threatened by the townspeople. Whatever negative feelings Elnor harbours, his love for Picard is stronger, so Elnor saves him and vows to be his qalankhkai. This decision cements Elnor's place on Picard's team. - In Supernatural, Dean and Sam become hunters after their mother dies, and the series starts with their father missing, forcing them to take up the mantle. \|\|They become bona fide orphans at the start of Season 2.\|\| - In The Gamer's Alliance, quite a few characters have ended up as orphans after their parents' demise. - The protagonist of Baldur's Gate is raised by Gorion the sage, and at the start of the game does not know who his/her real parents were. \|\|It turns out that both are dead, and that the PC's father was the deity of murder, Bhaal. The trope is subverted, since the latter part of the game, and the sequel, are about the consequences of Bhaal's attempts to avoid his coming death — which among other things resulted in the PC's birth and special heritage.\|\| - In Baten Kaitos, Kalas has no parents, although he makes mention to being raised by his grandfather, and to having a brother. \|\|He's an Artificial Human, and his grandfather actually created him.\|\| The prequel, surprisingly, averts this: Sagi's implied to be the only biological child of the woman who runs his town's orphanage, and Milly's dad is \|\|one of the villains\|\|. Also played with: One of the boss fights culminates in YOU orphaning one of the original game's party members. - The Cute Knight series' player characters: - Cute Knight: She's grown up in an orphanage and is now, having come of age, trying to make her way in the world. This leaves her free to pursue any of the possible story paths without having to worry about a family. One story path results in her being Happily Adopted, although only the Golden Ending reveals that \|\|she's not an orphan at all — she's the kingdom's long-lost princess\|\|. - Cute Knight Kingdom: She was Happily Adopted as a baby by the local candlemaker and her husband. They're quite content to let her pursue whichever story path makes her happy, however. The 'true' ending reveals that \|\|she's not an orphan either. Instead, she's a princess from outer space — with multiple mothers and fathers!\|\| - Maki Harukawa from Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony was raised in an orphanage. \|\|It was scouted for potential assassins by a cult called the Holy Salvation Society. When they threatened to defund the orphanage if they didn't comply, she agreed, granting her true talent.\|\| - No matter which class you elect to play in Darkstone, you are an orphan. When speaking to the guards at the gate of your hometown, one will always comment that they haven't seen you since your parents were killed. - Disgaea: Hour of Darkness: Laharl and Etna are orphans. \|\|At least, Laharl thinks he's one.\|\| - In the Dragon Age series: - Averted to a certain degree for most of the Origins in Dragon Age: Origins; played completely straight for the Human Noble, however, whose parents are murdered during the course of the origin story. Regardless of background, the player character always has relatives or unrelated persons who fill the parental role in their lives, and most of them do survive the origin stories. For practical purposes, though, it still amounts to the same thing, as the player is taken away to join the Grey Wardens and is effectively cut loose by the plot. - In Dragon Age II, Hawke's father Malcolm passed away a few years before the events of the game, but his/her mother Leandra is alive and well and accompanies the family to Kirkwall, living with Hawke. \|\|And then this trope kicks in full-force.\|\| - The others tend to mention their parents in passing. Anders had a good mother who gave him a pillow, before he was taken to the Circle; supplemental material confirms that his parents loved him dearly right up until his magic manifested, after which his father at least wanted nothing to do with him. Isabela had a terrible mother, who sold her to a slaver in a very bad marriage, and never mentions her father at all. Fenris remembers having a mother (eventually), but her fate is unclear. Merrill's parents are never mentioned, but she was 'traded' by her birth clan to the one in which she grew up when her magic manifested. Varric spent his childhood caring for his alcoholic mother, whom he really only mentions once when he's talking about Bartrand; his father died when he was a baby. \|\|When Hawke is mourning his/her mother, Aveline tells him/her about her own father's death to comfort him/her, and notes that her mother died when Aveline was too young to remember her.\|\| Sebastian (who is DLC exclusive) loses his parents shortly before he's met in the game, as much of his character arc centers around finding those responsible for their murders. - Dragon Age: Inquisition leaves it up to the player exactly what their character's family is like; regardless of background, no family members are ever encountered in the course of the game. The human Inquisitor averts this trope, however, as Josephine explicitly mentions reaching out to their parents for support. - The trend continues for some of the Inquisitor's companions. It's particularly a plot point for the elf Sera, who was orphaned young (she doesn't seem to remember her birth parents) and was adopted by a human noblewoman, who has also since died. Cassandra's backstory is an especially tragic example, as she lost both of her parents when she was a child; they were executed for attempting to overthrow the king, and then when she was twelve her adored older brother was also murdered. It's not mentioned explicitly in the game, but this is also Cullen's backstory, as his home village of Honnleath was besieged by darkspawn during the Fifth Blight and both of his parents were killed — meaning that he left home for Templar training at the age of thirteen and never saw them again. - The player character of Dragon's Dogma is implied to be an orphan with no family, as no relations are ever encountered in the course of the game. - In Dragon's Wake the player takes on the role of a baby dragon who hatches from his egg only to find that his parents have already been killed. - Deconstructed in Drakengard, as the brutal deaths of Caim's parents have left him an intensely vengeful and violent Nominal Hero. - Good thing that Taiga and Mia don't have any parents in Duel Savior Destiny or else their family might be a little concerned when they get whisked off to another world and put into the special forces. In fact, nobody else seems to have any family either, apart from Lily's adoptive mother. - An optional backstory for the Dragonborn in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. If the Dawnguard DLC is installed, there comes a point in its main quest when Serana, who has some justified parent issues (her father is an evil vampire lord who wants to blot out the sun), will inquire about her companion's parents. The game provides a few choices for what happened to the player character's parents, one being to say that they died a long time ago. - A really common occurrence in Final Fantasy: - The heroes of Final Fantasy II are orphaned when their hometown is invaded by The Empire just prior to the story beginning. \|\|Josef's daughter Nelly sadly ends up joining them in that camp.\|\| - In Final Fantasy III, all the main characters are orphans, although three had been adopted and one was working for the king by the time the game begins. - Most of the main characters are orphans in Final Fantasy VIII as well, with the exception of Rinoa who was a Rebellious Princess. Most side characters were as well as SeeD specifically recruit from orphanages, because that is what Gardens started off as. Tyke Bomb gone into a full blown army. - Final Fantasy IV: Cecil and Kain were orphaned and taken in by King Baron, and Rydia becomes an orphan in-game. Edge orphans himself, killing his parents after they become chimaera. Polom and Porom are raised by Mysidia's elder and may or may not be orphans. - Final Fantasy V has the Idiot Hero being an orphan at the game's beginning, the rebellious princesses losing their father halfway through the game and the Sixth Ranger being a replacement for her dead grandpa, who was also her last relative. It's more done as a party of the game's theme of legacy than a plot ticket, though. - Final Fantasy VI has Terra, Edgar, and Sabin explicitly stated to be orphans as part of the plot. Gau is essentially an orphan. Relm may or may not be an orphan \|\|depending on whether you save Shadow\|\|, but it's at least Disappeared Dad. The rest of the cast never mention their families, including Cyan who does have a dead wife and child that feature in the plot but never mentions his parentage. - Cloud from Final Fantasy VII, due to Sephiroth killing his mother during his raid on Nibelheim. His father is never mentioned. - And Aerith (though she was raised by Elmyra for fifteen years), Tifa, Marlene (raised by Barret), Red XIII... - Zidane in Final Fantasy IX. Truth be told, \|\|he's revealed never to have had parents at all\|\|. - Eiko as well, \|\|though she actually gains parents by the end of the game\|\|. - In Final Fantasy X, Tidus, Yuna, Seymour, Wakka, and Lulu are all missing both parents. \|\|(Well, a case could be made for Tidus, but that's different.)\|\| Kimahri's family disowned him, Rikku's mother is dead, and we never hear anything about Auron's parents. Only two of the main characters have siblings, and one of them is dead. Probably justified to demonstrate that Sin has touched everyone's lives. - Final Fantasy XI has \|\|Lion\|\|, Prishe, Aphmau, and Lilith. (Although the last one is trying to avert the trope through Time Travel.) Can we get Square into a 12-step program to deal with their addiction to this trope? - Both Vaan and Penelo from Final Fantasy XII. - Ditto with Ascended Extras Kytes and Filo from the sequel Revenant Wings. - Ashe's father (her mother is never seen/mentioned) is killed in the opening movie. \|\|Vayne orphans himself and Larsa when he orders their father to be murdered.\|\| Basch and his sibling are orphaned during the attack on their homeland. Your party fights and kills \|\|Balthier's father\|\| during the course of the game, orphaning him as his mother was already long dead. - Lightning, Serah, and Snow in Final Fantasy XIII. Presumably Fang and Vanille as well, since they \|\|were in crystal stasis for several hundred years\|\|. Only Hope is the exception, and both his parents are seen during the course of the game, though his mother dies less than an hour in. Though this is averted with the Big Bad. \|\|It's unclear if, as a Mechanical Lifeform, it really has parents, but the game is fond of related symbolism in regards to it, and at the very least it was abandoned by the gods who created it. Unlike the heroes, it took the trauma of this situation rather badly. very badly actually.\|\| Unfortunately the heroes never discuss this. - Rafa and Malak in Final Fantasy Tactics. - The Player Character in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. S/he was found as a baby in the woods one day and raised by Sherlotta and the village. How and why s/he came to be there in the first place is neither explained nor relevant. - Fire Emblem: - The series as a rule enjoys making their main characters an orphan at some point in the game. Their mothers are rarely mentioned but when they are, they're dead. Their fathers will die at some point in the story for some reason. The sole exception to this so-far is Eliwood, Roy's father in The Sword of Seals who lives throughout the game but is severely bed ridden. On the other hand, both Roy's and Lilina's mothers passed away before the game starts, and \|\|Lilina loses her father Hector early on, playing this trope straight in her case\|\|. The prequel, Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword, viciously delights in killing off family. It's gotten to the point that if a character has a parent/sibling/uncle that loves them, nine out of ten times they're dead before the game is up, if not killed before it. \|\|Lyn's parents were both killed by bandits, Hector's parents and brother die of disease, Eliwood's dad is killed by Nergal, Raven's parents committed suicide when their house was attacked, Lucius's father was killed and his mother died of sickness, Serra's parents abandoned her, Erk's are absent, both Jaffar and Nino have dead parents, Lowen probably takes the cake though, having lost first his parents, then his grandparents in fairly quick succession.\|\| - The worst part of Nino's family situation: \|\|Her adopted family are all bosses late in the game. The worst part of it is, they're not bad guys at all, and some of the conversations if you force Nino to attack them are pretty heart wrenching. Worse still, their dead bodies are reanimated in the last level, which means she has to kill them TWICE\|\|. - What about the other part? \|\|When she faces off against Sonia, the woman she thought of as her mother her entire life and who she only wanted to please, the bitch is quite happy to tell Nino how she slaughtered the girl's real parents for their knowledge on dragons and Nino's real mother died shielding her. Oh, and the only reason Sonia didn't kill Nino as well is because she figured Nino might be useful later.\|\| - Pretty much every character in Genealogy of Holy War due to \|\|the entire playable cast save Fin, Adeen and Brigrd being wiped out half way through the game leaving their orphaned children to continue the fight seventeen years later\|\|. Many other enemies are also orphaned by the player and are out for revenge. - Genshin Impact: several characters have been orphaned as a plot point for their origin. - Bennett was orphaned shortly after he was born; he calls the older adventurers in the Adventurer's Guild his "dads". - Dehya was orphaned before her adoptive father found her, and he later died too. - Diluc's father Crepus being killed is the major factor why he is the one Pyro-vision bearer to be moody, and why he and his foster brother Kaeya have a strained relationship at best. - Having been stuck in a trap for a hundred years, Faruzan's family have long been dead by the time we are introduced to her. - Hu Tao is the 77th Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor due to the death of her father, althro the death of her grandfather is more important to her story. - Kazuha is the last member of the Kaedahara clan. - Kaveh's father is dead, but his mother is living with a new husband in a foreign land. - Being a zombie for a few hundred years, Qiqi is naturally orphaned. - Razor was raised by wolves, and it is assumed that both of his adventuring parents are dead. - Shenhe was to be sacrificed to save her mother's life, but at the end she survived but both of her parents died and she was raised by Cloud Retainer. - In Golden Sun, the trope is very much zig-zagged for the main cast. - Isaac's father and Jenna's parents and brother are killed off right in the intro. Then it quickly turns out that the brother survived and seems to be an enemy. Then in the second game, \|\|it turns out the trope is completely subverted: the parents and Isaac's dad also survived and were made hostages, and saving them is a big motivator to the quest. So the kids are not actually orphans... then they accidentally almost kill their own parents themselves near the end of the game\|\|. Poor Isaac's mother has to almost force her son to keep going on his quest and is a source of worry, as she falls gravely ill in his absence. - Ivan is an orphan and his adoptive father is kidnapped as you meet him, but the trope is toyed with: you're told that you can't do anything about it and you should just leave the father behind, but Ivan worries a lot, and you get an optional sidequest to free his father and ease his mind; and in the second game \|\|Ivan's mysterious parentage is a plot point\|\|. - Sheba is also an adopted orphan and joins the group because she was kidnapped, but she's an inversion of the trope: in the second game, she refuses to drop by her hometown because her worried adoptive family would force her to stay. - Piers is a straight and extreme example: he spends the first half of the game trying to go home, then when he finally does, he learns that his mother just died and he quickly gets exiled. - Mia would be a straight example, having simply no mentioned family at all... but she is the one character who is sad to leave (she says farewell to her two young apprentices) and it's more a case of "conveniently rid of her town-healer duties". - And Garet is a complete aversion: he's the only cast member who has a large, living and functional family, but they all encourage him to save the world and fatherless Isaac gets more angst; then, in the epilogue cutscene of the second game, \|\|Garet comes home, finds the town destroyed, and thinks for a moment that they all died\|\|. - The first four heroes of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn all have at least one parent still alive and caring for them — the previous games' heroes (whom the kids strongly resemble). However, the second set of heroes include two straight examples (Sveta, whose parents died in Morgal's revolutionary war, and \|\|Eoleo when his father dies onscreen\|\|), a subversion (Amiti, who doesn't have parents but lives with his affectionate and overprotective uncle, who tries to forbid him from heroics), and an aversion (Himi's parents aren't happy to see her going into danger, but they have to let her because she's the only one who knows what needs to be done anymore). - Implied to be the case with the eponymous characters of the Jak and Daxter series. They get flung forward in time in the sequel, and don't have any problem staying there. The orphan thing is explored/confirmed for Jak, but is still only an implication for Daxter, though no one is saying otherwise. - According to Mai Shiranuis conversation with Takuma Sakazaki in The King of Fighters XIII, Hanzou Shiranuis death leaves the legacy of the Shiranui school of ninjitsu in the hands of Mai and Andy. This implies Mai is the only member of the Shiranui family left. - La Pucelle: Prier, Aloutte and Coulette are orphans. - Dart from The Legend of Dragoon, in addition to the Doomed Hometown at the beginning of the game. - The Legend of Zelda: - Link is often an orphan, leaving him with no prior engagements to his adventure. The number of games that even mention his family can be counted on one hand, sometimes still playing the trope straight: - A Link to the Past: Link's uncle is struck down in the beginning of the game, forcing Link to take up his sword. - Ocarina of Time: The Great Deku Tree, having raised Link and the other Kokiri forest children, dies early in the game. \|\|As a secret Hylian, this actually happened to Link twice; his proper Hylian parents died in a civil war, the fatally-wounded mother wandering into the forest and entrusting the then-infant Link to the Deku Tree in her last moments.\|\| - The Wind Waker: The sole aversion in the series. Link rescuing his sister is the impetus of the main quest, and visiting and helping his grandmother is a sidequest. - Zelda might also count in some of the games. She definitely counts in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, where her figurine clearly spells it out and an NPC early in the game mentions that her mother died, and in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, in which her father is killed shortly before the start of the game and her mother has been dead for years. - Two of the three options in Mass Effect for Shepard. With the spacer background, Shepard's mother is not only alive and well, but also helps him/her out during one of the optional sidequests in Mass Effect. They have another conversation in the Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3. - In Metal Gear, the circumstances which led to Otacon being an orphan are a significant aspect of his woobie status. - Metroid: Samus Aran was orphaned and raised by the Chozo, who have since withdrawn from the universe, leaving Samus with no familial ties. - The player character in The Mystery of Grimstone Manor, a Halloween Episode spinoff of The Cabinets Of Doctor Arcana, is indicated to be this because the game states that they are their Uncle Victor's last living relative. This means that although their parents kept them away from Uncle Victor all throughout their youth, they can no longer stop the player from going to the ancestral family mansion and following in their Black Sheep uncle's footsteps. - In Neverwinter Nights 2, your mother died when you were a baby, during \|\|Ammon Jerro's duel with the King of Shadows\|\|. Your father is a complete question mark, a point that might have made an excellent sidequest. - Octopath Traveler has this all over. Ophilia's parents die when she's five and she's sent to live with the Archbishop. \|\|By the end of her story, he'd dead as well\|\|. Primrose's father is killed ten years earlier, long after her mother had died, prompting her whole story. Alfyn's parents were killed by the plague years before the story begins. Therion is implied to be an orphan. H'aanit also lost her parents at some point, being effectively raised by Z'aanta. - All over the place in Persona 3; the protagonist, Akihiko, and Shinjiro are orphans. Ken is probably an orphan (dead mother, no mention of father but is being supported by a distant cousin). All three members of Strega are likely orphans (\|\|Jin mentions that they, and other artificial Persona-users were all found on the streets as children\|\|). Yukari's father is dead, and her mother a hot mess incapable of being any kind of real parent. Mitsuru's mother only appears in a CD drama, and \|\|her father is killed late in the game\|\|. Junpei only has a father. Only Fuuka has two living parents, and she's estranged from them. Even Koromaru, a dog, has lost his own master. If nothing else, it makes fighting Shadows easier for them. - The parental situation of Persona 4 is far better, with the only real orphan being Naoto, and even then, she had been raised by her grandfather the entire time. Kanji's father is explicitly stated to be dead, but he still has his mother, Teddie is \|\|a Shadow\|\|, and Yu's parents travel abroad frequently. Everyone else in the party is from a completely intact family. - The tone of the game may help. Persona 3 is darker than Persona 4 and most of the time, the abandonment is ether a direct or indirect result of the Kirijo group's experimentation on the Shadows, with the other two members having parents that made it personally preferable to live in the dorm. - This trope is mostly absent from the two earlier games, with the only cases of parental loss coming from Persona 2: Maya's father, a war journalist, died on the field, and \|\|Jun's parents, who are both dead by the end of Innocent Sin, but are resurrected when Philemon resets time\|\|. This trope also looks like it's in effect for Tatsuya and Katsuya Suou, but turns out to be entirely averted for them — their father (and indeed, their mother) is mysteriously absent from Innocent Sin, a game in which every other major character's father makes an appearance, but he later shows up in the Updated Re Release of Eternal Punishment, and their mother has been confirmed to be alive via the guide books (albeit a passive figure in her sons' lives). - Persona 5 goes back to this in spades, though it is addressed more than in the previous titles. Joker's parents abandoned him to a distant friend in Tokyo when he was arrested for assault \|\|though he supposedly returns to them in the ending\|\|; Ryuji's abusive dad abandoned him and his mom; Ann's parents travel a lot; Yusuke's mom died and his father is never mentioned; Makoto's father died and she is being raised by her sister; Futaba's mother is dead and her father's whereabouts are unknown as she was born out of wedlock; \|\|Haru's father is killed during the plot and her mother is never mentioned\|\|; and Goro's mother killed herself \|\|and his father is only vaguely aware that Goro is his son.\|\| However, Yusuke, Futaba, \|\|Haru\|\|, and Goro's statuses are all plot relevant. - Phantom Brave: Marona and Ash become orphans in the introduction. - Ratchet of Ratchet & Clank believes he is the only Lombax left in the universe. Although \|\|this is proven wrong when Alister Azimuth, another Lombax, appears\|\| in Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, Ratchet is forced to \|\|kill Azimuth at the end, leaving him alone once again\|\|. - Resident Evil has a cast that either consists of this or of characters with one parent. Barry Burton himself subverts this; he's a married parent with two daughters, and canonically, he survives the events of the first game. How Chris, Claire, and Leon lost their folks is put out there in guidebooks and novels, and it's implied that Jill is also this (something is amiss with her father). Sherry loses both of her parents during the events of Resident Evil 2 (her mother is shot and her father transforms into a tooth-covered, virus-riddled abomination and is eventually put down), and Steve Burnside loses his father to the T-Virus during Code Veronica. There's also Jake Muller — his mother died of an illness, \|\|and his father turns out to be the recently-killed-during- Resident Evil 5-Albert Wesker\|\|. - Cornet, the main character of Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, lives with her grandfather. \|\|If you've played Disgaea, you'll probably see the twist coming.\|\| - Many of the girls in Senran Kagura have no real family to speak of for various reasons. Katsuragi's parents vanished to avoid punishment for failing a mission, Homura was kicked out of her family due to her being unable to become a Good Shinobi anymore, Yomi's parents worked themselves to dead to make sure their daughter could have a brighter future, Hikage's furthest memories go to her being raised in an orphanage for some reason, both Haruka and Mirai more or less abandoned their parents for various reasons, everyone at the Gessen team have dead parents and were then adopted by Kurokage \|\|who had already died during the events of the game\|\|, Ryoubi's and Ryouna's parents died when they were young \|\|and their older sister Ryouki, who took the parental role after that happened, is also dead\|\| and finally \|\|Fubuki's yoma mother was banished out of this realm by her father, who did it at the cost of his own life\|\|. - Skies of Arcadia: surprisingly, not the hero, but both other core members of your party. Aika is established early on to be an orphan, and Fina... well, there's no other Silvites left but some Elders, and Ramirez. - Sonic the Hedgehog: This was Sonic's American backstory throughout most of the 1990s. The Sonic the Hedgehog Bible has his parents dying and a later bio says he was an orphan raised amongst Woodland Creatures. Since Adventure, however, it's unknown if Sonic is still an orphan. His parents aren't mentioned at all. No one's parents are (except for Cream's mother). Knuckles, being Last of His Kind, also qualifies. - Soul Nomad & the World Eaters: Revya and Danette are orphans. - Taki from the Soul Series had her immediate family die of sickness, leaving her to be raised by the Fu-Ma Ninja Clan. - Ryu from Street Fighter is an orphan who was raised by Gouken, his master. - A recurring element in the Tales Series: - In Tales of Phantasia, several party members including the leads Cress and Mint are orphaned very early in the game, several because \|\|their parents were a previous generation of heroes who sealed away Dhaos, and who are being targeted for the keys they hold\|\|. - In Tales of Vesperia, everyone in your entire party is an orphan. With most of them, all we get is either the parent left or the parent died, or both, no further explanation. We only find out how one parent died, although it's implied (very very subtly) that several of the mothers died in childbirth. In all honesty, it feels a little ridiculous at times. - Sorey in Tales of Zestiria, as he was a human raised by seraphs, which was what gave him a strong enough resonance to be the Shepherd. The seraph party members never had family, as spirits born from sites of natural power \|\|except Mikleo, who as a baby died in the same event that orphaned Sorey but immediately reincarnated as a seraph and raised alongside Sorey. His mother's technically still alive but in no position to have raised him\|\|. - Exactly what orphaned Velvet, Laphicet, and Celica Crowe before Tales of Berseria is not fully explained, but can probably be blamed on the daemons that plague the world. The rest of Velvet's family is eventually stripped away as well. Other human party members Magilou and Eleanor are orphaned as well, also to be blamed on the daemons. Rokurou isn't orphaned, his family just comes from extremely far away \|\|but he's hinted to have to become a Self-Made Orphan to succeed the head of his family someday\|\|. As with the seraphs in Zestiria, the malakhs are spirits born spontaneously from the world \|\|or reincarnated from those who die in specific circumstances\|\|. - All three leads in Wild ARMs are this by the end of the first act. Rudy is already an orphan, with his adopted grandfather dead by the time the story begins, Jack's family \|\|most likely died in the attack on Arctica\|\| and Cecilia's mother is already dead at the start of the game with her father \|\|dying after the demons attack Adlehyde.\|\| - Of the seven party members in Xenoblade Chronicles 1, only one of them has a living parent, five are stated to be orphans, and the last's parents are never mentioned. \|\|The orphan total becomes six later thanks to the parent performing a Heroic Sacrifice.\|\| - "Onion Kid" alias "Rex" alias \|\|"Sarda"\|\| from 8-Bit Theater was orphaned so often, that he's stopped looking for foster parents or even an orphanage who'd still take him in. This trauma is actually the cause for everything that happened in the comic to begin with, thanks to a Stable Time Loop. - The Dreamland Chronicles: Felicity lightly mentions that she was orphaned. - Grunn's orphanage is one of the settings in Dreamkeepers. The "convenient" aspect of the trope is played with in that the orphans are one big dysfunctional family, and several of them are important contributors to the plot. - Most of the cast in Dubious Company. Sal is the only character firmly established as having living relatives. - The Sues were adopted by Izor after their family was killed by a series of random fires. - Gary Stu appears to have taken the parental role for his brother. - Walter, Tiren, and Elly have fond childhood memories, but appear to no longer have ties to their families. They were visibly distraught when Sal asked if they had a home. - The main character in Find Chaos, Arthur, and his sister Tristan are both orphans by Arthur's doing (possible accident?). - The protagonist in Holiday Wars is one, which can be seen in this episode. - Hanna of Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name never mentions his family, but it's implied that he has no immediate relatives in the city. - Jade Harley from Homestuck, who was raised by her pet dog after her grandfather died. \|\|Technically speaking, John is an orphan too: both his and Jade's biological parents are long dead. He is raised by his 'father', who is technically his half-brother. Oh, and his and Jade's biological parents are John's grandmother and Jade's grandfather. Confused yet?\|\| - And as of \|\|2/19, all of the kids are orphans in both the traditional and technical sense.\|\|. - Troll society is entirely like this, as the adults go off to conquer the universe while they leave the planet in the hands of the youth for the most part, leaving them to be Raised by Wolves. At least until events cause all of said Wolves to die, but they remained as their sprites. \|\|Until Jack Noir killed them all over again.\|\| - In the Alpha universe, \|\|Roxy and Dirk\|\|. Even more so once it's revealed \|\|that the two of them exist on Earth 400 years in the future, and their parents have been dead for centuries and left caches of food and supplies for them\|\|. - This was why Rita was allowed to be Dana's Wonderita in The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: she had no next of kin to even tell her that being a sidekick was a dumb idea. \|\|One strip, however, hints that Dana herself might be Rita's biological mother.\|\| - The Order of the Stick's protagonists have various shades of this. - Roy Greenhilt is confirmed to be an orphan, as both his mother and father are dead. - Haley Starshine's mother is confirmed to be dead, and for a long time, her father was locked in jail. - Durkon Thundershield's father is confirmed to be dead, but his mother is still alive. - Averted with Elan, whose parents are still alive, albeit estranged. - The status of Vaarsuvius's and Belkar Bitterleaf's parents are unknown. - Discussed in Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, where an artificial intelligence concludes that the continuing appeal of Anne of Green Gables is because Anne has no family ties, no psychological damage from her loss, and is an intelligent and amusing person who requires minimal effort to raise. - Jordan from Skins. Apparently there's been no mention of her family at all — the supernatural agency called the Coven took her in as a child. - True Villains: Played for Laughs with The Pollyanna Mia when she joins the Villain Protagonists. Her orphaning and subsequent Hilariously Abusive Childhood makes them feel a lot better about having just incinerated her hometown and everyone in it, so they adopt her. - Sinedd of Galactik Football is able to run off and join The Shadows despite a large song and dance being made in the very same episode about the need for parental permission. His departure isn't justified with this trope for another 18 episodes. Orphan or not, Sinedd was already of age, making the parental permission unnecessary for him. - Patch from My Little Pony Tales turns out to be an adopted orphan in the episode "Princess Problems" so that she could be suspected of being a long-lost royal daughter. - Ronaldo from the Brazil episode of The Simpsons. Conveniently as an orphan, he doesn't have parents hogging his money he gets from performing on Teleboobies, and he assists the Simpsons in paying Homer's ransom. - Likely a requirement to be part of the Teen Titans, because what sort of parents would let their children put their lives on the line in weekly superheroics? And sure enough, the only living parent to any of the Titans ever seen in the series is not a very nice guy: - Cyborg's father is (presumably) alive. In the comics he was the one who made him a... well, Cyborg. His mother is explicitly deceased. - We also get to meet Beast Boy's (adoptive) parents from the Doom Patrol. Elasti-Girl is pretty nice, but Mento is bit of a jerk. - In Teen Titans Go!, Raven's mother is alive after \|\|Trigon's defeat\|\|. - Robin's parents are dead as always, but this incarnation heavily implies that he even ditched his "father" Batman so he could move on. (And ended up gathering a bunch of friends around him instead, but no adults. The closest thing to a parent he has is Slade purring about what a great apprentice he could be...) - We don't see Starfire's parents, either. The closest thing she has to a family adult figure is her uncle, which is good since her only other family is her sister, Blackfire... - Buck Tuddrussel and Larry 3000 of the futuristic Time Squad needed Otto from the 20th century since he knows more history than they do. Since he's an orphan that was in a rather troubling situation when they found him, they adopted him despite the fact that it's forbidden by the Time Squad. - Advertisements for the Pony Express purportedly mentioned that they preferred their hires to be orphans, though original copies of these advertisements have not been discovered. Presumably a lot of dangerous occupations would prefer to have as few grieving parents as possible.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanedHero
Orphaned Setup - TV Tropes "A naked blonde walks into a bar, with a poodle under one arm and a two-foot salami under the other. She lays the poodle on the table. Bartender says, 'I suppose you won't be needing a drink.' The naked lady says-" When characters tell jokes, the whole joke is rarely told. We hear either the punchline or setup. In this case, only the setup. Most commonly a limerick ("There once was a man from Nantucket"), a "Knock Knock" Joke note : which may not even get past "knock, knock", something involving Noodle Implements, or a combination of the above. The Inverted Trope of Orphaned Punchline. A subtrope of Nothing Is Funnier, as the punchline is left entirely for the listener to imagine. Compare and contrast Brick Joke, when the punchline is revealed a long time later. Often overlaps with Riddle for the Ages. See also Stealth Pun, when the missing punchline is meant to be discerned on its own if you stop and think about it. And when the lack of a payoff after a lengthy setup is the punchline, that's "Shaggy Dog" Story. ## Examples: - Asterix: Asterix and the Laurel Wreath has Vitalstatistix dragged to dinner with his Nouveau Riche brother-in-law Homeopatix. His wife Impedimenta mentions Vitalstatistix wanted to bring a menhir as a gift. Homeopatix: Come on, old chap, what do you want me to do with all your menhirs? Vitalstatistix (with an evil grin): You really want me to tell you? Impedimenta: VITALSTATISTIX! - Subverted at the end of one chapter of The Demon, where we hear the setup (two Halfwitted Hillbillies each buy a horse and try to find ways to tell them apart, but their manes, tails etc. were already cut), but when Etrigan asks for the punchline, it isn't shown to the reader. It is revealed at the end of a later chapter when a Fourth Wall-breaking imp asks him for it (\|\|they take the horses to a vet, who tells them the black one is slightly bigger than the white one\|\|). - The Mickey Mouse comic "Topolino e la dilagante scherzelletta" features a villain that creates the ultimate joke (known as the "prankjoke") that induces everyone into endless laughter, allowing him to steal everything without being interrupted. For the whole story only the setup ("A very tall guy enters a bar...") is heard: this actually was used by the magazine it was first published to launch a contest where readers could create their punchline to the joke. Surprisingly subverted sixteen years later, where the original story's author revealed the prankjoke's actual (and kinda disappointing) punchline inside another, completely unrelated story (\|\|"...with a very low ceiling and...Ouch."\|\|) - In The Breakfast Club, Bender tells a long complicated joke \|\|to himself while crawling through an air duct,\|\| but then \|\|falls through the ceiling\|\| before he can finish. - No real-life punchline, Judd Nelson ad-libbed the setup. That hasn't stopped some people from making up their own punchlines. - In Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Matthew starts telling a joke to Elizabeth, but she cuts him off before the punchline. Director Philip Kaufman explained the joke on the commentary: "The English Camel Corps are trapped in the Sahara Desert. They've been surrounded by Rommel for forty days and have run out of food. The Captain makes an announcement to the men: 'Men, I have some good news for you and some bad news for you. The bad news is, we have nothing left to eat but camel poop. The good news is, there's plenty of it.'" - The Muppet Movie: Fozzie has bad luck with his act at the El Sleezo Café Fozzie Bear: There was this sailor who was so fat... Fat Sailor: How fat was he? ( Breaks bottle and threatens Fozzie with it ) Fozzie Bear: Um, he was so fat... that everybody liked him, and there was nothing funny about him at all. - Cannibal! The Musical has the town's drunken sheriff say "You Know What They Say about sunrise?" After a long, pregnant pause, he simply walks off without making his point. The actor was apparently drunk and forgot his lines, but Trey Parker thought it was funnier than the actual line. - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: The famous "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" is never given an answer (a common answer is "Poe wrote on both of them"). Lewis Carroll eventually came up with the answer "Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front!" - Blabber Mouth by Morris Gleitzman briefly mentions a joke about an octopus and a combine harvester, which is apparently only funny if you tell it in sign language. - Discworld - In Reaper Man, Ridcully, making a speech at Windle Poons's "going away party", starts out "You know, seeing old Windle sitting here tonight puts me in mind, as luck would have it, of the story of the cow with three wooden legs. It appears there was this cow, and —" at which point the Bursar stops listening because he's heard it before and the Archchancellor always gets the punchline wrong anyway. If you were wondering, the punchline is, "Well, a cow like that, you don't eat all at once!" - In Sourcery, when Rincewind and Nijel are in the snake pit, Rincewind asks if Nijel knows how many trolls it takes to change a lamp wick? Since Nijel is more interested in escape, he never learns the answer. - Harry Potter: - In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore starts to tell a joke about a troll, a hag, and a leprechaun who all go into a bar, but McGonagall convinces him not to finish it. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince a joke about "the hag, the healer and the Mimbulus Mimbletonia" is mentioned. - There's also Uncle Vernon's "Japanese golfer joke," which was orphaned for good reason, as the joke he's talking about is possibly one that's Not Safe for Work and/or racist. (Which makes you wonder why Vernon was actually telling it to a potential customer...) In the book, we only read Vernon saying "You ruined the punchline of my Japanese golfer joke" but in the film we also hear some of the setup. - In Perry Rhodan this trope kinda saves the universe. (A somewhat Chaotic Good entity so wants to hear the end of the joke that it becomes a powerful ally.) - A Running Gag in The Dwarves, a fantasy series about dwarves (by Markus Heitz) is the joke about the orc asking a dwarf for the way. It never got resolved. - I, Jedi: Wedge's joke, "So a Bothan walks into a bar with a gornt under his arm," because Luke's using the joke as a distraction to put Corran in a meditative trance for a mind probe. Lampshaded later by Corran's friend Iella, who's apparently heard several variations on that joke in New Republic Intelligence (given their penchant for espionage, NRI has more than its share of Bothans), but naturally doesn't tell us any of them. - In NewsRadio, Bill runs a knock-knock joke by Dave. Bill: Knock-knock! Dave: Who's there? Bill: Bill. Dave: Bill who? Bill: That's all I've got so far. - On The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Ted also starts working on a knock-knock joke, and runs it past Murray before he has a punchline. The payoff then leaves this trope: Ted not only comes up with a punchline—very unlikely given the setup is "Anna Maria Alberghetti"—but the punchline is actually funny. (Assuming you've heard the old pop/jazz standard it references, which the characters then sing.) - On Alice, Mel's mother comes to visit and on multiple occasions tries to tell Alice's young son the Nantucket limerick but gets cut off by Alice after the first line. - In "The Naked Now" episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data is cut off before he can finish a limerick about a woman from Venus. - On QI mention was made of an ancient Greek joke (#114 in the Philogelos) that was orphaned in this fashion, involving a eunuch and an Abderite: Abderite: How many children do you have? Eunuch: None, I'm a eunuch! - For a punchline, Clive Anderson suggested: "How many grandchildren, then?" - Annie on Community took a class on joke-telling at Greendale but never learned anything past set-ups. The professor was so old... - A sketch in A Bit of Fry and Laurie has Stephen Fry try to tell a joke to his girlfriend, but keeps getting interrupted before he can tell the punchline. - In MASH: Col. Blake:* There was a young lady from Kent, who took off her... Hawkeye: Steady, Henry. - In How I Met Your Mother, to explain away Alyson Hannigan's maternity leave, the show has Barney tell Lily a "hilarious boy joke" that causes her to shun Barney (and the cameras) for several weeks. The setup is, "What's the difference between peanut butter and jam?" Future Ted does not reveal the punchline of this joke to his kids (or the audience) but \|\|it's a real joke with a punchline along the lines of "I can't peanut butter my dick up her ass."\|\| - Are You Being Served?: Mr Spooner tries to tell a limerick that starts "There once was a girl from Prestatyn / Who said 'look here, I couldn't put that in'". He is cut off by the seniors but explains that she's packing her suitcase for the nunnery. - David Letterman did something along these lines when he gave a list of the top ten Bill Clinton jokes. He never actually got to the punchline, he just would trail off and look at the audience, who could figure it out for themselves and were hysterical by that point. - An early episode of Madam Secretary has Liz's theologian husband Henry repeatedly testing out a joke he was going to tell at a convention that begins, "Thomas Aquinas walks into a bar." He's interrupted the first time; the second time it cuts away to Liz busting out laughing on the other end of the phone line. - Before his time on Monty Python, John Cleese had a special called How To Irritate People, known most famously for the airline sketch, but before that, he tells the following joke, adding in an Orphaned Punchline for good measure. Cleese: Have you ever heard the one about the two beautiful blondes who were on their way to a nudist camp? One of the blondes suddenly noticed that— [audio cuts out for several seconds] —Well, I didn't know that he played the violin. - Game of Thrones has the famous Running Gag of Tyrion trying to tell a story about what happened when he took a honeycomb and a donkey into a brothel, only to get interrupted. Fans have wracked their minds trying to finish the joke, and some have come with pretty good answers (NSFW). The final episode acts like it's going to finally reveal the punchline in Tyrion's last scene... and then abruptly cuts away mid-sentence, just as he's starting the story. - Seinfeld: - "The Comeback" surrounds George's attempts to recreate the situation that led to a colleague quipping to him, "The ocean called, they're running out of shrimp" so that he can deliver the comeback he came up with after the fact ("The jerk store called, they're running out of you!") When he finally gets his opening only to for the offender to deliver another zingy comeback on the spot, he falls back on Kramer's suggested comeback—"I had sex with your wife"—only to be told that the man's wife is in a coma. The episode ends with George, on his way home, coming up with a retort that begins "The life support machine called..." and turning the car around. - "The Yada Yada" has two jokes that each have an orphaned setup and punchline, with the middle left to the imagination (one about a rabbi and a farmer's daughter and one about the Pope and Raquel Welch on a lifeboat). - In one episode of The Charmings, the family is hosting a Halloween party. When a giant shows up (long story), Prince Charming and Snow White go off to handle the situation, leaving Luther in charge. Luther: What should I do? Prince Charming: Tell them a ghost story. Luther: (to kids) OK, two ghosts walk into a bar... - The National Lampoon Radio Hour once did a skit about an audition for comedic "straight men", with one setup line after another being delivered in rapid-fire fashion. Finally one guy blurts out a punch line by mistake ("Okay, you're a cab"), prompting the derision of everyone else in the room. - During the usual Take That! against pianist Colin Sell in an introduction to "One Song to the Tune of Another" on an episode of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Humph read out "Even after all these years, the sound of Colin's playing still makes me want to clap"; this alone was enough to get laughter and a round of applause from the audience, and he decided not to bother with the punchline. note : It wasn't until the episode was released as part of the "Live" CD range that the punchline was revealed as part of the retakes between shows: "Both hands over both ears!" - Cheech & Chong Not really a joke but one of the "Sister Mary Elephant" sketches has her reading some poem that goes "The sun kisses the morning sky/the birds kiss the butterflies/the dew kisses the morning grass/The (whole class is talking and not paying attention so she says "Class? Class! SHUT UP") she doesn't finish the poem, but it's pretty obvious the missing fourth line ended with something about kissing someone's ass. - Layer 955 of Awful Hospital leads with Dr. Balmer telling a joke to Staphelia. He gets as far as "So I said to the imbecile, 'We don't even serve sausage so do take your hands off my" before being interrupted by Neckslob freaking out due to \|\|Fern having had her core transferred into it.\|\| - Spongebob Squarepants uses this to to begin his famous opera opener, "There once was a man from Nantucket..." Cue the crowd gasping before he can say a bad word. - The Simpsons uses this trope a lot. Examples: - In "Black Widower", while filming Selma and Sideshow Bob's wedding, Marge asks Krusty to tell a joke, and he begins, "A man walks into a bar with a small piano, and a twelve inch pianist whooaaa hooaaa I can't tell that one!" (This is a well-known joke involving a genie with poor hearing and a pun on the word pianist.) - In "Deep Space Homer", after a newly-sober and very competent Barney proves his newfound fitness by doing several athletic feats while reciting a few lines from the Major General Song, Homer tries to prove his worth as well by doing a cartwheel and beginning "There once was a man from Nantucket" but he falls over and hits his head before he can finish. - The syndicated version of "Day of the Jackanapes" has Marge's comment about it being "good for a show to go off the air before it becomes stale and repetitive." In the original release, this results in a haggard-looking Smithers coming in to announce that Maggie just shot Mr. Burns again, resulting in little-to-no reaction from the family. The syndicated version cuts out everything after Marge's line, resulting in it becoming this. - In "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)", Bart starts telling Lisa about something he told Mabel when he's interrupted by Homer. As Homer leaves, Bart starts telling the story again before the scene switches. - In "Milhouse of Sand and Fog", Homer gets Krusty to perform at his pox party, but only pays for 20 seconds. Krusty begins telling a joke ("Moishe caught the chicken pox, he scratched all night and day! He asked the rabbi what to do, and he said") before a timer goes off and he leaves. - In the "Treehouse Of Horror" segment "Survival Of The Fattest", Mr. Burns is hunting some of Springfield's men. As Burns shoots Krusty, Krusty tries to tell a joke, saying "Dying is like golf, except in golf-" when he's shot some more. - Rugrats has an episode where Grandpa tries to explain an event that had happened to him 15 years prior, during a bowling competition. He gets interrupted so many times that, at the end of the episode, when they're finally willing to hear his story, he no longer has the motivation to do so. - In the Looney Tunes short "A Pest in the House", Daffy Duck bursts in on a sleeping hotel guest to tell him a joke he just heard, which takes too long because he's laughing so hard. During the set-up, the guest goes down to the lobby to punch manager Elmer Fudd in the face (a Running Gag throughout the cartoon), then comes back to the room just as Daffy is getting to the punch line... which he's forgotten. - In Finding Nemo, Marlin, because he's a clownfish, is often being asked to tell a joke. He tries, but he keeps getting the set-up wrong and has to backtrack, never getting to the punchline. In the end he finally gets the joke right, but that time we only hear the punchline ("With fronds like these, who needs anemones?") - In the Phineas and Ferb episode "One Good Scare Ought to Do It!" Candace is practicing talking on the phone before she can call Jeremy for real and tries telling a joke to break the ice ("What do you get when you cross a yak with a Martian?"), but Linda interrupts her before she can finish. - In The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy movie, Irwin is forced to live out his worst nightmare: having to perform stand-up in a room full of bears. He starts with, "So a bear and a rabbit are pooping in the woods..." before the bears jump on stage and maul him. - One of the reasons the Japanese DVD releases of Transformers: Animated are a case of Bad Export for You is because it completely omits the live action Otoboto Family segments that play at the beginning and end of every episode. Since the characters in the show occasionally set up a joke and the punchline is delivered in the ending Otoboto Family sequence, this trope occurs as that segment is no longer present in the DVD releases. Conversely, because sometimes a joke is set up in the beginning Otoboto Family segment and the punchline delivered during the actual episode, Orphaned Punchline also occurs. It doesn't help that the Otoboto Family segments are just not very funny.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanedSetup
Ostrich Head Hiding - TV Tropes How are they supposed to sleep like that, with no oxygen flow? Peek-a-Boo, I can't see you, Everything must be grand. Boo-ka-Pee, they can't see me, As long as I've got me head in the sand. Peek-a-Boo, it may be true, There's something in what you've said, But we've got enough troubles in everyday life, I just bury me head. One of the most prevalent Animal Stereotypes is the ostrich burying its head underneath the sand whenever it is frightened. The implied message being that the bird so dumb that it has No Object Permanence problems. In other works he may be doing this while sleeping. In reality, ostriches don't put their head underneath the sand. Such a scenario would leave them sitting duck for predators not to mention risking suffocation. Just like any other animal, they will run away whenever they assume danger. Logical too, seeing that they have long, strong legs that can run over 40 miles per hour, making it extremely difficult for predators to catch them (and if they are caught those same legs can deliver deadly kicks). When they sleep they just sit down on the ground like other birds do. The head burying in the sand image is likely a perception derived from humans watching the birds from a distance and seeing them reach their long necks down to the ground to search for food or to manage their nests. Nevertheless this Urban Legend keeps popping up in comic strips and cartoons and has even become a metaphor for people too frightened to do something about an important problem or in deep denial about it. Instead of taking action they prefer sticking their heads under the ground and wait until the problem goes away by itself. Sub-Trope of Artistic License Ornithology. See also Head-in-the-Sand Management and Safe Under Blankets. ## Examples - A Canadian commercial for Duracell batteries featured robot ostriches hiding their heads in the sand at the beginning of the ad. - A series of 1990s Russian adverts for Irn-Bru (no, honestly, it's a whole thing, apparently) featured blue and orange ostriches, who bury their heads in the sand, only for their heads to come out in Antarctica and steal cool Irn-Bru from penguins. In another one, the ostriches are themselves in Antarctica and have buried their Irn-Bru to keep it cool, so they duck into the snow to drink it. - Audrey the Ostrich from Ox Tales always has her head buried in the ground. - There is an old joke about a zoo having a sign near a cage saying "Please don't scare the ostriches. The floor is concrete." - A 1930s Mickey Mouse comic strip had Mickey join a race to win money. As everybody was allowed to bring their own manner of transport Mickey used his pet ostrich to ride on. During the race the animal suddenly gets scared and sticks its head under the ground, so Mickey has think up a way to make the animal stop doing this. - Robert Crumb's final Fritz the Cat story shows Fritz dating an ostrich girlfriend who sticks her head underneath a bunch of pillows inside Fritz' house. He tries to get laid with her, but she refuses to move, so he kicks her in the behind and leaves. Out of revenge she murders him with an icepick in the head. - Boes, a Dutch comic strip on which Ox Tales is based: Ostriches hiding their head in the sand are a frequent gag. - Spike does this in The Land Before Time when Littlefoot and Cera are fighting, and when the Gang sans Cera comes across Sharptooth for the last time. - Dumbo. During the Baby Mine segment the camera shows a shot of the circus animals taking a rest at night, including a mother (or father?) ostrich and her two baby birds, sticking their heads underneath the sand. - In Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, a mother Gastornis hides her head in the ground as she gets startled by a Tyrannosaurus rex. Her chick attempts to do the same, but the ground is too hard, so the chick knocks itself out. - In Scooby-Doo! and the Legend of the Vampire, Scooby and Shaggy do this to evade the wrath of an emu. - Bedknobs and Broomsticks. During the soccer match the ostrich buries its head underneath the sand, but is kicked against his behind soon afterwards, causing him to tumble forwards and fall on its behind. - Bumblebee. Bumblebee does this on the beach, thinking it would hide him if other people are around. Yes, he honestly forgot to transform into vehicle mode. - Played for dark comedy in James Thurber's fable "Oliver and the Other Ostriches." Oliver attends an ostrich lecture where a leading ostrich tells them that they are superior to other species because they are intelligent enough to hide their heads. Oliver tries to comment that other species have good qualities too, but the ostriches will have none of it— and then they promptly get interrupted by an elephant stampede. All the ostriches are flattened except for Oliver, who is intelligent enough to run away. - Spoofed in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which it is discussed that a good way to escape from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast Of Traal is to wrap your towel around your head, since the Beast is "such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you." - The image of an ostrich hiding its head is used often in political cartoons, usually to portray politicians who hide from luring problems such as a crisis, recession, depression, complaints of the people or an enemy power rising. - Example: A 1941 political cartoon by Dr. Seuss (yes, that Dr. Seuss) portrayed American isolationists as ostriches with their heads buried, blissfully ignoring the impending war. He used this analogy frequently in his cartoons, such as one where the buried ostrich head chews at the roots of a tree labeled "American morale" and another where members of the America First party pass out ostrich hats. - The Far Side: One strip has an ostrich doing this, with a lion crouched next to him and peering down the head-hole. "I seeeeee you!" - In the Kaufman and Hart play Merrily We Roll Along, the grotesquely old-fashioned Mrs. Riley complains about the title of a play her daughter is starring in (in 1923, a time when, perhaps not coincidentally, fashionable women wore ostrich feathers), and her son-in-law tries to explain its significance: Mrs. Riley: What the hell was it all about, will you tell me that? What did the name mean? "The Ostrich." Wasn't a God-damn bird in it. Harry: Well, the whole idea is—people afraid to face things. Sticking your head in the sand. Mrs. Riley: Well, why didn't they come out and say so? - The ostrich in Animal Jam Play Wild will do this if the play button is pressed. - The first boss of Ballz is Guggler, an ostrich who sticks his head in the ground to heal when you're far enough away. - No ostriches feature in Avian Attorney, but the Prime Minister of France describes the King as ostrichlike in his determination to ignore bad things. - Conkdors from Super Mario 3D World are ostrich-like enemies who attack by slamming their faces into the ground. - Dragons: Riders of Berk: Barf & Belch bury their heads in the beach when they get spooked by a thunderstorm. In the absence of the twins, Snotlout is the one who has to try and get them out. When pulling doesn't work, he digs his way in to confront them directly. They respond with Belch igniting Barf's flammable gas, launching Snotlout right out of their hole. - Silly Symphonies: In The China Shop, an ostrich figurine sticks its head into the base it is standing on when the Satyr starts throwing dishes. Its exposed legs and neck are promptly sliced through by a plate and it reassembles into a shorter bird. - Tex Avery's Slap Happy Lion has a lion roaring so loud that it scares off an ostrich, who sticks his head in the sand, then lifts the piece of ground head and all and runs off with it. - South Park. In Cartoon Wars the citizens are so frightened of Family Guy showing The Prophet Muhammad and the reactions this will create in the Muslim world that they decide to use the ostrich tactic by burying their heads underneath the sand. - Foghorn Leghorn: In "Mother Was a Rooster", Foghorn adopts a baby ostrich, who hides his head in the sand whenever Barnyard Dawg called him an "ugly chicken." When Foghorn and Dawg get their heads stuck in the ground in he end, the ostrich says "They left me all alone. Where did everybody go?" - Channel Umptee-3: Orson the ostrich lived his life with his head in the ground like the other ostriches. When he took it out and looked around, he saw that The World Is Just Awesome and decided to share it with everyone through a TV show. - Stanley: In "Honest Ostrich", Stanley feels he let Marci down when he can't find a soccer ball she let him borrow for a big game, and he wishes that he could hide his head in the sand like an ostrich and forget the whole day. Dennis points out to him that Ostriches don't really hide their heads in the sand, and after finding out the truth in the Great Big Book of Everything, he finds out that Ostriches really duck their heads in the grass to avoid being spotted by predators. So they tell the kids that one myth is not true, and replace it with a variant on the myth instead? Ostriches don't hide their heads in the grass either to hide from predators. As the description says, they run. - Penguins of Madagascar: One episode has an ostrich that gets her head stuck in quick-drying cement, alluding the "ostrich with its head in the ground" pose. This gets lampshaded by the characters, who point out how wrong this trope is. - The Lion Guard: Deconstructed. In "Bunga The Wise," Bunga tells an ostrich who's scared of hyenas to hide her head in the ground to avoid seeing them. When the rest of the Lion Guard see her doing this, they point out that ostriches don't actually do such a thing. After they help the ostrich to pull her stuck head out, she complains about how hard it is to breathe down there. - Kaeloo: In Episode 70, this is done by Quack Quack the duck (even though he's not an ostrich). Somehow, it works perfectly well and nobody can find him. - Babar: "The Show Must Go On" has ostrich ballet dancer Madamoiselle Soretoza, who would bury her head in a sandbox if things don't go her way. - Mike, Lu & Og: Invoked in a "back to the show" ad bumper; Wendell spooks an ostrich so it can bury its head in the sand, allowing him to pluck its plumage to use as Fluffy Fashion Feathers. - Ed, Edd n Eddy: Parodied in an episode where, during a game of hide-and-seek, Rolf does this at an attempt to pick a good hiding spot. - House of Mouse: In "Donald's Pumbaa Prank", an ostrich ballerina hides her head in a cake when Pumbaa is about to make a gigantic fart. - Oggy and the Cockroaches: In "The Hungry Ostrich Empire", Jack brings an ostrich to Oggy's house for him to petsit. It sticks its head into the floorboards whenever someone tries to hurt it. - The Dick Tracy Show: In "Horse Race Chase," this is how Go-Go Gomez exposes the Brow and Oodles' plan to win a horse race by using an ostrich disguised as a horse. He frightens the ostrich which screeches to a stop (sending jockey Oodles flying off of it) and buries its head in the ground. - My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "The Golden Horseshoes, Part 1", when the ostrich-like Skree at scared by something, they respond by hiding their heads in the soil. This is more effective than most examples, however, as doing so also turns the Skree into visually unremarkable rocks. - Done by another bird in an U.S. Acres episode, namely the cowardly Wade Duck. - Though real ostriches don't do this, there are a few small mammals that hide their heads in crevices when threatened, including solenodons and the rock-haunting ringtail possum. What adaptive function this serves is unknown. Notably, solenodons (which are only found on several islands in the Caribbean) are very vulnerable to introduced predators.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OstrichHeadHiding
The Other Marty - TV Tropes Casting can be a tricky thing. You don't always get it right at first, and it so happens you might replace an actor after having them already film a substantial amount of the film. That means for all important scenes involving that actor you have to reshoot it with your new performer. In some cases, quick shots of the original actor may find their way into the final cut, though you'd probably only notice this if you paused on those shots. It is, of course, much easier to pull off the Other Marty in animation and voice-only roles. Named for one of the more famous examples. Originally, Eric Stoltz was cast as Marty McFly in Back to the Future. However, after a good portion of the movie was filmed, the filmmakers, Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis, decided that Stoltz's performance was too dark, and he was replaced by Michael J. Fox. Gale and Zemeckis had actually wanted Fox from the start, but scheduling conflicts due to his work on Family Ties prevented him from accepting the role. In the final cut of the movie, Stoltz can be seen driving the DeLorean in wide shots of the car chase at the mall, and it's his fist punching Biff Tannen in the diner. According to the 2015 documentary Back in Time, in a lot of the shots that don't have Marty onscreen, but the other actors are reacting to him, it's Stoltz who's actually in these scenes. In a more general business sense, the use of Stunt Doubles and set doubles means that often we are not seeing the actual actor in as many scenes as we may believe. In animation, character models may be changed and updated as work progresses and completed footage may end with glimpses of that original character. Likewise, while replacing voice actors for an animated work is common, sometimes these actors are also made to go back to re-record and replace the voice of older episodes of a show so that when the older episode is re-run, the new actor's voice is heard. See also What Could Have Been, The Pete Best, Deleted Role, and Fake Shemp. Sister Trope to The Other Darrin and Flashback with the Other Darrin. ## Examples <!—index—> <!—/index—> - In-universe in Watchmen, the original Silk Spectre was planned to star in a film focusing on her. After much Troubled Production, new scenes were filmed featuring a different actress, with the director claiming "from the back, you can't tell the difference." In a newspaper review of the finished product, the reviewer finds the illusion so unconvincing that he refers to the two as if they were separate characters. - There was at one time a rumor that Little Steven Van Zandt had fallen victim to this when he left Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in 1984 (rejoining in 1999). Allegedly, a number of songs on the Born in the USA album were re-recorded with Springsteen on lead guitar instead of Van Zandt. In actuality, Van Zandt left before he would have had the chance to appear on those sessions. In any case, Springsteen always played a lot of the lead guitar on his albums even while having another dedicated guitarist in the band. - When Michelle Phillips briefly left The Mamas & the Papas during the recording of their self-titled second album, her parts were recorded by producer Lou Adler's girlfriend, Jill Gibson. Phillips returned before the album was released, and re-recorded at least some of her parts. It remains a matter of dispute as to how many songs on the final album feature which singer. - The vocals on Black Sabbath album The Eternal Idol were initially recorded by Ray Gillen, but he quit due to personal financial difficulties (among other problems) just before the release and Tony Martin was then hired to rerecord in a nick of time. note : (Only surviving part of Gillen's contribution is some laughing in the track "Nightmare") - Ozzy Osbourne was at one point sued by his former bandmembers Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake for unpaid royalties. When the albums featuring them ( Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman) were reissued in 2002, their parts were rerecorded by Ozzy's then-current members. The original Daisley and Kerslake tracks were eventually restored for the albums' 30th anniversary reissues. - Glen Matlock is simultaneously on both sides of this trope. He was replaced by Sid Vicious when the rest of the band decided they couldn't stand him halfway through the recording of their only (studio) album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. Then, they found out that Sid was often strung out on various drugs, and when he was sober he was completely incompetent as a bassist. So they called Matlock back to finish the session. Though Vicious is officially credited on the album, the other band members have confessed that they did their best to keep him away from the studio, allowing guitarist Steve Jones to joke that this proved very easy since Sid was suffering from hepatitis, and he was only allowed a small bass part on "Bodies", which was promptly buried in the mix. The actual bass performances on Never Mind the Bollocks were recorded by Matlock and Jones. - Kiss has done a lot of this over the years, as members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss had drug and alcohol issues that affected their playing: - The majority of the drums on the Dynasty and Unmasked albums were played by Anton Fig, best known as the drummer for David Letterman's house band. - Many times, they brought in other guitarists to fill in for Ace. Most notably, many of the studio tracks on Alive II and the "reunion" album, Psycho Circus, were handled by longtime friend of the band, Bob Kulick (Bob's brother, Bruce, would play in the band from 1984 to 1996). - Their only album with Mark St. John on guitar, Animalize, had two songs (Lonely Is The Hunter, Murder In High Heels) with his future replacement, Bruce Kulick, playing lead guitar. - According to Peter Criss, many of the bass parts on their albums were actually handled by Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley instead of Lead Bassist Gene Simmons. - Ministry: - Ministry side project 1000 Homo DJs recorded a cover of Black Sabbath's "Supernaut" featuring Trent Reznor on vocals. Reznor was having a contract dispute with his label, TVT, and they refused to allow the song to be released. Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen re-recorded the vocal part himself. note : There is an urban legend that instead of re-recording the part, Jourgensen added additional distortion to Reznor's part and just claimed that he re-recorded it. Jourgensen has long denied this, even after the threat of legal action was past. The version with Reznor's vocal was eventually released, after TVT acquired the rights to 1000 Homo DJs' recordings. - Chris Connelly first collaborated with Al Jourgensen when Jourgensen had asked him to add vocals and lyrics to an instrumental he'd written... That instrumental recording was later turned into "I Will Refuse" by Pailhead, with Ian MacKaye on vocals, who provided his own lyrics and vocal melody. Connelly's version was later featured on a self-curated rarities album called Initials C.C., where it was credited to Revolting Cocks note : Which makes sense because the personnel featured on that recording were Connelly, Jourgensen, Paul Barker, and Bill Rieflin, all of whom were once in Revco together. and titled "Stick". Connelly would say of the experience that "it was an honor to be erased by Ian". - Listing all the examples where a movie's music is replaced could fill a book and has, but some choice ones are - Due to the punishing production schedule of Stock Aitken Waterman acts, Miriam Stockley was drafted in to hit notes that the actual stars couldn't. This especially affects Kylie Minogue's hits - an inexperienced singer with a thin soprano voice who had to fly from Australia to the UK to record a song that was brand new to her and then get back on the plane again two hours later, it's testament to the talent of all involved that the vast majority of the singing on the SAW albums is Kylie. "Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi" is an easy song to spot Miriam in - you can hear Kylie's voice cut out after 'I'm wondering why...' (the cut is mid-vowel and obscured with a lot of reverb effects and BVs), and on the chorus, it's Miriam, who has a noticeably fuller and huskier tone. - Bad Brains originally recorded the album Quickness with Taj Singleton on vocals and Mackie Jayson on drums. Shortly after finishing the recording, HR and Earl Hudson, the group's original singer and drummer, rejoined the band; Singleton's vocals were erased and HR wrote new lyrics and melodies for the already completed music. Jayson's original drum tracks remained on the album, but he was left uncredited and the group photo used for the cover art featured Earl Hudson instead of him. - Original Dead Cross vocalist Gabe Serbian left the band shortly after they finished recording their debut album. Mike Patton took over as vocalist, recording new vocals and lyrics for the music the band already finished. - The Italo Disco song "Mad Desire" by Den Harrow (a model who lip-synced to recordings by session singers) was originally sung by Silvio Pozzolli. However, Pozzolli's English wasn't that good (he pronounced "Here I am" as "Ear I am"). When "Mad Desire" was released on the Den Harrow album Overpower, Tom Hooker (an American expat) re-recorded the vocals. - The Offspring twice lost a drummer departure before recording an album (a dismissal with Splinter, a departure with Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace), leading session musician Josh Freese to take over. Freese also ended up a tour drummer for them in 2021. - Once David Ellefson was fired for a sexual misconduct, Megadeth announced the yet to be released album The Sick, the Dying... and the Dead! would have his bass tracks re-recorded by a session musician. - Cats: The London cast originally had Judi Dench double-cast as Jennyanydots and Grizabella. Dench tore an Achilles tendon during rehearsals, then compounded it by falling off stage. Her roles were later split, Jennyanydots with Myra Sands and Grizabella with Elaine Page. - In one of his earliest roles, Marlon Brando was cast as Stanislas in the English-language production of The Eagle with Two Heads. He did not get along, at all, with co-star and producer Tallulah Bankhead, and his unprofessional conduct during previews led to Helmut Dantine replacing him for the short Broadway run. - Company initially starred Dean Jones in the role of Bobby Baby, and he even recorded the role on the cast album. However, right after opening night, Jones departed due to suffering a nervous breakdown from his divorce. He was replaced by Larry Kert, best known for originating the role of Tony in West Side Story. As a result, Kert was nominated for a Tony, making it a rare case for a replacement receiving a nomination. - In the world premiere of the musical First Date at Seattle's ACT Theatre, Casey was originally supposed to be played by Kendra Kassebaum (one of the many Glindas in Wicked), but she got called back to NYC for a different show and was replaced by Kelly Karbacz. - With The Phantom of the Opera Steve Harley, a UK singer trying to make a comeback, was in running for the role of the Phantom — so much so that he recorded the original single of the "Phantom of the Opera" title song. However, the tone and the musical style of the show changed considerably after this, and he was sacked just before rehearsals began and replaced with Michael Crawford. Needless to say, the comeback never happened. - A third Lloyd Webber example came in the form of Roger Moore, who was going to play the character of George in Aspects of Love, but dropped out after deciding his voice wasn't up to the job. His understudy, Kevin Colson, took the part instead. - For Lloyd Webber's adaptation of Sunset Boulevard, Broadway star Patti LuPone was promised the lead in the original Broadway production, but was ultimately replaced by Glenn Close from the LA production. The ensuing lawsuit crippled the Broadway production, which closed after two years at a huge loss despite high ticket sales. Similarly, Close's replacement in LA was meant to be Faye Dunaway. During rehearsals, it was decided that her voice wasn't what they wanted and they elected to shut down instead of recasting. Dunaway sued and settled for an undisclosed sum. - Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark cycled through many principal actors because of its constant delays and unfortunate production mishaps. At one point, Jim Sturgess was attached to play Spider-Man, with Evan Rachel Wood as Mary-Jane and Alan Cumming as the Green Goblin. - Marlon Brando reprised his role as Don Corleone and recorded new dialogue for EA's 2006 video game The Godfather. Due to his failing health, the studio was forced to turn to a soundalike. As courtesy to Brando, however, they did use some of the lines from his recordings, specifically the scene where Corleone was recuperating at a hospital (where the muddled quality of Brando's voice due to the breathing apparatus he was using at the time made sense). - Al Pacino was set to reprise his role as Tony Montana for Scarface: The World Is Yours. However, when it was discovered that years of smoking had damaged his vocal cords to the point where he could no longer sound like Montana, Pacino personally handpicked André Sogliuzzo to replace him. - Clive Barker's Undying: The game's original premise had the hero as a tattooed, muscle-bound shaman versed in the ancient arts. When Clive Barker came aboard, the first thing he had the development team do was overhaul the hero into Irish paranormal investigator Patrick Galloway, wisely deciding that an everyman hero would work much better for the story (not to mention the Author Appeal factor). The hero's original design didn't go to waste, however: he can be seen as the Trsanti shaman wielding the Gel'ziabar Stone in the flashback cutscene. - In Borderlands 2, Gaige the Mechromancer is a pretty unique example, as she has two voices in the final version. The first is Luci Christian, who is also credited for the role in the main game's end credits, and the second is Cherami Leigh. Originally, Christian was to voice the character entirely. However, after she had recorded most of her lines, Gearbox Software decided to recast the role. When Gaige was released as a DLC character, all of Christian's original lines were left in by mistake, along with all the lines written and recorded after Leigh had been cast. Players have to spec into Anarchy to heard much of Leigh-as-Gaige, though. - Destiny managed to pull a retroactive version of this. Peter Dinklage's voicing of the player's Ghost companion was poorly received by fans. When the character required new dialogue for expansion packs, the developers used Nolan North instead. They then had him re-record all of the original dialogue as well so that Dinklage's performance could be patched out of the game completely. Word of God claims that Dinklage was replaced because his busy Hollywood schedule made it extremely difficult to get him for the short notice work that video game voice acting requires (especially a "live" game like Destiny). - Destiny 2 repeated the phenomenon with Anastasia Bray, originally introduced to the game in the Warmind expansion in 2018. Ana's original voice actress, Jamie Chung, was replaced by Erika Ishii in 2020 with D2's Season of the Worthy update. At the same time, Bungie patched all of the Warmind content to include Ishii's performance for Ana, in much the same fashion as the first game's Dinklage-to-North switch for the player's Ghost. - In Far Cry 3, Jason was originally going to be voiced by Elias Toufexis, who ended up doing two years worth of voice work for the game. After the release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where Toufexis voiced protagonist Adam Jensen, Ubisoft replaced Toufexis with Gianpaolo Venuta since, in the words of the former, "they didn't want people playing this game and thinking of another game". Toufexis would later voice the lead in the spinoff title Far Cry Primal. - Final Fantasy: - Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015), outsourced to a different company with a different art team to the previous Dissidia games, reportedly had serious problems getting Cloud to look right. Early trailers for the game showed a somewhat shiny, elfin-looking Cloud which met with negative reception amongst members of staff, who complained that "something was off" about him and that he looked creepy. One person from Team Ninja complained in an interview with Famitsu that they 'must have remade Cloud's face a hundred times' due to inability to get him to look like the character. - Final Fantasy XV's lengthy Troubled Production and numerous rewrites resulted in a lot of these: - Early promo material focused heavily on Noctis's girlfriend, Stella Nox Fleuret, who was hyped up as having a strong, Silk Hiding Steel personality and the most important role in the story. Her charismatic design and comparisons to previous fan favorite Celes from Final Fantasy VI led to the fanbase getting attached to her. As XV's Development Hell creaked on, it was Retooled into a game about four guys on a road trip, and Stella's role became ancillary. Feeling that it would be disrespectful to Stella and the fans to use her in a drastically diminished role, she was replaced with a new character called Lunafreya Nox Fleuret. - Emperor Iedolas Aldercapt was originally going to be voiced by Shinji Ogawa. After Ogawa's death during the game's development, his dialogue was rerecorded by Shōzō Iizuka. - The game also ran into problems where Ink-Suit Actor child actors would age out of being able to perform their roles by the time rewrites necessitated new recordings, requiring recasts. - Final Fantasy XVI: Lord Byron Rosfield was originally supposed to be voiced by Stephen Critchlow, but due to his passing in 2021, the role was recast with Ewan Bailey providing the voice and Critchlow still being credited alongside his replacement. - For Gears of War 2, due to the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike, Marcus Fenix was briefly recast to the Texas-based Christopher Sabat, who has confirmed that he did some recording for the game. Once the strike was resolved, John DiMaggio was free to reprise his role, and Sabat's performance went unused. - Halo: - In Halo 4, David Anthony Pizzuto was the original voice of Ur-Didact, but he sadly passed away before he finished recording all of his lines. Keith Szarabajka voices the character in the final game. - Mike Colter played Jameson Locke in Halo: Nightfall and Halo 2: Anniversary, and performed motion capture for the character in Halo 5: Guardians. He was also set to voice him again, but due to scheduling conflicts with Luke Cage, Ike Amadi stepped in to voice Locke in the final game. - For Halo Infinite, actor Verlon Roberts announced pre-release that he was due to play the character of Spartan Griffin. In the final game he is still credited for a motion capture performance, but Griffin is voiced by Andrew Kishino instead. Given the circumstances, it is possible an NDA breach on Roberts' part is to blame. - Kingdom Hearts: - For a strange example of this happening with a Universal-Adaptor Cast, the original Kingdom Hearts was originally written so that Rikku, from Final Fantasy X, would appear as Leon's assistant, and Vincent, from Final Fantasy VII, would be Hades's undead champion. For various reasons, note : Which included concerns that it would be too confusing to have both a Riku and a Rikku in the game, and a decision that Vincent was too dark to fit into the Disney setting. the roles were recast with the Final Fantasy VII characters Yuffie and Cloud. This is still noticeable in Yuffie's costume, which is a variation of Rikku's outfit from her original appearance; and while Cloud's costume was more revised, it is an obvious amalgam of his and Vincent's costumes from their original appearances. - Some of the Updated Re-release compilations of the games replace a voice actors performance from the one game to maintain vocal consistency with the characters appearance in another game in the compilation: - Pierre Taki, Olaf's original Japanese voice actor, was patched out of Kingdom Hearts III following his drug arrest less than two months after the game's release. - Due to Rutger Hauer passing away before he could record his lines for the Re:Mind DLC of Kingdom Hearts III, Master Xehanort was recast as Christopher Lloyd for that DLC episode, providing not only new lines exclusive to the DLC, but new takes to some of the dialogue Hauer had already performed. - The Like a Dragon series had this happen two times retroactively due to Japan's culture of companies summarily axing and distancing themselves from talent that get into trouble with the law on drug charges: - Pierre Taki originally portrayed Kyohei Hamura in Judgment, but after an arrest on suspicion of drug possession, Sega pulled the game from shelves for a time until they could change the character so that he no longer bore Taki's likeness. - One of the main protagonists of Yakuza 4, Masayoshi Tanimura, was recast for the PlayStation 4 re-release after his original voice actor and model, Hiroki Narimiya, left the industry to return to his fashion design career after being framed for drug abuse allegations. Toshiki Masuda being brought on to provide Tanimura's voice and likeness. - Jason Marsden recorded lines for the Dead/Party Juju in Tak and the Power of Juju before he was replaced by Rob Paulsen late in development in the first game. Marsden's version of "Nice job, little dude!" was left in a commercial. - In the beta release of Star Wars Battlefront II (2017), Rey was voiced by Helen Sadler. By the time the game hit stores, she was replaced by Rey's original actress, Daisy Ridley. - Overwatch: - The French dub had Marie Vincent dub Ana Amari from her addition to the game up to September 2017, where she was replaced by Isabelle Leprince, with all her lines redone. - In the Italian dub Paolo Marchese originally voiced Reinhardt until April 2017, when he was replaced by Pietro Ubaldi who redid all his lines. - Fire Emblem: Three Houses: - In the E3 2018 reveal trailer, Edelgard was voiced by Cristina Valenzuela. By the time Nintendo's Fire Emblem Direct aired in early February 2019, she had been replaced by Tara Platt for unknown reasons. For a long time, it was speculated that this was due to Valenzuela breaking the NDA. note : Revealing their role before it was allowed by the developer. However, it was later revealed that the recasting was amicable; something changed Nintendo's mind on the story direction and thought a change of English voice actress was needed for it. - Male Byleth was voiced by Chris Niosi in both Three Houses and Fire Emblem Heroes. After his own indiscretions with the NDA, his lines were scrubbed from Heroes and he was replaced by Zach Aguilar, with his replacement voicelines included in Update 3.7.1 in Heroes, and Patch 1.0.2 in Three Houses. Aguliar's lines were also used when Byleth appeared as a DLC character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. - In Half-Life: Alyx, Merle Dandrige reprised her role as Alyx for most of the game's production, recording dialogue all the way up to the ending. However, midway through the writers decided that, given the game's status as a prequel set while Alyx is a teenager, they should go with a younger-sounding voice actor and swapped her for Ozioma Akagha. - Hwang in Soulcalibur VI was originally voiced by Lucien Dodge for his appearance as a NPC in Seong Mi-na's Soul Chronicle. Once he became a DLC character, however, the role was recast to SungWon Cho, who also re-recorded all of Dodge's lines for the character's aforementioned story appearances. - In the Professor Layton series, the UK releases of the games replace Lani Minella's portrayal of Luke Triton from the US release with British actor Maria Darling. - The original Mortal Kombat had an actor named Eric Kincaid playing the role of Shang Tsung. When the developers realized that Shang Tsung had fewer moves and animations than they needed for the final boss, Ho-Sung Pak, who played the protagonist Liu Kang, was brought in to recording additional frames in the same outfit. Since Ho-Sung Pak posed for the majority of the animation frames, only he was credited in the final version, but some of Kincaid's poses were still used. - Disco Elysium: - The Horrific Necktie as seen in the game is multicoloured, mostly green and blue with red accents, and has a mixture of paisley and floral prints in clashing colour schemes. However, at one point, it was orange. This can be seen in the portrait for the "Sensitive" prebuilt archetype, which shows the detective caressing the Necktie (as it tends to become a prominent character in builds prioritising PSY), with it being bright orange and having a consistent paisley print. Kim also references the tie being orange in one specific line of dialogue in his Debriefing scene at the end of the first day, when complimenting the player on their shoes - "I like the green. Goes with the orange." - It seems very likely that the role of the Scab Leader/Kortenaer was written with his original voice actor, Chapo Trap House's Felix Biederman, in mind; Korty's incompetent failson Sociopathic Soldier personality is in line with Felix's comic persona and obsession with modern military culture, and he's a Comic-Book Fantasy Casting of longtime Chapo enemy Peter Daou. In the Final Cut dub, where Korty is voiced by Mack McGuire, he still keeps his resemblance to Daou without the Casting Gag to make sense of it, making it seem like a weird detail. - Originally Dead by Daylight had Pinhead voiced by an unknown actor before being removed and later replaced by a returning Doug Bradley. - When the trailer for Stupid Mario Brothers Animated was released, all the voices were done by Rich Alvarez. When the first episode was released, the very same scene instead had Chris Muller reprising his role as Luigi, and Rich's wife Jackie voicing Peach. - A parody example is Homestar Runner / Strong Bad Email #177 Original, where Strong Bad retcons casting changes for Bubs and fabricates various behind the scenes conflicts and fan reactions. Pummeling Ensues when Bubs finds out. - Fans were allowed to watch the first episode of Red vs. Blue: Zero during RTX at Home 2020, in which the henchman Diesel was voiced by Ryan Haywood. Due to the controversial circumstances around him that led to his subsequent departure from Rooster Teeth, he was replaced by Daman Mills by the time the season actually came out. The only way to hear Haywood's performance is through reaction videos recorded during that early showing.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrwellianRecasting
Orphaned Series - TV Tropes Yet another proud member of the Candle Jack Appreciation Cl 6. They stick the first half of a two-part story in their first issue, little realising that 95% of 'zines that follow this course are destined never to produce issue 2. — "Ten Silly Things That Fanzine Editors Do", Doctor Who: The Completely Useless Encyclopedia When the author of a series abandons the storyline entirely — either from lack of interest, time, money, inspiration, or pulse — the series is said to be orphaned. This isn't much of a problem among professionally produced works, as their large team of creators, profitability, and susceptibility to Executive Meddling make it unlikely for them to be dropped for any reason other than cancellation, though it isn't unheard of. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Fan Fiction, Web Comics, role-playing fora, and other amateur works, on and offline. In fact, this is a particularly common problem with them, as many are created part-time by enthusiasts who've never written, drawn, or scripted anything before. They start on the first chapter, strip, or post, only to promptly forget about it. And if not that, they suffer from longer and more frequent Schedule Slips until either they take an "extended" hiatus that becomes permanent or they simply drop the work altogether. Sometimes, though not always, enough time passes that the abandoned work disappears from the site(s) hosting it. Usually this happens because the account or website hosting it dies off. On rare occasions, such a series resurfaces if the original artist returns to it. Or a fan may even "adopt" the series and pick up where the original artist left off. This is rare, and one reason is that fanfiction writers often find after some years that what they made is now regretful and they would rather forget about it. Orphaned series are liable to have a bad effect on free hosting services. Lists of works get clogged with abandoned entries, and sites become littered with hundreds of introductory strips. They can also engender a mistrust of the authors who abandon their work, as readers become wary of investing in anything they write in the future. See also Dead Fic, where a work gets this status without any reason given for the abandonment. Compare Vaporware, which is something the creator claims not to have given up on — but almost all the fans have; Stillborn Franchise, which is when a work could have gotten a series of Spinoffs, Sequels, and Prequels, but didn't; and Cliffhanger Wall, where a work ends on a cliffhanger, but the creator then pivots to making prequels, interquels, remakes, and spinoffs instead of resolving the cliffhanger. For when the work is orphaned in a more literal sense, see also Died During Production. If a creator has multiple examples of this on their record, see Attention Deficit Creator Disorder. It should not be confused with "orphaned works", where a copyright holder of the work is known, but the whereabouts are unknown or cannot be contacted, thus the work cannot be used without the unknown holder's permission unless under Fair Use. ## Example Subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other Examples: - The manga Chicago abruptly ended after two volumes, with an apology from the writer stating that she couldn't handle the schedule at the end of the second volume. - Akane Chan Overdrive lasted two volumes, the last of which had two chapters that were side-stories, without any resolution of the plot. - Manga artist Miwa Ueda orphaned the series Peach Girl: Sae's Story after two and a half volumes, because the birth of her child left her with little time to work on it. - Aqua Knight was abandoned by the author Yukito Kishiro in order to work on Battle Angel Alita: Last Order. He promised to be back later in the future, but even after finishing Last Order in 2014, there have been no signs of Aqua Knight continuing. With Kishiro focusing his efforts on Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle, the chances of Aqua Knight ever continuing look slim. - For that matter, only two OAV episodes of the Battle Angel anime were ever produced. Even if anybody was interested in reviving an anime version, it wouldn't legally be possible without the involvement of James Cameron, who purchased the adaptation rights to the series to produce a live-action film adaptation. While the film adaptation was released in 2019 after years of development hell, there has been no word on any further anime adaptations of Battle Angel Alita. - The prequel manga of Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening prematurely ended due to the artist quitting before Volume 3. - The manga Hellsing: The Dawn. 6 chapters since 2007 and then dropped. Not enough to even release a single collected volume. - Sailor Moon artist Naoko Takeuchi had several orphaned series in the wake of the end of her hit franchise. The first was PQ Angels, which was discontinued abruptly after only 4 chapters, and Kodansha lost the proofs of the portion that had been written. The manga was never published outside of its original serial run. Her second series, Love Witch, ran for three chapters, at which point Takeuchi had written that she was taking a vacation from which the series never returned outside of a one-shot side story. It was not until the 2005-2006 run of Toki Meca, expanded from the one-shot Toki-Meka, that Takeuchi saw a series through to its completion again. - Shaman King* formerly ended with No Ending since Hiroyuki Takei dropped it. However, the re-release of the manga eventually led to two new volumes to end the series. - CLAMP has several of these. - Clover had a story that concluded after two volumes. The third and fourth volumes are made of flashbacks, and according to CLAMP, two more volumes are needed to complete the story, but they haven't made anything yet, - Gate7 managed to have 4 volumes until it went into a hiatus in 2014. - Legend of Chun Hyang was dropped after a single volume, but CLAMP did mention that they would like to continue it in the future. - Legal Drug was halted for a few years, but it continued in 2011 under a new title, Drug and Drop. Then, they dropped it again in 2013. - X/1999, perhaps their most infamous example, has been on hold since 2003, with 18 out of a planned 21 volumes released. It ended on a cliffhanger, and the story was building towards a resolution. The magazine that had been publishing it ( Monthly Asuka) has since folded, and CLAMP has, supposedly, been searching to put it in a proper magazine - though at this point there are doubts that the group is still making serious efforts to pursue this or continue the work. - Fire Candy's mangaka left off her work after two volumes to begin another, although she did state in her last note that she'd like to return to the series after gaining more experience. - One of the more notable OEL titles to go out like this was No Man's Land, which the publisher heavily promoted and commenced work on a Flash adaptation of. Problems with the creator's schedules sadly led to the series dying after only two volumes. - Millennium Snow was orphaned by Bisco Hatori in 2002 after her breakout hit Ouran High School Host Club got popular. After finishing Ouran, she would eventually return to and finish Millennium Snow in 2013, just over 10 years later. - The short-lived series Shanghai Youma Kikai was put on hold so Hiromu Arakawa could work on Fullmetal Alchemist. - Beet the Vandel Buster was 12 volumes into its publication when production suddenly stopped in September 2006, due to artist Koji Inada's sudden illness. The manga started up again ten years later in 2016, though at a slower schedule than before since it moved to a monthly publication as opposed to a weekly one. - Happens constantly with fan translations of manga and fansubs of anime. One example that left readers disappointed is that of Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl. When AnimEigo licensed the series, the circle that had been fansubbing it stopped out of respect. Then AnimEigo dropped it just a third of the way through its 122-episode run, leaving the series doubly-orphaned for a while. Finally the fansubs were started again and completed the run. - This happened to a number of manga series both Japanese and OEL due to the closure of Tokyopop, one of the largest English-language manga and light novel publishers around. Pray another company picked it up, though chances are no one did. - Tokyopop was also hit with this a few years earlier due to a contract dispute with Kodansha that resulted in TP losing a large chunk of their catalog. Among the biggest losses were Beck (stopped a third of the way through the story) and Get Backers (stopped just before beginning the final story arc). - The hardest losses to take were titles like Peacemaker Kurogane and ARIA. Both manga were originally published in English by ADV before they went belly-up. Then Tokyopop rescued the series, only to close not long after. - The English translation of Life (2002) was cut short by Tokyopop, meaning over half of the series has never been released internationally. - Image Comics collaborated with Tokyopop in order to get the final half of King City out. - Like the Tokyopop example above, when Random House's (Del Rey's) manga division was taken over by Kodansha, only top-tier titles like Negima! Magister Negi Magi and Genshiken were continued or reprinted; everything else was dropped. - The decade of the 2000s is littered with the corpses of failed English-language manga publishers, most of whom only had a few series before dying. Casualties include Studio Ironcat, ComicsOne, and DC Comics-backed CMX (who at least got out all of Emma: A Victorian Romance before Dan Didio killed it). - Due to the continuing collapse of the English-language manga market (closely tied to the collapse of traditional bookstores), most of the remaining publishers have at least a few cancelled series under their belt. - Net Sphere Engineer was announced to be the sequel to BLAME! The first chapter excited many. A second chapter never came. While nobody actually knows what happened to the rest of the story, many opt for the answer that it was abandoned. - The story of Final Fantasy: Unlimited was plotted to last two seasons, but only the first season was animated. The story of the second season can be found in various supplemental media (available in Japanese only). - Stellvia of the Universe was originally meant to be (at least) three half-seasons, but due to personality conflicts the team broke up at the end of the second. At least it was a natural break-point. - Zombie Powder lasted only four volumes before it was canceled, due to various issues and complications in the author's life at the time. - Descendants of Darkness has been on hiatus since December 20th, 2002, due to Yoko Matsushita suffering a hand injury. Her art style has changed somewhat since because of this and she did work a little more on the manga afterwards. However beyond brief periods of "SHE'S GOING TO FINISH IT!" now and then, there's been nothing else beyond a few chapters after volume 11, all of which are finally being put in a 12th volume. Fans are just pretty much begging to hear how she planned to end the series now. - The English translation of the Kingdom Hearts manga ended on Kingdom Hearts II Vol. 2 after TokyoPop decided to discontinue the series due to financial problems. Good that there are fans who translate where TokyoPop can't, right? The series has since been picked up by Yen Press, and as of October 2013, the manga adaptations for the first three games has been re-released, with another one upcoming. - Gun Blaze West only got up to its third volume when it was canceled due to a combination of low readership and Nobuhiro Watsuki feeling he couldn't go any further with it. The series ends before the heroes even reach the fabled destination. - More of Orphaned Spin-Off, one of the manga-only arcs of Higurashi: When They Cry, Utsutsukowashi-hen (Reality Breaking Chapter) abruptly ended after three chapters in 2007. - Dub only example: For unknown reasons, Bandai Entertainment had stopped releasing the dub of Di Gi Charat Nyo! They stopped at episode 72, leaving the remaining 32 episodes with no dub. The company's closure pretty much killed any remaining hope of the dub being completed. - In Mexico, the most important publisher of comics was Grupo Editorial Vid, who published a large variety of titles for a bit more than 50 years. By the end of the 90s, they started to publish manga with Spanish translation. Plenty of titles were published for the Mexican market, but then, by the end of the 2000s, due to bad management choices (and mostly, due to the new Chief Editor decided to focus in other business, along with helping his children's artistic careers), they stopped publishing manga, leaving plenty of manga series without continuation, some of them just a few volumes before reaching their final volume. Even many series that were promised by them were completely canceled. Thankfully, around 2013, then-new comic and manga companies such as Panini and Kamite began to publish manga, the latter formed from what could be rescued from Vid's remains and the former rereleased Naruto and Bleach, both series previously launched by Vid (but stopped at vol. 24, so it will take 2 years to reach where Vid left them). - Happened with some manga in Brazil, especially by publishers Conrad and Panini (the former due to low sales and the latter due to financial difficulties). The most infamous examples are Fullmetal Panic Sigma and Otomen published by Panini which were put on hiatus for 4 years before being canceled. Other notable examples are Guin Saga (manga version), Crayon Shin-chan, Doctor Slump, Peach Girl and the deluxe edition of Dragon Ball. Subverted with Eden: It's an Endless World! which was canceled by Panini but was republished by JBC years after. The same happened with Monster and even One Piece, which were canceled by Conrad and republished by Panini (in the latter case, the publisher folded right as the CP9 arc was reaching its climax; Panini retranslated everything from the beginning while continuing the series from where it originally stopped). - The 90s hentai manga series Dragon Pink by ITOYOKO had nothing after its fourth volume; it stopped on a cliffhanger of Pink, its main female protagonist, being impaled by a sword, the sort of cliffhanger you'd expect a series to follow up on. ITOYOKO himself is still active in the H manga drawing scene, making it strange how he hasn't yet finished the story. - While the remake manga did get an ending, the original Birdy the Mighty manga just petered out after a while. Similarly, despite wrapping up the main plot and the arc of the second season respectively, the OVA series and Decode both still had subplots left unresolved. - Prism ended up being put on "hiatus" then eventually cancelled due to a plagiarism scandal. The mangaka has done other series since. - While Chonchu had its first part driven to completion, its second part is still pending 10 years after the end of the first part and there's no prospective date for a release. - Many manga/manhua/manhwa continued until the end but their non-official fans-translations didn't. Manhwa Metal Heart is such an example. - Yoo Ah Dok Jon only ran 15 chapters then was abandoned without any news. - PHD: Phantasy Degree aka Master School Olympus only ran to 10 volumes, while the author seemingly moved on to do other projects. - Cavalier of the Abyss was abandoned just after a big twist was revealed and nearly reaching a climax. - The Devil May Cry spin-off comic by Dreamwave was abandoned due to the company folding. - Jax Epoch and the Quicken Forbidden has only two volumes, Borrowed Magic and Separation Anxiety, with the third volume, Flannel Sorceress, still in progress since 1996. - It took David Lapham several years to find the time to complete the final issue of Stray Bullets. He claimed that after the birth of his child he was no longer able to rely on the inconsistent revenue and heavy time investment of a self-published series and that he had chosen to primarily seek work-for-hire and creator-owned work at the major publishers. He often stated a desire to finish the series, or at least the current arc, but a lack of time to do so. He was finally able to finish and release the final issue in 2014. - During the '90s, Joe Madureira started a comic called Battle Chasers, an epic fantasy story of which the first few issues hinted at a huge backstory. But it quickly started slipping from its schedule (because Joe Mad was spending all his time playing Final Fantasy VII, or so the legend goes) to the point where issue 7 was released 16 months after issue 6. The editorial in issue 9 promised that 10 would be out soon, but then Joe Mad left the comic industry altogether, basically leaving the story hanging (although a video game based on the comic has since come out). - Artist George Perez's creator-owned series Crimson Plague was ended after its first issue. Perez revived the series a few years later with Image Comics, only to end a second time after one new issue and a reprint of the original comic. - Martin Wagner signed a deal with Antarctic Press in 1996 to reprint the 12 issues of his self-published comic, Hepcats, and then start publishing new material. The only new material to emerge was a #0 issue; Wagner abandoned Hepcats before issue #13 made it to print, right in the middle of a multi-issue story arc called "Snowblind." 10 years later, Wagner announced that he would finish "Snowblind" as a webcomic, but after 4 years of virtually no progress, he threw in the towel and left the comics industry for good. - Marvel series NYX was slated to be an ongoing series but after numerous delays by both the writer (Joe Quesada) and the artist was declared a limited series simply to finish out the first story arc. - Marvel later released a follow-up mini-series, with a different writer and artist this time around. - NYX did, however, win a place in history as the first appearance in comics continuity of the successful Canon Immigrant Laura Kinney, aka X-23. - GoldenEye had a Comic-Book Adaptation that only got the first issue out of the planned three released, with rumours that the cancellation happened due to the suggestive cover for issue 2. - The comic M. Rex ended after two issues. About ten years later it received a cartoon that started to delve into the abandoned plots and more. - Sokora Refugees, a manga-inspired (in both art and story) comic, was super-popular before its abrupt end after two volumes. The comic's site, after two years in operation, stopped updating in November of 2006 and died completely a few months after. The artist mentioned the author had some personal issues after a few weeks of no new strips. What seems to have actually happened is that the creator landed her own syndicated daily comic strip, My Cage. The demands of doing four panels a day pretty much ensures that Sokora Refugees will remain an orphan unless something happens to My Cage. And now, we've jinxed it. - Alan Moore's miniseries Big Numbers stopped after two issues. This was particularly frustrating as due to the more literary, kitchen-sink-drama nature of the series, the audience didn't learn what direction the series was going in, how the groups of unrelated characters were going to interact, or what all the untranslated dialogue in some Indian language was about. The main cause was that illustrator Bill Sienkiewicz left the series and he was replaced by a nineteen-year-old assistant of his named Al Columbia. Columbia had to replicate the gritty, photo-realistic technique Sienkiewicz utilized for illustrating the previous Big Numbers issues, and he had to do so by specified deadlines. Columbia cracked under the pressure of such a herculean task and as a result, he not only left his Big Numbers work unfinished, but he destroyed much of his work, including two unpublished issues. Columbia, despite having a cult following generated by grotesque works such as The Biologic Show, remains somewhat a pariah in the comic industry. - Moore never finished Supreme or 1963 for various reasons that aren't really his fault, either. Moore's last script for Supreme (which did not resolve ongoing storylines) was finally illustrated and published twelve years later, preceding Erik Larsen's revival of the series. - The Ballad of Halo Jones reached a fairly satisfying conclusion, but only got a third of the way through Moore's original plan for the saga. - In the early '00s there was a quirky British comic titled Bazooka Jules, by Neil Googe, about a 16-year-old schoolgirl named Julie Glocke who gets mixed up in a plot involving aliens and super-science and gains the ability to turn into a ridiculously well-endowed Action Girl who can spontaneously pull gigantic pieces of armament out of thin air. It was criticized for the underage Fanservice, but fans and critics enjoyed the humor and Googe's expressive art style. Anyway, around issue #3 (it was planned to run for six), Googe took seriously ill and someone broke into the publisher's building, stealing the material for the planned future issues, which were never recovered. Googe got better and planned a relaunch of the series with artist LeShawn Thomas, but before it got off the ground they hit some copyright issues, Thomas left to do animation work on The Boondocks, and Googe himself eventually signed an exclusive deal with DC Comics. Neil Googe has retained Julie as a sort of signature character, but as a comic, Bazooka Jules seems to be as dead as it gets at this point. - Classic fantasy comic Wormy (sort of Dungeons & Dragons meets Pogo) stopped in mid-arc when David A. Trampier dropped off the face of the earth. \|\|He became a taxi driver\|\| - The Tick comic series ended abruptly (right before a big fight with the bad guys) when author Ben Edlund decided to spend time working on the cartoon. He never made it back, and given the current success of Supernatural, it's unlikely he'll be making it back anytime soon. - And especially given that the series has been relaunched under writer Benito Cereno. - Warren Ellis has a number of these to his name, many of them due to a hard drive crash in 2008 (as explained here). It didn't help things at all that he already had a reputation for Schedule Slippage prior to this. Projects affected by this include Fell, Desolation Jones, New Universal and Doktor Sleepless. Planetary and Ministry of Space both experienced lengthy schedule slips, but were, eventually, completed. - Pretty much everything by Rob Liefeld after he and the other Image founders left Marvel. He's become notorious for starting new comic titles (or revamping the existing ones) only to abandon his plans partway through. The list of mishandled crossovers alone can make a significant portion of this list. Most notoriously, he's gone SIXTY-TWO MONTHS between issues of a Youngblood limited series. - Mike Baron's Sonic Disruptors (a DC limited series from the late 80s) ended on a cliffhanger after seven of an originally-announced twelve issues, with no explanation given at the time. Eventually, Baron admitted he had been making it up as he went along and simply realized he had no idea where the story was going. It may be just as well; after an excellent first issue, it got So Okay, It's Average fast. - Xenozoic Tales started in 1987 as a bimonthly, but the artist's increasingly detailed drawings necessitated a gap before issue 4 and a reschedule to come out once every three months. This reschedule lasted only three issues before hitting another gap and ceasing to have a regular schedule beyond "when we get it ready." Space between issues got increasingly long, with only two issues released in 1989. The series had one issue a year each April for the next three years, then skipped 1993 entirely. Issue 13 came out in 1994 and issue 14 came out in 1996. There have been no issues since, though the author/artist has been known to claim in interviews that he will get back to it. Should we hold our collective breath? - Scud the Disposable Assassin was this for ten years, due to Creator Breakdown. It was finished up, working this into the plot as a Time Skip. - Unicorn Isle was a fantasy comic by Lee Marrs, c.1987, originally slated to run for 12 issues but cancelled after only 5 for unknown reasons. - Archie Comics once made a comic based on NiGHTS into Dreams and had made the initial three issue mini-series into a ongoing series in the same vein that the Knuckles The Echidna ongoing spun out of its second mini-series. However, after its second three issues, they put the series on indefinite hiatus and classified issues 4-6 as a second mini-series. - When Seven Seas Entertainment was first starting out and before they began to publish licensed manga, they released several original titles in the manga style. Having vastly misread the market for such titles (as well as the rapid decline of the publishing market since the company's founding), several of these series were cancelled due to low sales, while some others were stopped short due to other issues. Seven Seas has since largely switched to either one-volume releases (with sequels as sales demand), printed versions of original web series that have a high enough readership (such as Aoi House), or licensed series. Some of the casualties: - Seven Seas debuted with four OEL series, Amazing Agent Luna, No Man's Land, Last Hope, and Blade for Barter. Blade for Barter was cancelled after a single volume (with the conclusion to the cliffhanger published online to make it up to people who actually bought the first volume). Last Hope ran for two volumes with a third teased but then hit a wall when a contractual dispute arose between the publisher and the author that eventually led to the series being cancelled due to market concerns. No Man's Land was originally heavily publicized and also had a flash series started, but both the books and flash series were scrapped originally due to the artist and author having too many other commitments, and have been essentially cancelled due the company's concerns over the declining publishing market. - The Outcast sold well and the publisher intended to continue with it, but the author abruptly left it midway through the second volume for other commitments. - Both Unearthly and Captain Nemo never moved past their first volumes due to the author, who also runs the company, being forced to stop writing in order to run the company instead. - Ravenskull had a teaser for a second volume, but never moved past one. The artist was juggling multiple projects at the time, which led to delays before the second volume was quietly cancelled. No reason was ever given, though looking at Seven Seas response to other properties that have languished in development hell, its probably a safe bet this one won't be returning either. - Seven Seas have several manga and light novels they've licensed, and then never released, such as Ryohgo Narita's Vamp. The kicker is that a few of them are fully translated and ready to be printed, but SSE are reluctant to release them due to market concerns (in the case of Vamp!, they're worried that the series won't appeal to the Twilight crowd... which it wouldn't, but they're looking in the wrong place. It's doubtful those fans would be interested in a novel series featuring a vampire T-rex). - Bill Willingham's Coventry lasted two issues before it was discontinued. Willingham later wrote two short novels in the same universe. Arguably, his later series Fables may be a continuation of the Coventry universe, so perhaps it was not entirely orphaned. - In the mid-90s, three different companies produced comics based on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. The first company, Gladestone, published two mini-series set in Season Two before passing it to Marvel. Marvel did an adaptation of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie and started two series set in Season Three (one with the Rangers in morphed state and a flip book with the team in Ninja form coupled with stories based on VR Troopers). Only six issues of those were made before it was passed over to Awesome Comics where only one issue of a Power Rangers Zeo comic and an ad talking about a crossover between the Zeo team and Youngblood was made. Moral of the story - don't make comics set in an ever-changing continuity. - Wildsiderz was abandoned by writer/artist J. Scott Campbell after the second issue. In fact, he stopped doing Sequential Art altogether around then — now he does pin-ups and covers. Basically, this is a case of "100% uninterested in finishing it." - Randy Green's Dollz was, like M. Rex and Wildsiderz, a two-issue series that was never finished. As far as anyone can tell, Green got too caught up with other projects to bother with it. He still, however, produces art of the characters now and then, sort of like Neil Googe does with Julie Glocke. - Kevin Smith's second Batman miniseries, The Widening Gyre, follows the events of Cacophony and has been on hiatus after 6 issues since early 2010. Smith's reasoning for the delay boils down to "Being stoned all the time". - Before that, there was the infamous Daredevil/Bullseye: The Target mini-series. Long story short, Kevin Smith did a highly acclaimed Daredevil run in the 90s, and one of the most memorable issues had Bullseye killing Karen Page, Matt's girlfriend. Once Smith finished his run, Joe Quesada asked him to enter into a gentlemen's agreement that Smith would get the first shot at writing any future confrontation between Daredevil and Bullseye, as he'd set the stage for their inevitable showdown quite nicely. A few years later, Brian Michael Bendis had made it known that he wanted to have Bullseye return to the franchise, and Smith reminded Quesada of the deal they'd made. Quesada agreed to let Smith write Bullseye's return instead of Bendis, but on the condition that he do it immediately as part of a limited series. The ensuing limited series ( The Target) only ever saw one issue released before Smith lost interest and scrapped the whole thing. He's since said that he regrets agreeing to do the mini-series, as he did it more to hold Quesada to his word than any genuine desire to do another Bullseye story. - After an already erratic release schedule, Frank Miller's All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder abruptly ceased publication in 2008. A continuation called Dark Knight: Boy Wonder was announced in 2010, but as of 2020, it's yet to actually appear. - As stated above in Manga/Anime, Grupo Editorial Vid. It was the most important publisher of comics for the Mexican market, but then since the first half of the 2000s, they started to have problems, like losing the rights to publish Marvel Comics in Spanish, then losing the rights to publish DC Comics, Image, Dark Horse, etc. Thankfully, other publishers decided to work on these titles. - Director Jon Favreau partnered with superstar artist Adi Granov for a four issue mini-series called Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas. The series was meant to be released alongside the first Iron Man movie as a gateway book to get new fans interested in the comics, but only two issues were published before it fell victim to Schedule Slip and was then cancelled altogether. Also not helping matters was the fact that Favreau had a massive falling out with Marvel over the Executive Meddling he put up with while making Iron Man 2, meaning that even if he ever had any interest in finishing the mini-series, it's certainly not going to happen now. - Bad Planet by Thomas Jane was planned to be a 12-issue long series, but it was plagued by Schedule Slip during its development cycle. Volume 1 containing the first six issues was concluded, but the second volume hasn't been updated since 2013. Due to lack of funding, it's unknown if the series will ever see its conclusion. - French comic artist Olivier Ledroit wrote and drew a comic, The Scarlett Door, about a group of cyborg Transhumans who wake up from hibernation in a post-apocalyptic North America, which was discontinued after a single issue and ended on a cliffhanger. - After 23 years of running non-stop, Archie Comics' restructuring and financial troubles led to the cancellation of their Sonic the Hedgehog series. The last few issues were meant to head into a new arc but the axe came down at that point and nixed any future plans. The comics at the least were able to finish up the "Shattered World" arc (aka the Sonic Unleashed adaptation) and was as far as a proper closure the comic was going to get despite a ton of lingering plot lines. Sega since then gave the comic license to IDW. While the comic has the same writers, they opted to reboot the comic world rather than continue the previous universe. - On 2018, Cosmo The Merry Martian was rebooted as as the action-oriented Cosmo the Mighty Martian with the former writers of Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog series, most likely in an attempt to retain the latter's reader base after its cancellation. After five issues, the miniseries suddenly came to a stop in 2020 for no apparent reason, although since the writers were also working on IDW's own Sonic series at the time, it's a moot point. - Archive of Our Own allows an author to literally orphan a fic (original or otherwise), disowning a work that they no longer want to be attached to, with the "new" author being orphan_account. This can be done with both unfinished and completed works, and naturally, a vast majority of the fics "written" by orphan_account are of the former. - Harry Potter and the Breeding Darkness might have run solely on Plot Bunny fuel, but it is very well-written. Unfortunately, the fic seems to have been discontinued due to lack of interest and time to continue writing for it, and has now been put up for adoption. - With Strings Attached was this for a long time. The author, who started it in 1980 and began posting it online in 1997, gave it up in 2002 after her personal life imploded (mother had Alzheimer's, laid off from her job, etc.). The two-thirds of the book she'd finished remained on her website to drive readers nuts. She never thought she would finish it, but in early 2009 she was hit by literary lightning, wrote 300 pages in 3 weeks, and finished the thing. (The final product in book form is over 650 pages long.) She has now released the first half of the long-promised sequel, The Keys Stand Alone. - Colonization: First Contact is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic with the typical "human in Equestria" premise, except with a twist: instead of the typical self-insert, it features a space expedition of scientists and soldiers who stumble upon the planet Equestria. Unfortunately, it petered out just as things had started getting interesting; all we got are five chapters, and a piece of the sixth on the author's profile. The author later announced he will not be finishing the fic (and offers it to any enterprising author who would like to finish it.) - Fimfiction.net allows authors to label their stories as being "On Hiatus" or "Cancelled", though whether or not an orphaned fic will actually make use of either label is a toss-up. - Invoked by the Harry Potter fanfic "Our Obligations", where the writer specifically wrote the last chapter as a No Ending just to give people this impression. - Yellow Submarine, a Harry Potter fic, was almost finished when its author decided to wrap up an earlier loose end. The related subplot was reintroduced, then abandoned. - The Avatar: The Last Airbender series Consequences of Our Pasts was meant to be an exploration of the Avatar cycle starting with Aang and show the results of having no Airbenders left for the cycle to use, as well as explore how events in the distant past made the canon War inevitable. Midway through the second of five projected stories, the author put it on hold for over two years due to Real Life concerns, then expressed dissatisfaction and burnout (as well as belief that Embers (Vathara) expressed his intended themes more effectively) before finally removing it all from Fanfiction Dot Net. Only the first part of the first story, The Aftermath: Aang's Book, is now archived here, and that is mostly setup. - The "Partners" series by Nate Grey will never be finished due to the author losing interest in Pilot Candidate over the years. - Obscure Splatoon fanfiction Orange and Blue by Inkling Studios. It was first cancelled as a fanfic in late 2016, then being revived in early 2017 as a webcomic... only for THAT to be cancelled as well due to the creator losing interest in the game and having poor experiences with the fandom. - Twilight Pretty Cure was abandoned after the author was accused of mishandling sensitive subjects such as rape. Though she tried to address this problem by rewriting the story to make it less offensive, the backlash against it eventually caused her to give up on it completely with several of the revised chapters still not reposted. - When the Monster Musume anime first aired back in 2015, several artists and anons met on imageboards to discuss the series, and decided to create a parallel story starring the Bicycle Cop and girls from the most dangerous liminal subspecies available, as a sort of "evil" counterpart of Kimihito's harem. So Everyday Life with Bicycle Cop was born. High-quality art of the girls was made, along with backstories and info pages that perfectly replicated Okayado's writing and drawing style. Several strips were made to show the interactions between the girls and the cop, like a very funny and occasionally sweet sitcom. Unfortunately the artists either got bored, had other commitments or jumped to other fanbases, so the project slowed down and eventually came to a halt. The anons sent the whole work to Okayado as a sign of gratitude, in any case. - Grej created a Jreg fan series called Realicide. Officially, three episodes have been released with shorts in-between. It was given the Approval of God and is a piece of Ascended Fanon, with the events of Realicide being acknowledged in Centricide to be simultaeneously occuring. Jreg even expressed desire to collaborate with the Grej team one day. However, the series was officially canceled in mid-2021 as the creators were burnt out and wanted to move on to other projects. - The fic Hell and High Water was cancelled in 2022, though at that point the last chapter was written two years prior, which itself was written a year after the previous one. The author cited these long update gaps as one of the reason for dropping the fic. The other was the bloated nature of the plot, as he felt there were too many needlessly complicated details, characters, and plot beats. He did suggest that he may revisit the story in the future, albeit completely rewriting it to be more condensed and focused. - The Danganronpa fic series Legacy Of Hope, a reboot of A New Hope (Danganronpa), was ultimately shelved due to story fatigue and loss of communication with the original author (the reboot is ghostwritten). As such, A New Luck abruptly ends on the third story arc, but the author gave out the list of killers, victims, and survivors. - Universe Falls, a Steven Universe and Gravity Falls crossover retelling was 102 chapters in, and halfway through what they called "Arc 9" of a planned 11 arc story. There were even preliminary plans to do a sequel series once they finished. They even had the titles for the remaining episodes posted online for what the general flow/themes of the remaining parts of the story would be. But then, in mid 2022, the author announced that he was putting the fic on "indefinite hiatus". In part because of sheer exhaustion for having worked on it for 7 years and no longer considering it fun. In part because they had other stories they were now more invested in. And in part because of a psychosomatic association it now has with the death of their father. While apologetic, they just don't have the flow anymore to finish it out. - The first two installments of Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series, 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two have film adaptations, but not 2061: Odyssey Three or 3001: The Final Odyssey. Tom Hanks expressed interest in doing film adaptations of the last two, but this was ages ago, Douglas Rain has died, and Keir Dullea is probably too old to do the rest of the series. - The Chronicles of Narnia survived a Channel Hop of distributors (from Disney to Fox), but then Walden Media's contract with the C. S. Lewis estate ended, and the series is on hold again. The third film's poor reviews and Adaptation Decay certainly didn't help. While a planned adaptation of The Silver Chair was announced back around 2013 which would've be a reboot directed by none other than Joe Johnston, it has since been canceled as of 2019 in favor of a new reboot of some sort for Netflix. - Zack Snyder planned an arc of five films in the DC Extended Universe that would see the birth, fall and rise of the Justice League and apocalyptic fights against the New Gods in a Bad Future. Ultimately, only three films were made — Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Zack Snyder's Justice League due to the studio (now called DC Studios) and Warner Bros. having been disoriented by the ferocious backlash upon the release of Batman v Superman (which cause the Justice League film to suffer from it, and the version of Snyder could only be saved thanks to a fan campaign) and having distanced themselves from Snyder as a result. - The Divergent Series had this fate given that the final book Allegiant was split into two movies ( Allegiant and Ascendant)...that were not shot concurrently. note : This was unlike Lionsgate's previous YA franchise The Hunger Games, whose two-part finale was filmed back-to-back, so it was able to release the second even if the first underperformed (which it didn't). Divergent obviously wanted to follow its lead, but the series never generated as much interest as The Hunger Games and the second film underperformed, which should be enough writing on the wall for Lionsgate to cut the films' funding. Part one ended up being a Box Office Bomb, so the next one never materialized. - Eragon never had any sequels despite 3 later books to adapt. The film underperformed - not financially, but regarding its critical and audience reception - and there wasn't enough interest in continuing it. - The Last Airbender only adapted the first season of the three season animated series it was based on, but due to a poor critical and audience reception the planned sequels were never made. - Older Than Print: At the beginning of The Canterbury Tales, the characters are all heading to Canterbury for various reasons, and it's stated that each one will (for a story contest) tell two stories on the way there, and two on the way back. However, it breaks off before they make it to Canterbury or even have one character tell more than one story (in some cases, such as the Cook's Tale, the story is incomplete). Whether or not Geoffrey Chaucer simply abandoned it or meant to finish it but died first is unknown. (An alternative explanation is that the work was completed, but no complete version of the manuscript has been retained or recorded.) - Some scholars consider The Tale of Genji an example. It cuts off abruptly with the potential for plenty more story. - Robin Jarvis seemingly abandoned his Hagwood trilogy after the first book. Indeed, for over a decade there was only one book, but the final volumes were released in 2013 and 2016, respectively. However, his Intrigues of the Reflected Realm series still only has one book, Deathscent. Hagwood and Intrigues of the Reflected Realm debuted at about the same time, and now the latter has remained unfinished for longer than the former. - Quest Of the Gypsy by Ron Goulart was supposed to be six books long, but stopped after the second book in 1977. - Stieg Larsson's The Millennium Trilogy was planned to be a decalogy, but was cut short in 2007 after only three books by his sudden death. The series' publisher would later hire David Lagercrantz to continue the series in Larsson's stead, releasing the fourth installment in 2015. - Kim Newman writing as Jack Yeovil's Demon Download series for Games Workshop's Dark Future universe has been awaiting the fourth and final installment since 1991. Despite GW republishing the earlier works, there's no sign of the final volume ever appearing in print. - Tales of the Nine Charms by Erica Farber and J.R. Sansevere had two books published in 2000 and 2001 respectively and claims to be a trilogy. As of 2014, the third book has yet to materialize. - The Architect of Sleep by Steven R. Boyett ends on a cliffhanger that may never be resolved. After wrangling with his publisher over the sequel, Boyett took the unusual step of buying the rights back and has stated repeatedly that he no longer has any interest in finishing the series. - Charles Stross has explained that he will not be continuing The Eschaton Series beyond its existing two installments because he feels he made some worldbuilding mistakes so serious at the end of Iron Sunrise as to make that universe unviable. - George R. R. Martin attempted to start a number of short story series (he says in Dreamsongs, "My career is littered with the corpses of dead series") before settling on Haviland Tuf, chronicled in the Tuf Voyaging fixup novel. - Changeling and Madwand by Roger Zelazny set a stage for multidimensional conflict of technology vs. magic vs. Eldritch Abominations and just stop there. In over a decade the author never came back to the setting. - Roald Dahl's third book about Charlie Bucket and Willy Wonka, Charlie in the White House — which would have picked up from the Sequel Hook at the end of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator — never got further than Chapter One. - The War Against the Chtorr is at risk of becoming this, as David Gerrold is pushing 70 years of age and has yet to finish Book 5 (of a planned 7), after Book 4 ended on a cliffhanger. - Lilith Saintcrow's Steelflower trilogy wound up subverting this. At one point, the author stated on her website that she would not be continuing the series due to heavy piracy of the ebook edition of the first installment, but wound up releasing the second and third installments of the trilogy nearly ten years later, completing it. - Empire from the Ashes ( Dahak) sets the stage for an interstellar war of epic proportions, where human ancestors have been fighting genocidal aliens, whose invasions kept nearly (but not quite) exterminating them for millions of years. The first book, Mutineer's Moon, is about a stranded picket planetoid waking from 50 000 years of sleep to enlist the help of the Lost Colony Earth. Armageddon Inheritance is about figuring what killed the rest of the interstellar Imperium/Empire and fighting the invasion, this time with a fleet of planetoids and using exploding stars as death traps. Heirs of Empire is about slowly preparing a counterstrike while surviving a coup and establishing order on another Lost Colony, this time stuck in the flintlock era. And then nothing since 1996. Presumably, David Weber is busy writing about Honor Harrington and Bahzel. Meanwhile the animated adaptation has been in pre-production limbo since the early 2000s. - Terry Jones's The Lady and the Squire, the sequel to the children's novel The Knight And The Squire, ends on a downer with two major characters missing-presumed-dead and the three main characters splitting up. It was published in 2000 and never continued. - Dragon Queen, a Web Serial Novel, stopped updating in March of 2015, with eight chapters up. - Diane Carey had initially planned at least one or two more books revolving around Piper, the character she introduced in what would eventually be called the Fortunes of War story, but those novels never came about. - Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories: The introduction of Volume 1 makes it clear that Dr Asimov was intending to work with Doubleday to republish all of his fiction in a format that would make finding stories easy, but having only 88 stories/poems when his short Science Fiction is more than two hundred shows that at least two more volumes would be needed. Once you add in the Mystery Fiction and Poetry counts, the two lonely volumes look very incomplete. - The Maradonia Saga. The last new book to be released was Maradonia and the Law of Blood, all the way back in 2010. The series presumably stalled due to its author Gloria Tesch preferring to focus on The Movie. It seems like the creators ran out of money and gave up on the series after the film's premiere, making the story end on an unresolved cliffhanger. Several other factors point towards the series being cancelled: as of January 2020, the Maradonia websites are down, none of the e-books are available for purchase, the only physical copies for sale are used, and Gloria Tesch's website focuses on her modelling. To make matters worse, Gerry Tesch, Gloria's father and the one person who helped promoting and publishing the series, died in 2018. In December 2019, Gloria Tesch released The Secret of Moon Lake (under the new name/pseudonym Sofia Nova) and called it her debut novel, effectively disowning Maradonia. - Erec Rex was supposed to be an eight-book series. The fifth entry was published in 2012. The official site currently has a headline "Book Six is underway!"...from 2014. - Tales of Elethiya, a planned ten book length web serial novel seems to have stalled out at three instalments and the website where they were available is offline leaving the series in limbo. - The Starkillers Cycle, a serialized online Space Opera novel available on Tumblr that was co-authored by Sarah J. Maas and Susan Dennard. It was first uploaded in 2014 but then stopped being updated and has since been taken down. It's been speculated this is because of Dennard and Maas breaking off their friendship (the details aren't public but it's been noted they no longer interact during interviews/panels or post about their friendship, and they've stopped following each other on social media). - The Familiar, an ambitious book series written by Mark Z. Danielewski that was planned to span 27 volumes, with each volume being a whopping 800+ pages filled with interlocking stories and characters, was prematurely halted at less than 25 percent complete after the fifth volume was released, as the publisher lost faith in it with sales being poor. - Chappelle's Show when Dave couldn't handle the fame and pressure after the success of the first two seasons. He literally walked out on the production of the third season, even after Comedy Central offered a bigger paycheck. He is currently focusing on performing stand-up. - The Sarah Jane Adventures, the kid-friendly spin-off of the modern Doctor Who series, ended halfway through Series Five following the death of star Elisabeth Sladen (the production team weren't willing to replace her or carry on without her). Fortunately, although one story arc — related to Sarah Jane adopting an alien girl — was left incomplete, the series' storylines were standalone enough to avoid any loose ends. - Twin Peaks was this for over 25 years. The movie, Fire Walk With Me, rather than concluding the story, was supposed to mark the transition from TV to films, but after its failure at the box office, the follow-up was never made. A revival series eventually aired in 2017, concluding the story at last (or not). - Technically, you might say this of Sonny with a Chance. Season 3 ended with Sonny Munroe (sort of) reconciling with Chad Dylan Cooper and landing a job singing songs in an outdoor café. Before the fourth season was to continue the plot line, Demi Lovato went to rehab to treat self-harm, bulimia and drug and alcohol abuse, as well as her bipolarity, and she decided at the end that returning to Sonny wouldn't be a good thing for her recovery. So Random!, which only loosely brought back the SWAC characters and cast (with a few additions) as part of their "Show Within a Show Becom(ing) A Show", did not mention Sonny or "Channy" at all, used Chad Dylan Cooper as a Random, and was canceled after one season. Demi never even got to guest on an episode as herself or Sonny. - Though the stories of its characters would be continued in film, Star Trek: The Original Series doesn't cover all of the five-year mission of the Enterprise, ending unceremoniously. - Bryan Fuller is the victim of this trope way too frequently: - Wonderfalls had completed a full season of episodes but only four aired before FOX pulled the plug. The story behind the Muses remains unresolved and several planned stories, including a lesbian's mystery pregnancy and a stint by Jaye in a locked ward never played out. - Pushing Daisies ended after two shortened seasons with many unanswered questions and dangling plot threads, not least of which is the source of Ned's ability. - Although Hannibal made it through three seasons and seemed to come to a conclusion, Word of God confirms that \|\|Will and Hannibal both survived the Fall\|\|. Fuller had planned on five seasons and has expressed repeated interest in adapting Silence of the Lambs. - Fuller also has two failed pilots to his credit, Mockingbird Lane and High Moon. - Even his Carrie (2002) counts. It's an adaptation of the Stephen King novel that was talked about expanding into a TV series, so it ends openly in the hopes that the story could continue. Despite strong ratings justifying a series, he soon realised the network weren't interested. - The BBC adaptation of John Christopher's trilogy The Tripods was cancelled after the first two series (covering books one and two) leaving it in limbo. - New Amsterdam (2008): Fox halted production of the show after only filming eight episodes out of a planned 13. The only reason the show even aired was because the network was starving for material during the 07-08 writer's strike. After airing all of the completed episodes, Fox officially canceled it. - The Vocaloid series "Synchronicity" was thought by fans to have been abandoned, since the third and final video in the trilogy has yet to be released. This notion was perpetuated when an incomplete version of the final video was allegedly posted on Japanese video sharing site Nico Nico Douga before quickly being removed. However, the creator of the series, Hitoshizuku, claimed that no such video was ever uploaded, and she has confirmed on her blog that the conclusion to the series is in progress, though she stated that fans might have to wait awhile for it to be released. - The 1995 David Bowie album 1. Outside was intended to be the first part of a trilogy of concept albums. Bowie apparently lost interest in the project. - Similarly, George Michael's 1990 album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 was intended to be part one of a Distinct Double Album, 'Volume 1' containing pop-rock and soul influenced tracks. 'Volume 2', which was intended to be a dance album, was never finished because of disputes with the record company. Michael had recorded 4 tracks for it. He contributed three of them — "Too Funky", "Do You Really Want To Know", and "Happy" — to the Red Hot + Dance AIDS charity album. "Too Funky" was released as a single with the b-side "Crazyman Dance", also recorded for the cancelled album. The Vol. 1 single "Waiting For That Day"'s b-side "Fantasy" may also have been intended for the album as it fits in stylistically. It isn't known if Michael recorded any more songs for the cancelled Vol. 2 or carried them over to his later albums Older or Patience. It is unlikely the record company wanted him talking about unreleased material so it may not be known for a while. - Shirley Manson recorded a solo album. The studio refused to release it considering it non-commercial, and she also gave up putting the songs out on her own. - Simple Minds recorded a promo video for This Is It, and clips were shown in a promo video for the album Graffiti Soul. The song was ultimately not released as a single, and the full video has not been released. - The Beach Boys had planned for a Stars & Stripes series featuring various other artists (primarily in Country Music) doing remakes of their most famous hits. After Stars & Stripes, Vol. 1 bombed, they abandoned any plans for a Vol. 2, although one track for what would have become Vol. 2 (a cover of "In My Room" with Tammy Wynette) later appeared on one of Wynette's compilation albums. - The Residents intended on releasing a six-part "mole trilogy" set in the same universe as the Mark Of The Mole Concept Album: They cut things short after a disastrous tour supporting Mark Of The Mole itself, and only put out three albums and an EP revolving around the concept. One of those releases is a Live Album presentation of Mark Of The Mole itself ( Mole Show), and all the others ( Tunes Of Two Cities, Intermission, The Big Bubble) are supposed to be music made In-Universe by the feuding societies depicted in Mark Of The Mole, so the whole story-line ultimately has No Ending. - Limp Bizkit EP The Unquestionable Truth, Part 1, bore a more serious tone than usual LB fare, and served as a comeback record for guitarist Wes Borland. Naturally the title implied there would be another part, but EP sold badly and Borland walked away again after its release (he rejoined the group later, but little was heard about the second part since then, especially with their main album stuck in Development Hell). - Miley Cyrus was originally planning in 2019 to release a 3-part album project called She Is Miley Cyrus, releasing it in the form of 3 EPs throughout the year. Only the first EP, She Is Coming, saw a release, with the later two, She Is Here and She is Everything, being indefinitely postponed after her tumultuous breakup with Liam Hemsworth. In the following year, she announced that the project was scrapped and rebooted from scratch (she claimed that it didn't make sense to continue on with the pre-breakup material), culminating in the release of an entirely new album, Plastic Hearts, near the end of 2020. - Kanye West's first three albums between 2004 to 2007 ( The College Dropout, Late Registration, and Graduation) heavily revolved around college and themes of growing up into adulthood, with Kanye planning immediately after Graduation to complete the series with an album titled Good Ass Job. Then Kanye was hit with multiple of personal tragedies all at once, including the sudden death of his mother and breakup with his fiancé, which prompted an almost complete overhaul in musical direction with 808s and Heartbreak. The last news that anyone has ever heard of Good Ass Job was Kanye announcing in 2018 that it would be salvaged as a collaboration with Chance the Rapper, but word of that too has since stagnated, with Kanye focused on other projects since. - The Pinball 2000 line from Williams Electronics, heralded as the future of pinball, debuted with Revenge from Mars and Star Wars Episode I. Although both machines were well-acclaimed and decent sellers, Williams' shareholders decided to pull out of the arcade gaming business all together to focus solely on slot machines. - In a sort of Show Within a Show style example, this phenomenon got a reference in the RPG sourcebook GURPS Fantasy II, where the greatest poet of a certain ancient civilization has been suffering a writer's block for thousands of years, his magnum opus left one volume short of completion. Rather than an isolated case, this is another symptom of said civilization's stagnated nature. - While the game itself has continued without a hitch, Konami is notorious for creating and then dropping various deck archetypes for the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game. While the anime-based ones are forgivable, the original ones are not, especially when some of those archetypes are left orphaned with only an opening hand's worth of cards to their name. Fortunately, Konami seems to be realizing that they have those archetypes orphaned, and are starting to readopt them with new support in the game's more recent sets. - Mage: The Ascension's revised Convention books, covering the groups of the game's primary antagonist group, the Technocracy. The first book in the series, Iteration X, was released in 2002, proving to be a considerable improvement over the original... then White Wolf went and ended the Old World of Darkness. Fans thought that was it for the Convention books. However, at Gencon 2011, WW announced they'd be doing the remaining four Convention books, and finally completed the set in October 2013. - On the subject of the oWoD, both Wraith: The Oblivion and Changeling: The Dreaming were ended before the other lines, and both were left incomplete. Wraith's Guildbook series was left unfinished, with five of the thirteen Great Guilds not covered. In Changeling's case, meanwhile, Book of Glamour was announced, but never saw light of day (and is unlikely to, its intended content being superseded by Changeling's 20th Anniversary edition), and the Kithbook series was cut short, with the Boggans and Sidhe not done (though Nobles: the Shining Host is considered an unofficial Sidhe Kithbook). Fortunately, a Boggan kithbook was funded as a stretch goal for the Kickstarter to fund a deluxe version of the Changeling 20th Anniversary corebook. - In a particularly early example, the Horace series of video games on the ZX Spectrum became orphaned following the departure of its creator from the video game industry in the mid-80's after suffering a collapsed lung. The series came to a close in 1985, with a standalone game appearing ten years later, and then nothing since. - Any game released on an episodic schedule can be prone to this if the first episodes don't stir up enough interest and the developers are fired (as is the case with SiN Episodes: Emergence, whose development studio was disintegrated after the release of the first episode Emergence) or lose interest and move on to other, better things (Telltale Games, for example, released only the first two episodes to their Bone series, which were met with lukewarm reviews, before moving on to the much more successful Sam & Max: Freelance Police series). - After Half-Life 2 Episode 2 ended on a cliffhanger, gamers eagerly awaited a resolution in Episode 3 which was supposed to come in by the end of 2007. However, after Valve missed this deadline the project was never seen or heard from again, with Half-Life 2 Episode 3, or eventually, Half-Life 3 becoming one of the most infamous pieces of Vaporware in video game history. During 2016 and 2017, most of the key creative story staff from the Half-Life series left Valve, which many saw as the final nail in the coffin for Half-Life 3's chances of ever getting made. - 2020 saw the release of a VR interquel named Half-Life: Alyx, the first Valve-produced entry in the Half-Life series for over a decade, which follows the exploits of Alyx Vance 5 years before the events of Half-Life 2, with the ending suggesting that the timeline was rebooted. This, along with announcements from Valve stating their plans to continue the series, may mean the long-awaited subversion of this trope. - Team Fortress 2 was another victim to "Valve Time", in this case most regarding its comic series. Initially announced in 2013 for a bi-monthly 7-issue story arc, only 6 issues were completed between 2013 and 2017, and the final issue nowhere to be seen. Following issue 6's release, the development team of TF2 had massively downsized, and in 2019, series artist Heather Campbell confirmed that issue 7 was not in active development as everyone moved onto different projects, and barring the possibilities of "waiting to see if/when the stars align", it seems it'll stay that way. - Left 4 Dead was yet another series that was left abandoned by Valve (Starting to see a pattern here?). The last game was Left 4 Dead 2 which was released all the way back in 2009. This is despite the fact that both the first and second game being released merely a year apart. Although there have been hints on Valve attempting to make a sequel, they were merely rumours and nothing substantial has been released, despite fans begging Valve to make a sequel due to the game's aging engine. - The LucasArts adventure game Loom was conceived as the first game in an epic fantasy trilogy, with an extremely confusing cliffhanger ending to get players interested in a potential sequel. For years, many fans speculated that the sequels were dropped because Loom wasn't as critically acclaimed as LucasArts had hoped (it was) or because it didn't sell very many copies (it did), but LucasArts would later confirm that the sequels were dropped because no-one at the company wanted to work on them. - Full Throttle sold well enough that the company intended to create sequels. However, two different attempts to put one together fell apart in the process. As the creator Tim Schafer left LucasArts not long after the first sequel attempt to form Double Fine, and LucasArts went under in 2013, it's safe to call this one dead (outside of a remake). - Tim Schafer is cursed with these. - Brütal Legend was intended to be the first title in a series and the ending has a Sequel Hook. The second game had even started pre-production at Double Fine when Electronic Arts swiftly cancelled it in response to low sales of the first title. Years later, when EA dropped support for the title, DF gained full rights to the game, allowing them to finally release a PC port, and the fate of the sequel or new content all depends on whether the PC port sells well or not (which, so far, it seems to be doing much better on PC than on consoles). - Tim stated in 2017 that a sequel can and will happen eventually, he just needs to work on Psychonauts 2 first. The Psychonauts crowdfunding campaign did say that it passing would make the sequel much more likely. Eventually it was successfully funded and the sequel was released in 2021 to much applause from the fans. Awesome. - Betrayal at Krondor enjoyed immense success and is now a cult classic. The team that put it together was just starting to work on a sequel when the studio broke up the RPG department and crashed the whole project. A Spiritual Successor, Betrayal in Antara, and a thematic successor, Return to Krondor, eventually appeared, but the first had nothing in common with its predecessor except for the general game engine, and the latter was a sequel in name only. (And Betrayal in Antara would get abandoned itself, though fewer people cared about that.) The actual project intended by the creators of Betrayal to expand on that storyline and tie off all the loose ends, called Thief of Dreams, never saw the light of day. - This trope seems to have hit Sega particularly hard: - Before being released, six episodes for Shenmue were planned. The first episode was critically acclaimed, but flopped financially, so they decided to make the series shorter, by merging episodes 2, 3, 4 and 5 into a single episode, leaving the series with only 3 episodes. But Shenmue II (still universally acclaimed as an awesome game) flopped even harder than the first one (all thanks to the game being released as an Xbox exclusive in America, and the Dreamcast dying out in Europe and Japan), so plans for future games in the series were abandoned by Sega. Creator Yu Suzuki managed decades later to get a Shenmue III done with the help of crowdfunding. But the story still ends on a Sequel Hook and the game has a letter hoping for a Shenmue IV. - El Dorado Gate was intended to be released in 24 bimonthly installments. Due to the death of the Dreamcast, the last 14 volumes were canned. Slightly averted in that Capcom planned for this ahead of time, and gave the game a proper ending in Volume 7. - SEGA also had the honor of publishing High Voltage Software's The Conduit and its sequel, both designed to fully capitalize on the Wii's processing power. Unfortunately, even though they both end with a Cliffhanger, poor sales of the latter discouraged High Voltage Software from continuing the series. - Commander Keen ends rather suddenly with an impending battle between Commander Keen and his arch nemesis who intends to destroy the universe. Both Commander Keen 5 and 6 make reference to this impending conflict, but the story was never finished. Unless you count the Game Boy Color version, which doesn't exist. - Viewtiful Joe claimed that there'd be two more times the world needed to be saved at the end of the first game and the sequel ends on a cliffhanger. Odds of the 3rd game ever coming out are pretty damn low now that Clover Studios doesn't even exist anymore, and most of the employees are working at PlatinumGames now, which isn't associated with Capcom. - Legacy of Kain was last seen with the Big Bad still at large and many plot lines still hanging. Due to the death of a major voice actor and the departure of the main writers (and the death of another), the story will never be completed. - Anachronox ended on a cliffhanger. The game was a critical hit with a cult following, but didn't sell too well. Then there's the fact that that the development team was fired the day before the game was released. So no sequel for you. - No One Lives Forever was abandoned by Monolith in favor of First Encounter Assault Recon and Condemned: Criminal Origins. The odds of a modern reboot, sequal, or remaster are unlikely now since now no one's sure who even owns the IP. - The four-part Swordquest series from Atari was cut short with the release of Waterworld, the third game in the series, thanks to The Great Video Game Crash of 1983. - Freedom Force is a pair of light-hearted yet brilliant superhero pastiches that blended pastiche with actual overarching plots and solid gameplay. Unfortunately, they didn't sell that well so development on the third entry died. Since then the studio has become so focused on (and rich by) making the Bioshock series that the cliffhanger ending of the second game will likely never be cleared up. - The Croc series ended after two normal games and two mobile games, due to Argonaut Software folding. The mobile games have long been unavailable for download, so the only games most people will play are Croc 1 and 2. A 3rd game in the series was announced but never released. The games were serious contenders to Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon at the time, and could have gone on to better things. - Sadly, Klonoa had fallen victim to this for years, the series' last console game released in 2001, and last handheld game released in 2005 (outside Japan). There was a brief revival, when the first game was remade for Wii, but sales were very low, so the series was stuck in limbo again. Fortunately, there was an announcement for a Compilation Rerelease of both the first and second console games called The KLONOA Phantasy Reverie Series, meaning that the series is starting to get some activity once again. - Breath of Fire fell victim to this after the release of Dragon Quarter. Though Camelot Software Planning offered to revive the franchise, nothing ever came of it. - Mega Man Legends has unfortunately become this with 3 being cancelled. - Continuing with Mega Man, Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X was intended to kickstart a series of Mega Man X remakes whose story was more in line with Keiji Inafune's original vision. Unfortunately, poor sales killed that idea after the first installment. - Final Fantasy XV had a second season of DLC campaigns planned with episodes dedicated to Ardyn, Noctis, Lunafreya, and Aranea that would fill in the gaps in the story, similar to the episodes for Gladiolus, Prompto, and Ignis. Unfortunately, due in part to the departure of head developer Hajime Tabata, the second season of DLC was cancelled, making Episode Ardyn the last DLC campaign released for the game. - Bonk also appears to sadly be another victim of this, with Bonk 3DS and Brink of Extinction being cancelled due to the dissolution of Hudson Soft. - Shadow Hearts, due to the dissolution of Nautilus. - Monster Rancher, aside from a bare-bones freemium mobile app, was last seen as a handheld game in 2010, and hasn't had a proper numbered console installment in over a decade. The only speckle of hope is an homage to the series in Deception IV in the form of a Suezo trap. This ended in 2020, where a remaster of the first game was announced. - While the remakes of Lunar: The Silver Star may very well never end, it's safe to say there will probably never be a brand new installment in the Lunar series, due to Studio Alex no longer existing and the absolute trainwreck that was Lunar: Dragon Song. Sad, because a "Lunar 3" was apparently in development at one point. - Wild ARMs appears to be orphaned, given Media Vision has moved on to other projects, such as Shining Ark, Shining Resonance, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, and some of the later games in the Valkyria Chronicles series ( 3, 4, and Valkyria Revolution). - Suikoden hasn't gotten a proper sequel since the fifth, with Konami ultimately announcing on their Facebook page that they had no new announcements on the series, and that the development team behind the franchise had been disbanded. - Not quite dead, given the announcement of Genso Suikoden: Centennial Tapestry (official English title, if the game is localized, may differ), although the series that takes place in the same universe has been orphaned for years. - Sony left Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow hanging on a cliffhanger, then abandoned the franchise. - Blinx, due to the dissolution of Artoon, poor reception from critics and gamers alike, the failure of the Xbox line in Japan (where Blinx was supposed to help the Xbox catch on), and because Microsoft elected Master Chief as the Xbox mascot instead. - The Space Quest series, after ending with a teaser for Space Quest 7, has been abandoned as Sierra, like LucasArts, had moved away from adventure games, and later went under. Some fan made sequels do exist, but nothing official is ever likely to appear. - The Dark Cloud series appears to have ended with Dark Chronicle, now that Level-5 has moved on to other projects. - The Oddworld pentalogy. It was planned to be at least 10 games. To very few people's surprise, this turned out to be not an easy task. So far, there have been 4. Every year or so there's been news about the company making a new game (At least 3 different sequel ideas have been completely scrapped,) or making sequels in the form of films, but nothing ever comes of it. It seems like they may have finally given up on completing the series. They're working on remakes of their old games instead. - Activision fired the makers of the Crash Bandicoot series in the late 2000s, which is why Crash: Mind Over Mutant, released way back in 2009, is the latest canonical game in the series. Activision has since released remakes of the first three games and a racing spin-off, and the success of those remakes has led to the announcement of Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, breaking the streak. At least until Activision downsized Toys for Bob and made them a support studio for Call of Duty, causing the studio's leadership to leave and seemingly orphaning the series once again. - The World of Mana series, with Kingdom Hearts having replaced it as Square Enix's flagship action RPG franchise. - Also on Square, attempts to follow on Chrono Cross have been Vapor Ware for quite a while. And yet many attempts of fans to remake or create sequels to predecessor Chrono Trigger are met with cease-and-desist letters. Yasunori Mitsuda and Masato Kato are interested in another installment but want to have the Dream Team together again. - Baten Kaitos has had new installments planned, but scrapped for unknown reasons. - Lennus ( Paladin's Quest to North American gamers) got one sequel that remained in Japan, and that was it. - Xenogears and Xenosaga due to a really bad case of executive meddling in the former, and perceived lack of interest in the latter. Notably, while the person behind Xenosaga would love for it to at least be remastered, even he doesn't think there's enough fan interest for it to be profitable. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 continues on the series, but the only thing it has to do with the previous games is Gnosticism. And that one got multiple sequels of its own. - The Marathon game mod Return To Marathon was planned to be an episodic scenario, but only the first chapter was completed before it was scrapped. - This is what happened to de Blob, with THQ's bankruptcy in 2013 and the closure of developer BlueTongue. - Silicon Knights. Making M-rated games that were published by Nintendo? Check. Being bought out by Microsoft? Check. Making lackluster games at Microsoft, and then dying because (in a rare case where it'd be positive) they refused to do any Executive Meddling to keep Denis Dyack in check like Nintendo did? Check. Silicon Knights were planning on making an Eternal Darkness 2, but it never happened because after the release of Too Human and X-Men: Destiny, the company folded due to a lawsuit with Epic Games and plaigarism of the Unreal Engine. - Virus Invasion 7 was announced in 2008, then fell into extreme Schedule Slip; the final nail in the coffin was October 2011, when its creator, Blublub, first announced that it would be done within a week, then dropped off the face of the Earth. There were attempts to salvage the series, first by Pteriforever with a fansequel, Virus Invasion Spectrum, and then by SpeedyVelcro with a generally-inferior Spiritual Successor, Advanced Invasion. Advanced Invasion 4 seems to have been orphaned in its own right. - This seems to have been the fate of Jak and Daxter. A highly-successful franchise on the PS2, but when Naughty Dog went on to working on other projects such as Uncharted and The Last of Us, the Jak series was left in limbo. There was a new game released for the PSP in 2009, but it was poorly received, and Naughty Dog has said that they tried to make a Jak 4 or a reboot, but couldn't get it to feel like Jak, so—aside from an HD compilation—it looks like we might not see another Jak game for the time being. - Though the Sonic The Hedgehog series is itself going strong, this has happened to many of its spinoffs. The "Sonic Storybook Series" is the best example, as Sega decided to abandon it after Black Knight met with poor sales and even poorer reviews. - Zap Dramatic's Ambition ended on a cliffhanger and was supposed to be continued in a sequel series. It hasn't happened yet. - Darkstalkers hasn't seen a new installment since 1997. Capcom re-released Vampire Hunter and Vampire Savior in 2013 as Darkstalkers Resurrection, but Capcom later stated that they had no plans for a new Darkstalkers game, citing poor sales of the re-release. - Power Stone similarly stopped after Power Stone 2 in 2000. Capcom re-released both games as part of a collection for the Playstation portable in 2006, with no signs of life from the series since. - Big Huge Games' Rise of Nations was found to have had developed plans for future installments. Unfortunately, with the studio's closure, the fate of the RTS series is up in the air. - The unfortunately titled Insecticide: Part 1 released in 2008 and has yet to see a part 2. - The Remake of the Phantasy Star series, Phantasy Star Generation was abandoned after two games in favor of porting the originals. Further more, the remakes were announced for a US and EU release but never released. - The F-Zero franchise has been on a standstill since 2004 (the last game being released on the Game Boy Advance) due to Shigeru Miyamoto simply having no idea how to progress with the franchise without resorting to just throwing in only new characters and tracks. - Tactics Ogre started with "Episode VI" in the same fashion as Star Wars. Only four games were ever released. - LEGO The Hobbit was released containing An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug; The Battle of the Five Armies was promised as a future DLC but it was ultimately canceled, leaving it unfinished. - The Forgotten: It Begins, published in 1999, was developed as the first installment of a seven part series, and most reviewers agreed that it seemed like more of an introduction to a story than a complete game. Unfortunately the series was never continued, and because of disputed ownership rights between the developers almost certainly never will be, leaving the game as an orphaned first chapter. - ObsCure II ends on a cliffhanger revealing the existence of a Greater-Scope Villain, but the third game fell into Development Hell for several years. By the time it was finally released, it had evolved into a non-canon spinoff called Final Exam that only loosely references the events of the first two games. - An in-universe example is found in Dragon Age: Inquisition. As part of Cassandra's romance/friendship arc, the Inquisitor can persuade Varric to un-orphan a story series he had given up writing - just because she loves it and wants to know how it ends. Despite stating that he didn't like the series and it sold poorly, he agrees, then after he sees her reaction he says that it was Worth It. - Cursery was a series of PC point-and-click games from Blue Tea Games, sort of a sister series to their Dark Parables, which took classic nursery rhymes and twisted them into dark mysteries. Only one installment, The Crooked Man and the Crooked Cat, was ever produced before this trope went into effect; Blue Tea Games made the decision to shift focus to their mobile titles, and all of their PC game series were either sold to other developers or orphaned. - Nexus War was called off in a Grand Finale when the creator was unable to continue his work for financial and contractual reasons. One of the supporting developers revived the series not long after with Nexus Clash, but the sequel isn't as well-known and took several years of development to get itself back to the level of quality that players had come to expect from the original. - Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness was supposed to be the first of a new trilogy, however, due to Eidos' constant meddling, it failed spectacularly and Core were stripped of the very series they created. Eidos handed the series to Crystal Dynamics and the original series was suddenly ended in favor of a reboot, starting with Legend. Core made a last ditch effort to release a 10-year anniversary Tomb Raider game, but Eidos simply nabbed all of their concept art and scripts and gave them to Crystal Dynamics for them to make the game — Tomb Raider: Anniversary — instead, leading to poor Core Design ceasing to exist. - Mass Effect: Andromeda was set up with Sequel Hooks for DLC content at the end but BioWare, citing poor sales, canceled it and placed the series on a hiatus in favor of Anthem (2019) and a future Dragon Age installment, and a new Mass Effect announcement in 2020 teasing the return of Shepard's crew may be the final nail on the coffin for Andromeda. However, Bioware has hinted that this new Mass Effect game may explore some threads left open by Andromeda. - The Sly Cooper series was infamously abandoned by Sanzaru Games in November 2014, even when the latest game ended with a major cliffhanger. This led to fans rejecting the game as canon to restore the happy ending of Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. Sanzaru was later purchased by Oculus Studios, eliminating all chances of a sequel from them. Time will tell if Sucker Punch or another developer will rescue the franchise and either provide a sequel or a different fourth game. - For a long time, Stinkoman 20X6 was missing its last level, Level 10, and since 2005 never received an update. While there was an announcement for the level in 2018, it would not see completion until 2020, coming with an all-new opening, new levels, and an Anti-Frustration Features mode. - Golden Sun: Dark Dawn ended on a cliffhanger where \|\|Alex, the Big Bad from the previous game, is still alive, Isaac is missing, and there's a massive psynergy vortex hanging over the lookout point from the beginning of the game\|\|. Due to poor sales and mixed reception, Camelot effectively shelved the series and all dangling plot threads were left unresolved. - Dino Crisis had moderate success with the first two games, but the third game was critically panned by critics and fans. Between the poor sales of the third game and Capcom wanting to focus on other projects, Dino Crisis fell off the radar since 2003 and there hasn't been a word of when or if the series would ever return. - MySims ended on a rather abrupt note after SkyHeroes came out in 2010, and aside from a few references in The Sims 4, was never really heard from again. It doesn't help that Electronic Arts shut down Visceral Games, the franchise's primary developer, a few years after MySims went dormant, meaning it isn't likely to come back. - Gardens Inc has four games, with a "To Be Continued" sequel hook at the end of the fourth one. Said fourth game was released in 2016, and the devs have indicated that they will not be moving forward with any more games. - The Dark Tales released its 18th installment in August 2020. Despite being one of the best-loved developers of the hidden object game genre, AMAX Interactive seems to have closed its doors since then, being either rebranded or bought out by another company, and as far as anyone can tell has orphaned all of its game franchises. - Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was quite transparently the middle third of a story intended to finish with a third game. Publishers Square Enix meddled with the game by forcing a pay to win microtransaction cash shop, reportedly two weeks before Eidos were going to send the game off for certification, siphoned off a team to create "Breach" mode which was a horrendous game within a game with extreme freemium paywalls, wasted $50,000 on one part of the marketing campaign that gained no traction, royally pissed off the player base with a egregious pre-order bonus stunt and set a release date that competed with Madden, No Man's Sky, Resident Evil 4 and a World of Warcraft expansion, among other things. The massive 5 year dev cycle and wasteful spending required a 3 million sales figure to break even but it came up a million short, Square's executives labelled it a failure, cancelled the 3rd game and put the franchise on ice while redeploying Eidos to work on Marvel-licensed games. In 2022, the Deus Ex IP was acquired by Embracer Group along with several other IPs that Square Enix was sitting on, which could see a return of the series in the future. - Emily Short's When in Rome series was planned to run for five episodes, but only the first two were released (both in 2006), leaving the story unfinished. In 2022, she said it was canceled due to a lack of player interest and she doesn't remember what the rest of the plot was intended to be. ## Object Shows According to rough statistics, nearly a third of Object Shows get cancelled/abandoned very early on without any resolution or reboot (Hence the astonishing number of Short-Runners in the Object Show Community). The reasons may vary in one way or another: - Disinterest/Demotivation is a popular reason for object shows to drop off the face of the earth with little fanfare. These types of shows rarely past five episodes: - The creator getting accused of one or more vile behaviors is a surefire way. - Battle for Object Destination and its Spin-Off Earthquake were abandoned with major cliffhangers, one on the first half of a two-parter and the other on its very first episode, after evidence of Maxwell Hall (The creator of both shows) acting shadily towards a minor online came into light and he had to leave the internet entirely. - Object Cringe (Alongside Object Cringe Again) flip-flopped from being cancelled and Un-Cancelled because of Clankybot777's indecision to continue the series. It was re-cancelled seemingly for good after Clanky was accused of alledgedly grooming a minor online and the following disaster of her confusing apology note. - After Schooligans was cancelled after 2 episodes. More were planned for the series but they were eventually scrapped after allegations LorenTzel (The creator of the show) regarding racism at the 2022 BFDI + II Meetup came into light and he had to leave the internet entirely. - Awesome Futuristic Objects lasted six episodes (With its last episode only being half-completed) due to SizzleFlicks's lack of motivation and school. He then restarted the series with Awesome Futuristic Objects: The Double Season...only to scrap it for the same reason after three episodes (Also with a half-completed last episode). - Object Asylum is particularly noteworthy since SnowyPackel didn't want go through with the stress of making a full series and left it on half an episode as in all the voice-acting was completed but the animations and background weren't. - Object Filler discontinued production as stated in the description of the fifth episode because of Diamondcup67's personal issues and losing the drive to keep the show going. - Object Overload had this happen twice. The first time was due to Niall Burns not liking how the show was turning out as the series went on. When the Continuity Reboot came around, only one episode was made when Niall became demotivated. - The Object Show had seven episodes until the creator stop continuing the series out of Creator Backlash. - Sinful got ditched by Conner Dean before production could even begin due to some controversy on Twitter. Now deemed unreleaseable, Connor had removed all promotional material, images, and a good amount of lore for the show with its TV Tropes page being the only living relic left due to The Fic May Be Yours, but the Trope Page Is Ours. He has since replaced Sinful with a fictional nature documentary called Gikumo. - Super Dumb Joke Show deliberately ran on April Fools' Day before EpicBattler3 deleted it from her YouTube channel and never talk about it again. Its only episode ended with a viewer vote on who to eliminate that remains undisclosed to this day. - Town Attack was discontinued after four episodes because OpalStatus wanted to focus on her other show, Gerenal Mayhem in spite of the former being more popular with the viewers than the latter. - Wishful Thinking went dead silent just a month (two chapters and a interlude) into its runtime, right before the competition could officially start. The creator was never heard from again with their last webcomic update dating back four years ago. - TVTome Adventures was seemingly orphaned for a while because it wasn't getting its creator any money or attention. However, a full-fledged continuity reboot called TOME was released, so this trope was subverted. Double Subverted because the Reboot doesn't exactly follow the continuity of the original, so the plot of Tv Tome Adventures still ended up being unresolved and likely never will be except through supplementary material on the creator's DeviantArt. - A fanmade animation by NipahDUBS based on the horror RPG Mad Father ran on YouTube with the goal to have six episodes, according to the description of the first episode. However, only two episodes were made (that tells a little about the beginning of the story) and the project was dropped, according to the second episode's description. It has only "PART THREE IS CANCELLED." written on it, with no reason explained. Both episodes on YouTube had the comments section disabled. - A well written and hilariously machinima of RuneScape known simply as "The Quest" was started in 2006 only to be left to rot at the end of part two due to the creator apparently contracting AIDS. Needless to say that should the creator wish to continue the work, they couldn't. Runescape has since had a massive graphics update, making this machinima completely dead. Its fandom isn't taking it well. - The Newgrounds series Joe Zombie by Robert DenBleyker was supposedly meant to be concluded with Episode 7 as said in Episode 6 (from 2006). More than half a decade later however and a final episode has still not been produced. - Evil Rebellion trilogy by Konejo, the first two parts came up and the third was announced for 2007 but never came to be. First two parts can be seen in Newgrounds. - The first incarnation and reboot Darwin's Soldiers on Furtopia were never finished and will probably remain that way. - Trinton Chronicles never had a proper finish and was cut short before its final story. - Xiao Xiao ended with a demo of a beat-em-up game back in 2002. In particular, the Mutilator story, which featured a Professional Killer out to take out an evil boss, ended in an up-in-the-air ending, with the bad guy getting away after a motorcycle chase and the protagonist being reduced to hitchhiking with no success; there was supposed to be a third installment of that storyline that would wrap things up, but it never got made. There have been no signs of the beat-em-up demo or the series ever continuing since then. In fact, the author's whereabouts are unknown as well. - Sapphire Spindle Paw: Mystic(TheSpiritWolf) created a prologue video and then a first episode, then posted about his/her intentions to make a third video, and then left the site. Searching "Sapphire Spindle Paw", with quotes, gives around four or five results. There is no sign of an episode 2. - Rock Tumbler's Let's Play of Grand Theft Auto IV was discontinued due to his drug use. His former partners have started it up again and finished it. - Spoony's Let's Play of Deadly Premonition is looking like it won't ever be continued (at least not any time soon), having only Part 1 up on the site. This doesn't stop fans on the forums starting a new thread every few weeks or so asking when he's going to finish it... - Atlas of Medieval America was a very intriguing concept that never got more than a couple months of updates. Alternate History buffs have tried to carry on. - Super Mario Bros. Z due to how time consuming it took to the animate the fights, as well as Artist Disillusionment. What was meant to be twenty six episodes ended at eight after the creator called it quits. The series has since been revived, however, with just the first episode so far, so there may yet be hope. - Then fans' hopes were severely dashed when the reboot was stopped after one episode because of Alvin Earthworm's worsening mental health struggles. Then on February 2, 2020, he posted a sample footage from his 2nd episode, giving viewers of the series another big sigh of relief. - The Game Grumps are notorious for the amount of playthroughs they've left unfinished, the most infamous ones being Sonic '06 and Pokémon FireRed. While some (such as the ones just mentioned) have legitimate reasons for their abandonment (Dan doesn't want to butt in on an adventure he was never a part of, and Arin wants to grind up so that he can face the Elite Four in a fair fight, respectively), most of them are just dropped for no apparent reason. - The FireRed playthrough was eventually finished, over two years after it began. - The SCP Foundation story "Metafiction" (one of the most popular tales on the site) ends with a to be continued on a very interesting cliffhanger since 2010. The discussion page is filled with requests, pleads and threats to the author to just finish the damn thing already. The author himself made several promises over the years that he will most definitely finish it, any minute now, honest. - The Yogscast Minecraft Series Tekkit playthrough with Lewis Brindley, Duncan Jones, Simon Lane, Sjin and Sips was cut short after the crew got fed up with what they were doing; they had reached their initial goal of building a factory, but after attempting to revive the series by focusing on bees they decided to call it quits. - The Area 11 Minecraft machinima, titled GIGACRAFT, was eventually cut short after four episodes. This was in part due to the difficulties in getting Beckii Cruel to record Minecraft videos with them, as well as a general lack of time. - CaptainSparklez did a playthrough of the Pokémon Gold and Silver remakes, which ended after only four episodes. The reasons for this are unknown, though given the iffish content policy of Nintendo some fans believe that to be the reason. - Platypus Comix has two orphaned subsections: The Warner Bros. Club, a Warner Bros. animation fansite not updated since 2008, and For Portlanders Only, a collection of Portland, Oregon-related ephemera that has sat untouched since 2010. - The Website Is Down released 5 videos in 2009 and 1 more in 2011. The last one was titled Episode 4.5: Chipadmin part 1. More were promised to come soon, but haven't appeared yet (as of June 2016). The website spent years slowly deteriorating (for example, the blog domain expired around 2011). In 2014 Joshua Weinberg announced that the series will continue as an Adventure Game. As of summer 2016 he was still busy playing and analyzing the classic adventure games in his blog and started actual work on the game only in January 2016. - This happened to a number of Sips' playthroughs, according to this comment. - Comic Book YouTube Channel B3Comics. The channel was running smoothly but after a update video (Which was upload after a month long hiatus) they completely disappeared. Not even updating their Facebook or Twitter either. - The Dead Fantasy series has been orphaned with the sudden and tragic passing of the wonderfully talented animator Monty Oum in February 2015. On the upside, his other major work, RWBY, continued on without him. - Movie Rehab's Trailer Jailor was discontinued after the 13th episode since Jack Skyblue himself has stated that he has lost his passion for reviewing movie trailers. - Following the cancellation of BIONICLE's product line, writer Greg Farshtey volunteered to continue its plot in his series of online stories. Since this he could only do in his free time and had other occupations and family matters to deal with, the serials ended after only a few chapters, and were officially scrapped once their website got deleted. Greg has since cleared some of the cliffhangers up in his discussions with fans. - Labelscar was a popular blog dedicated to shopping mall history, with stories and photos of various shopping malls across the United States. The site abruptly stopped updating in 2013, due in part to one of its two writers and most of its fanbase shifting to Facebook. - Many YouTube reaction videos where someone watches a certain series end up unfinished. Although sometimes it's not because the "reactor" became unable or uninterested, but because the ones holding the copyright make the video be pulled (and three strikes terminates the channel). - High and Tight was going to have more episodes exploring the war and how the characters' lives have been affected - alternating between the soldiers who went off to the front lines at the end, and the friends and family left back home. However James Healy moved to Canada, Thomas Fitzgerald became too busy with college work, and Bobby Calloway lost interest - developing The Gumdrops instead. The film however was initially written to be standalone and has an open ending. - Lindsay Ellis: - She stopped doing 'Loose Canon' - where she analyzed different incarnations of a famous character (eg. Hades, Starscream etc) - after people kept complaining about which adaptations she left out - and has focused on specific video essays ever since. She said she still has plans for it, but hasn't uploaded one since 2017. - She's also discontinued The Whole Plate - a series examining various film theories in relation to the Michael Bay Transformers films. Her final word on the series' state came in August 2018, where she said it was on hold due to entering more controversial territory (of the particular film theories she began introducing the series with, critical race theory had yet to be tackled), but it never came to be. - Diva Dirt introduced a new feature called 'Fanline', where David would do a podcast with a wrestling fan talking about their interests re: the Divas, Knockouts etc. Three episodes were released and then it was abruptly stopped. - Wizards of the Coast has a notorious anti-drama policy, so when it came to light that Dice, Camera, Action! cast member Jared Knabenbauer ran seven sex blogs and was accused of cheating on his wife with co-star Holly Conrad, that was the anticlimactic end to the Waffle Crew. - The Wyoming Incident is an infamous Alternate Reality Game whose fate is hard to decipher, but it's likely this. Started in 2006 by a mysterious video of an alleged video hijacking, the game lead to an anonymous forum known as the Happy Cube, unraveling a story of people tied by the act of "cubing"... and then about a billion other directions with threads about worshipping malicious gods, moderator civil wars, the Wyoming Incident itself turning into an in-universe ARG, with its supposed creators being characters, and more. If there was ever meant to be an answer to the mystery behind the video, nothing has turned up conclusive — it's widely believed that at some point, the ARG was hijacked by anonymous users who quickly derailed the whole setup, leaving it an inscrutable mess. - SHiFT's web documentary covering the Any% Speedrun history of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom was originally planned to be in four parts. However, due to the Rehydrated remake's unexpected release at the time of production followed by SHiFT's declining motivation to continue with the project since he wanted to focus more on improving his records, the documentary series was put on indefinite hiatus after just two parts, with the second part ending on a cliffhanger teasing the rest of BFBB's history from 2017 onward which still remained a mystery. - Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings only covered the first two-thirds of Tolkien's three books. It was then concluded by the Rankin-Bass The Return Of The King, but with a very different style and tone, and much cheaper animation. A big cause of this was that the costs were massively underestimated, and the final result had to be pieced together from unfinished footage (for instance, every live-action character was supposed to be animated over). It would take twenty years for a live-action version to be made covering the entire story. - Perfect Hair Forever was scheduled to have 17 episodes made for the internet but the creators only made 1 due to lack of interest. - On April Fools' Day 2014, an eighth episode was aired as a stealth premiere after a long period of being orphaned with seven episodes. - The Pirates of Dark Water eventually simply stopped, after about eight of the thirteen treasures of rule were collected. A lack of budget and Channel Hops were the responsible issues, here. - Generation 3.5 of My Little Pony, which amounted to a style revamp of the G3 designs, lasted only a single year, having just one special and a few toys to its name. But then it was meant as a stopgap while Generation 4 was in development, with executives hoping that it would revive the franchise. It did. - Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles ended abruptly before finishing the final story arc. - Disney's adaptation of Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain series is incomplete, with The Black Cauldron only covering the first two books. However, as of March 2016, the company has bought up the film rights to the series once again, and has announced that they are now re-adapting it altogether in live-action instead. - Joe Murray spent less and less time working on Rocko's Modern Life after his first wife committed suicide. He needed some time to get stuff in order, and to process what happened, and that not only took a lot of time, but made him less interested in working on the series, until he finally gave up on it altogether. For a while, he occasionally blamed the series for his wife's suicide. - A similar turn of events happened with Camp Lazlo, this time the result of a messy divorce. - Storm Hawks had a ridiculously high-toned Cliffhanger as the season finale, which seemed to be building up a huge journey through the Eldritch Location of the series... only to abruptly end. To make matters worse, even the main character drops a MASSIVE Sequel Hook just before the ending. - TRON: Uprising. The show went for one major arc, then production stopped in 2013 with many threads still unresolved. The reasons for this are largely speculation at this point. - ThunderCats (2011) got hit hard with this, ending the first season with a massive cliffhanger \|\|revealing that Pumira was Evil All Along and Dead All Along, among other things\|\|. Then Cartoon Network announced that the show was cancelled. - Despite being renewed for a second season a week ahead of its finale, Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart's first season would ultimately end up being its last due to being part of a massive tax write-off following the Warner Bros. Discovery merger.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanedWebcomic
Origins Episode - TV Tropes "What? You want to know my secret origins? Well... maybe another time..." When you are writing a work of fiction you often want the audience to know how a particular character came to be. Often this is achieved in the first episodes or issues, but almost as often, for whatever reason, this can't happen. Perhaps the character was originally meant to be mysterious, a figure robed in secrets and mystique, and now their past has emerged. Alternatively the writers might not have had an origin laid out for them, perhaps due to the fact that they were meant as a minor character and gained a fanbase or were simply a Monster of the Week that happened to come back once or twice. Or it could be that the thing without the background is more than just a character; perhaps the entire universe has a history that the author wants to get across, and there is no way of doing that at the same time that a first episode finds its audience. An origins episode is an episode, issue, chapter, or a multi-part story arc that exists primarily to examine the origin of a character or setting after the work has been going for a while. Many prequels qualify, but not all. Likewise whilst many things have had extended flashbacks it does not necessarily count. However the episode or issue need not be all set in the universe's past to qualify, so long as exploring that past is the point. Done well, these works help build the universe's mythos and continuity; done badly, they just feel like the author trying to show how clever they are. Worse still are the origins episodes where the writer does not bother to check their own continuity and creates a mess of plot holes and poor characterization. Often takes the form of a Whole Episode Flashback or Flashback B-Plot. Compare with a Pilot Episode, which usually sets up the origins of the main characters and setting in the first episode. Television characters can have an Origin Episode of sorts if they receive A Day in the Limelight or a Lower-Deck Episode. See also Start of Darkness, for when a segment of the story shows the decisive point where a character becomes evil. See also No Origin Stories Allowed, which is when the creator(s) ban this from happening. ## Example subpages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Other examples: - Lamput: - The third season episode "Origins" is a Whole Episode Flashback of how Fat Doc and Slim Doc came to meet and become friends. The flashback, which begins when the docs find a picture of them from when they were kids while being carried away in a police car, also provides the origins of a couple other characters. - When Fat Doc and Slim Doc arrived at the same school, the latter was quite a bully to the former, only making friends with him after an incident involving the two accidentally messing up a science experiment their teacher was performing. - A science incident is also \|\|the catalyst for the birth of Lamput himself, who is seen at the end of the episode having formed from within a beaker\|\|. - Once the docs befriend each other, they decide to bully a specific round-looking kid in their school. \|\|That kid grows up to be the policeman who makes recurring appearances throughout the series and often arrests and beats up the docs - including in this episode where he thinks they robbed a jewelry store and brings them to the police station for it. Guy's held quite a grudge on the docs for all the bullying they subjected him to.\|\| - Before the Batman serves as one for The Batman (2022), covering the journeys of Bruce Wayne and Edward Nashton before they became The Batman and The Riddler respectively. - The Cat in the Stacks Mysteries: When Charlie Met Diesel, a short story included as a bonus feature in book 6. It's exactly what it sounds like, showing how Charlie found Diesel, wet and shivering in the parking lot of the library where he volunteers, and promptly took him to the vet to get checked out before adopting him. - The Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventures novel Business Unusual by Gary Russell told the story of Mel's first meeting with the Doctor, which her introductory TV season had neglected to depict due to Timey-Wimey Ball shenanigans in-universe and Troubled Production chaos behind the scenes. - The Q Continuum shows where a few of the enemies the crew of the original starship Enterprise faced came from. They were summoned through the Guardian of Forever by 0. - RWBY: Roman Holiday reveals how a young girl became Neopolitan, how Roman Torchwick became the greatest criminal in Vale, and how the two formed a lasting partnership. - Star Wars Expanded Universe: Thrawn gives the new-canon backstory of the titular Grand Admiral, including how he attained the rank. It ends shortly before his formal introduction into new canon in the third season of Rebels. - Star Wars Legends: Outbound Flight deals with the origin of Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn, and ties The Thrawn Trilogy with the prequel film trilogy and the New Jedi Order. - Tortall Universe: The Numair Chronicles is an interquel telling the backstory of The Archmage Numair Salmalín, who first appeared in The Immortals. - Warrior Cats: - Narnia has its origins told in the sixth book in the series, The Magician's Nephew. Just in time too; the series ends with book seven. - The Alchymist's Cat, a prequel to the Deptford Mice trilogy, reveals the origins of Big Bad Jupiter. He started out as an ordinary kitten called Leech in 17th century London, the runt of the litter who was mistreated by the evil alchemist who took them in. His brother Jupiter, on the other hand, was adored and became the alchemist's familiar. Leech grew envious of his brother's growing powers, and wished he could learn magic too, only to find out that just one in every family is allowed to use it. In the end, Leech kills Jupiter and assumes his identity, rising to power as a living God of Evil in the sewers. - The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes details how President Snow became the Big Bad of The Hunger Games trilogy. - Hannibal Rising is a poorly-executed Start of darkness for Hannibal Lecter, giving him a Freudian Excuse for many of the things he's famous for, even though he explicitly stated in the first movie that there wasn't any past trauma behind his deviant behavior—making him yet another intellectual in blatant denial. Rather sadly, this was an enforced case—Hannibal's creator, Thomas Harris, wanted to leave him an enigma with no real reason behind his crimes, but he was flat-out told by his publishers that if he didn't write it, they'd find someone else to do so. - VC Andrews wrote a prequel to Flowers in the Attic called Garden of Shadows that helps explain the motivations and backstory of the Evil Matriarch Olivia Foxworth. - The House of Night: The plot of Neferet's Curse, which details how an innocent girl named Emily Wheiler grew up in 1893 and ended up broken and vengeful as a result of being abused and eventually raped by her own father. She ultimately changes her name to Neferet, upon becoming a vampire, and vows to never again be used by anyone. - The Jane Eyre prequel, The Wide Sargasso Sea, shows the early life of a character thought of as villainous, but ultimately revealing them as well-intentioned and victimized by others. - The Magic: The Gathering novel The Thran is this for Yawgmoth, showing him rise from an exiled doctor into becoming first dictator of Halcyon, and then the Big Bad God of Evil he's mostly known as. It is important to mention that Yawgmoth was originally exiled for a reason: he performed many unethical experiments on different species to see the results and was in exile for doing so. - The Crippled God in Malazan Book of the Fallen was just a foreign god who fell to earth as the result of a trap meant for Kallor. And went stark raving mad as a result of his torture and imprisonment in this foreign world. He is currently trying to destroy the world just so he can be free again. - Old Kingdom: Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen, prequel to the main trilogy, depicts how its title character was set on the path to becoming \|\|Chlorr of the Mask, an evil necromancer who served as one of the main villains of the second and third books\|\|. - The Origin of Laughing Jack: As the title suggests, this is an origin story for Laughing Jack, taking place in the 1800s, likely 2 centuries before the events of his first story. It provides the details of how Laughing Jack became a murderous Monster Clown. - The Princess Bride devotes self-titled sections to the two mercenary henchmen of Vizzini, "the Sicilian"; how the giant Fezzik was beaten by other children and pushed to fight professionally by his misguided parents into rings where audiences booed him when he won until he found someone who understood him... slightly better; how the swordsman Inigo Montoya saw his father killed in front of him, spent years training and searching and becoming gradually more lost in his cups until he was found in obscurity. How Vizzini himself became the man he is now is left to the imagination, given only a few lines with a broad picture that he knew he would have to rely on his mind rather than his physical power; though the reader may expect it, there is no "VIZZINI". - A Song of Ice and Fire: Catelyn Stark's memories of her old friend Petyr Baelish are that of a sweet, romantic kid. Despite the fact that she was never interested in him that way, his romantic idealism spurred him on to duel her betrothed Brandon Stark for her hand, which resulted in Petyr nearly dying and getting sent packing back to his own poor home \|\|although that quite probably had more to do with the outcome of him being rejected and raped (whilst drunk and believing himself in bed with Cat, by her sister, Lysa, resulting in her pregnancy, which their father forces her to abort.\|\| In the present, Petyr is a full-on Magnificent Bastard and chessmaster, \|\|in control of both the Vale and Riverlands after having manipulated, married, and murdered Lysa, sparked the massive and destructive War of the Five Kings, and has taken on Cat's lookalike daughter Sansa, herself a Broken Bird, as both protegé and potential love interest.\|\| - The Star Trek: Destiny trilogy reveals the origins of the Borg Collective. - A minor example in the Star Trek: The Lost Era novel The Art of the Impossible. Corbin Entek, a Cardassian Obsidian Order villain from a highly popular episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is a lowly junior probationist in this book, albeit a promising one. The novel features a sub-plot in which he settles into the Order and earns the admiration of Enabran Tain. - Star Wars Legends: - Outbound Flight serves as a Start of Darkness of sorts for Grand Admiral Thrawn. Although he isn't exactly evil, it does explain why he took Palpatine's side. Eventually. Well, it introduces him to Darth Sidious and shows how perilously close he is to being exiled for his tactics. We know from the short story "Mist Encounter" that after he was exiled some Imperials found him and brought him back. - ''Outbound Flight" shows the start of darkness for Jorus C'baoth, who fell to the dark side near the end of the novel and went insane. This would then lead to his clone, Joruus C'baoth, also being an insane dark-sided Force wielder. - The novel Dark Rendezvous has several flashback scenes that explore Count Dooku's past and gives him a very convincing backstory. - The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin features a character who appeared first in Dark Empire, the comic book series set years after the novels but released years earlier. In Dark Empire, readers learned that he was an old friend of Han's, and also that he was willing to throw away that friendship by leading Han into a trap just for the reward. Crispin shows us in her prequels what a good and heroic guy he used to be, and eventually what happened to change him: he was captured, tortured, and crippled for life. - Darth Plagueis is an origin story for Palpatine, Dooku, and Nute Gunray. Though unlike the other two, Palpatine was evil from the beginning, and the book merely shows how he became a Sith. - Tortall Universe: The Numair Chronicles, while mainly being an interquel about Numair Salmalín, also shows how Ozorne Muhassin Tasikhe went from a "leftover prince" who was a personable, average student who only wanted to do mage-work with his best friends to the Evil Overlord Emperor Mage of Carthak seen in The Immortals. - Warriors: - The Rise of Scourge. It turns out that Scourge was, at first, just a cute little kitten with a crappy childhood. Desperate to impress the world around him, he is driven to first scare a dog away, then eventually actually kill a cat to maintain his peers' respect, which he claims to be his Moral Event Horizon. - Brokenstar was bullied by his foster siblings and resented by his foster mother as a kit in Yellowfang's Secret. It's subverted, however, at his birth, when he is born with a look of rage and hatred on his tiny face. - Whateley Universe: - "Mimeographic" covers Mimeo's origin story. Interestingly (and possibly self-servingly), it mostly portrays him as a sort of higher-order Punch-Clock Villain, who just does it to finance his lavish lifestyle - he plans out heists in detail to minimize collateral damage, and tries to avoid fights with heroes until he's ready to get whatever Power Copying buffs he needs for the specific caper. We also get to see why he adopted his Thou Shalt Not Kill policy (beyond the obvious wanting to get rematches for more power-ups, that is). - In "Intervention", we get a "This Is Your Life" style look at the events that soured Tansy Walcutt into the Alpha Bitch Solange, as part of her Redemption Quest. - In "The Road to Whateley", part 3, we get some flashbacks which set up the conflict between the Witch Queen and her longtime rival Sycorax. It isn't really a full Start of Darkness for either of them, but it does give us the background of their feud. - Wisdom's Daughter: The Life and Love Story of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed by H. Rider Haggard details the origins of Ayesha, the Big Bad of She. - Through excerpts from the novel Descarta is reading and \|\|Virgil\|\|'s own flashbacks we see how Kalthused of Within Ruin went from hero to utterly corrupt. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Angel's origin was first showed in both parts of "Becoming" but Angel elaborated on it in "The Prodigal" and "Five by Five". - "Becoming" also gave some more of Buffy's origin story (at least, within the TV show, given the movie is largely considered discontinuity by the TV series) showing her first meeting with her Watcher, Merrick, and her first patrol and slaying. - "Fool For Love" was Spike's official origin episode. "Lies My Parents Told Me" gave more details about that origin. And the cross-over episode with Angel that "Fool For Love" was a part of, called "Darla", was the origin episode for, well, Darla. - Related - Drusilla's origin and siring are described on Buffy in "Lie To Me", and shown in flashbacks in the Angel episode "Dear Boy". - While Anya talked about past exploits often, it wasn't until the Season 7 episode "Selfless" that we saw her full origin story. - Notably averted in Burn Notice: the made-for-TV-movie "The Fall of Sam Axe" pointedly showed how Sam managed to get his honorable discharge from the Navy SEALs despite his womanizing attitude, but in the timeline of the movie, he already knows Super Spy Michael Westen, seeking advice with his personal problems. Throughout the entire series, it's never been revealed exactly how a CIA spy and a Navy SEAL met and became best friends. - "Behind the Squeak," a promotional video for The Chica Show, is mainly about Chica's birth and rise to stardom on The Sunny Side Up Show. Kelly also explains that she and Chica first became animated due to one of Mr. C's magic tricks. - Chuck eventually showed us the backstory as to how Sara became a CIA operative, starting as a young teen when she was a grifter with her father. - "Chuck Versus the Tic Tac" reveals Casey's origins: \|\|A Marine Corps sniper in Honduras named Alexander Coburn who faked his death to join a special forces unit\|\|. Unfortunately, it left quite a Continuity Snarl that was never really addressed. - Community had the aptly titled "Heroic Origins", in which Abed charts the group's connection through random interactions before they all started at Greendale, eventually leading to reveal how they all came to choose the school. - Criminal Minds has several flashback episodes—a particular one being "Tabula Rasa", when Reid, JJ, and Garcia were still new to the BAU—but the one that fits the trope best is "Nelson's Sparrow", which shows the very earliest days of the BAU (or the BSU, as it was known then) in The '70s when there were still just three people (Jason Gideon, David Rossi, and Max Ryan) on the team, and follows one of Gideon's and Rossi's earliest unsolved cases. In particular, we see Gideon and Rossi coin a few terms that are commonly used by the present-day team (most notably "signature" by Rossi and "profiler" by Gideon), discover that this case is what inspired Gideon's previously-seen interest in ornithology, and is also the first time that the two characters appear onscreen together (since, in the present-day story, their actors are on the show at different times). - On Doctor Who: - The Second Doctor story "The War Games" finally revealed Gallifrey and the Time Lords, after six years of the Doctor's species being unknown. - It only took 11 years and four Doctors battling the Daleks before we finally got to see how they were created by Davros, after which point he became a recurring villain in Dalek stories. - Between the Doctor Who TV series and Big Finish Doctor Who audio adventures, we've had the Ice Warriors' origin story with the Second Doctor, the Daleks' origin story with the Fourth Doctor, the Cybermen's origin story with the Fifth Doctor, the Sontarans' origin story with the Sixth Doctor. - Nearly everyone who worked on the series prefers to avert this with the Doctor. Even after 50+ years and 38 seasons (as of 2021), the number of formal revelations of who they were before running away from Gallifrey and became the Doctor and why they fled the planet can be counted on one hand, and their real name remains a mystery. Their granddaughter Susan remains the only relative of theirs depicted onscreen or even named, even though they had to have had a wife and children. Occasionally hints are dropped about their past — the Twelfth Doctor confessed in "Heaven Sent" he fled Gallifrey out of fear of something rather than the boredom he usually claims — but nothing more, leaving the title of the show a never-to-be-answered question. The two attempts at this trope for the Doctor, the novel Lungbarrow in The '90s' Doctor Who Expanded Universe and the episode "The Timeless Children" at the beginning of The New '20s, both provoked very mixed fan reactions, and both retcon the depiction of Gallifrey in preceding televised canon. - The Firefly episode "Out of Gas" features flashbacks showing how each of the main characters ended up on Serenity (except for Book, Simon and River, who came aboard in the pilot episode). Zoe was Mal's old Army buddy from the Unification Wars, Wash signed on as pilot right after Mal and Zoe found Serenity, Jayne was a bandit who tried to kill Mal (until Mal convinced him to turn against his two partners by offering to pay him better), and Kaylee replaced the ship's original engineer after Mal found her having sex with him, and discovered that she knew more about engines than he did. - Forever Knight: Nick's vampire origin was shown in the pilot, "Dark Knight". - Frasier had this in the episode "You Can Go Home Again" which is also the season 3 finale. In this episode, Frasier celebrates his show's three-year anniversary and Roz offers him a videotape which contains his first broadcast. As he goes home, Frasier listens the tape and we see what happened when he arrived to Seattle, met Roz for the first time and reconciled with Niles and later Martin. - The Greek episode "Freshman Daze" gave the background stories for Casey, Cappie and Evan (with more information on Ashleigh and Frannie) through flashbacks to their freshman year, including the origins of the love triangle that drove most of their storylines. - Highlander had "Family Tree" and later "Homeland" for Duncan. For recurring characters, there was "Legacy" for Amanda, "Comes A Horseman" showed Cassandra's origin and there was one for Fitz ("Star Crossed"?). - "Three Stories", a Season One episode of House, reveals how House's leg turned out in such a bad state: he suffered an aneurysm while playing golf. His drug-seeking behavior caused the other doctors to brush off his pain as a withdrawal symptom. Soon, however, the aneurysm caused an infarction and muscle tissue to die. House refused to have the leg amputated, even though the bypass he demands and ultimately undergoes causes such severe pain that it gives him a heart attack. While in a medically-induced coma, his girlfriend and proxy authorized him to undergo a partial amputation that would only remove the necrotic tissue while leaving the rest of his leg intact, but it leaves his leg's mobility compromised on top of leaving him in chronic pain. - How I Met Your Mother has the episode "How I Met Everyone Else", which showcases how the core group (except Robin, who joined the group in the pilot) met and became friends note : Marshall and Ted met as roommates in college, Lily and Marshall met when she was "inexplicably drawn" to his dorm room one morning, Ted met Lily the night before at a party and that's why she showed up at their dorm (or so he thinks), Barney and Ted met in the bathroom at a bar, and Barney and Marshall met at the same bar some time later. They all met Robin at the same bar as well.. - Kamen Rider Double has nearly half their riders be given Origins Episodes, mostly as part of a movie (or in the case of Kamen Rider Eternal, a whole movie). - Kamen Rider Ex-Aid has Snipe Episode Zero. It depicts events leading to the Zero Day and Start of Darkness of Taiga Hanaya. - One of the main gimmicks of Lost, was that each episode had a flashback plot delivering information about a specific character's past. Many of the major characters ended up having several. - S1 E4 of Misfits has a bit of this, in that it expands on how some of the characters ended up with community service. - The Season 8 NCIS episode "Baltimore" depicts how DiNozzo and Gibbs met while the former was a detective with the Baltimore police department. - Odd Squad: The Season 1 episode "Totally Odd Squad" is an origins episode for Oprah, as she explains to Olive, Otto and Oscar about her time as an Investigation agent back in 1983 and how she became the Director of Precinct 13579. - Another Season 1 episode, "Training Day", reveals who Olive's previous partner was before Otto, and how she grew from being a Shrinking Violet as an agent-in-training to an eventual Shell-Shocked Veteran as an Investigation agent. It also has a brief scene that shows how Otto became her partner. - "Oscar of All Trades" shows how Oscar came to be the Lab Director of Precinct 13579. - The first part of the Season 2 finale, "Who is Agent Otis?", reveals how Otis became an Odd Squad agent and explains how life was for him before joining the organization. - The Season 3 episode "The Weight of the World Depends on Orla" shows how the eponymous agent became the guardian of the 44-leaf clover. - Once Upon a Time: - "The Stable Boy" does this for Regina. Her ambitious and cold-blooded mother wanted her to marry up, but she was in love with a stable boy. When Snow White, then an innocent child, tried to help Regina by letting the ambitious mama know her stepmother-to-be was with the stable boy... Well, let's just say someone's True Love ended up dead, and Snow White ended up on the wrong end of a vendetta. - "The Miller's Daughter" showed how Cora became who she was. When she was a young woman, \|\|she was tripped by an immature Eva (Snow White's mother before she married Snow's father) who claimed Cora hurt her.\|\| The King of the land forced Cora to apologize on her knees or he wouldn't pay her for the flour. She would later use the emotions she felt here to channel her magic to spin gold. - "It's Not Easy Being Green" shows how Zelena discovered in the course of one day that she was adopted, her stepfather never loved her, her mother abandoned her at birth and she had a sister who got everything she never had. \|\|When she's passed over as Rumpelstiltskin's student\|\|, her envy corrupts her and turns her into the Wicked Witch of the West. - "The Snow Queen" shows how the eponymous girl became evil. Born as Princess Ingrid, she discovered her ice powers one day while protecting her two sisters. The powers grew as she got older and she opted to hide herself away to protect the kingdom. \|\|When she accidentally killed her sister Helga, her other sister Gerda trapped her in an urn and had all memories of her erased from the kingdom\|\|. - "Poor Unfortunate Soul" reveals that Ursula used to be a mermaid, forced to use her singing voice to sink ships by her father. She rejected him and transformed herself in the sea witch after \|\|Hook stole her singing voice, her only memory of her dead mother\|\|. Ironically this same episode combines this with \|\|a HeelFace Turn, as Hook returns Ursula's voice and she reunites with her father\|\|. - In episodes "Best Laid Plans" and "Unforgiven" which act as the opposite for \|\|Maleficent\|\|. Originally established as an evil sorceress, discovering she was about to become a mother and \|\|eventually getting separated from her child\|\| prompts a sort of HeelFace Turn, showing her as a sympathetic character. - "Broken Kingdom" shows how \|\|King Arthur\|\| became a Knight Templar, due to his obsession with \|\|reforging Excalibur\|\|, which he sees as the only way he can truly rule his kingdom. This drove him utterly mad, as he was even willing to brainwash the woman he loved (and his whole kingdom, for that matter) and betray his best friend, in order to ensure his rule. - Power Rangers: - Power Rangers Samurai even went so far as to have its Origins episodes titled "Origins". It probably has something to do with the fact that said episodes were delayed until midseason, instead of being shown at the beginning as usual. - Power Rangers RPM had origin episodes for the Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green Rangers as well as for Dr. K. All ended with them going to or arriving at Corinth (except Green, who had to leave) and don't include how they were selected as Rangers (again, except Green who we already saw acquire his powers. - Suits episode "Rewind" shows Mike starting using his Photographic Memory to earn money cheating at tests, his friend Trevor start dealing marijuana and Harvey blackmailing Hardman into resignation. Also doubles as a Start of Darkness episode. - The Tales from the Crypt episode "Lower Berth'' provides the odd origin of \|\|The Crypt Keeper.\|\| An unholy product of the love between a (literal) two-faced freakshow attraction, and a 4000-year-old mummy. - In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, "Today Is the Day"/"The Last Voyage of the Jimmy Carter" is a two-part origin episode for \|\|Jesse Flores, and possibly also Weaver note : There's a character in the past sections of the episodes who is almost universally believed by fans to be Weaver, but it's not explicitly stated.\|\|. - Torchwood has the episode "Fragments", giving the back-story of how the main team members note : other than Gwen, whose origin was revealed in "Everything Changes" were recruited to Torchwood Three. - The Tribe had two of these in the second season; one focused on Zoot and Ebony; the other focused on Lex and Ryan (though the latter example was submerged as a very long flashback). - Uchuu Sentai Kyuranger has the origins of Stinger/Sasori Orange and Champ/Oushi Black in Episode of Stinger. - WandaVision's next-to-last episode, "Previously On...," uses flashbacks to tell the origin story of Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch. - The West Wing had several of these: - "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen" is a series of flashbacks to the 1998 Presidential Election [sic], showing how the main characters met and got involved with Bartlet's campaign. When the story begins, Leo is a former cabinet secretary serving as Bartlet's campaign manager, Josh is campaign manager for Bartlet's biggest rival (and future VP) Senator John Hoynes, Sam is a frustrated lawyer for an unscrupulous oil company, CJ is a PR specialist for a movie studio, Toby is a talented (but unsuccessful) political operative looking for a chance to prove his skills, and Donna is a campaign volunteer. - "Two Cathedrals" features an extended flashback to Bartlet's childhood, showing how he met Mrs. Landingham and first got interested in politics. As we learn, Mrs. Landingham started out as a secretary at the New Hampshire prep school where Bartlet's father was Headmaster, and she convinced him to confront his father about the wage gap between male and female employees at the school. \|\|He tried, but lost his nerve after his father slapped him for protesting his decision to ban several classic novels from the school library.\|\| - "Bartlet for America" goes into more detail about Bartlet's election, mostly from Leo's perspective. We see how Bartlet convinced Hoynes to become his running mate by telling him the truth about \|\|his multiple sclerosis\|\| as a gesture of good faith, and we learn about Leo's last alcoholic relapse. It turns out that a campaign donor pressured him into drinking again, and he fell off the wagon so hard that \|\|he wasn't able to come to Bartlet's aid when his MS flared up again\|\|—an incident that has clearly haunted him ever since. - White Collar episode "Forging Bonds" dedicated to how Neal started his Con Man career with Mozzie, how he met Kate, how Peter started pursuing Neal and how Peter and Neal first met. - Xena: Warrior Princess had several over the course of the show, showing how she developed from a village girl into an evil Warrior Princess. (She had a HeelFace Turn during her guest appearances on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys before she got her own show.) - The Incredible Hulk (1977): The original pilot episode detailed how David Banner became the eponymous monster and how he ended up on the run. - The X-Files had several origin episodes, including one for the Big Bad ("Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man") and the Lone Gunmen trio ("Unusual Suspects"). - Our Miss Brooks: - The first episode, appropriately enough titled "First Day", relates Mr. Conklin's arrival as newly appointed principal. - In "Borrowing Money To Fly", it's Miss Brooks' arrival in Madison that's explained. In this version, Mr. Conklin has already long been comfortable ensconced as principal of Madison High School. - The Season 4 Bravest Warriors two-part episode "It Shouldn't Ever Have to End This Way" reveals the exact circumstances under which the Bravest Warriors' parents and predecessors the Courageous Battlers were banished to the See-Through Zone by Beth's father. - The Homestar Runner short "Hremail 7" explains the origin of Strong Bad Email. And, in the process, messes up what little continuity the HR-verse has. - The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: The third episode serves as this for Epic-Man, explaining how he got his powers and started his superhero career. - Season 14 of Red vs. Blue has three examples: - The Blood Gulch Prequel Trilogy episodes - From Stumbled Beginnings, Fifty Shades of Red, and Why Theyre Here - all show how how the members of the Red and Blue Teams met and ended up in Blood Gulch. - The Merc Trilogy episodes - "Club", "Call", and "Consequences" - show what Locus and Felix were up to prior to Chorus as well as their \|\|Protagonist Journey to Villain\|\|. - It's heavily implied that the Freelancer Prequel Duology episodes - The Triplets and The Mission - \|\|concern the origin of the Red vs. Blue simulation war\|\|. - RWBY: - The aptly named "Beginning Of The End" from Volume 3 explains the backstories of both Emerald and Mercury, and how they came to work for Cinder. Cinder herself doesn't get an Origins Episode until Volume 8, in "Midnight." - "The Lost Fable" in Volume 6 reveals the history of both \|\|Salem and Ozpin\|\|. - The Shut Up! Cartoons segment Oishi High School Battle has Oishi Orgins, or, as the title says, Oishi High School Battle Orgins. Oishi Orgins explains several things, such as \|\|how Oishi's father got fired (like the intro song says) and how Oishi got her dog Noodles. (Which was due to the creature transporter machine going haywire after a demon attack, thus resulting in this event.)\|\| - The Cocoon Academy arc of Brawl in the Family is one for Dedede and \|\|Meta Knight\|\|. - Everyday Heroes: Oddly, Mr. Mighty's wife, Jane, got to tell her origin story before Mr. Mighty did. Then again, maybe the author just enjoyed drawing all those Stripperiffic outfits. - Gunnerkrigg Court: Chapter 40, "The Stone", delves into the history of the Inexplicably Awesome Jones, showing the various identities she's had \|\|throughout human history and beyond\|\|. \|\|Also The Unreveal, since it shows that while she's as old as the planet, she's never learned what she actually is or how she came to be.\|\| - The Order of the Stick: - On the Origin of PC's explores the back stories of the members of the Order of the Stick, and how Roy originally gathered them together to delve into the Dungeon of Durokan. - Start of Darkness is one for the bad guys, showing how Redcloak and Xykon first met and how Xykon became a lich. - Sleepless Domain: The Flashback Theater following Chapter 10 tells the story of how Melty Frost and Melty Flame first met, in the form of a temporary shoujo romance. The two girls were childhood friends who had since drifted apart, but reconnected after their powers awakened, and have been Sickeningly Sweethearts ever since. - The Shaker Woods story arc in Yehuda Moon & the Kickstand Cyclery, which makes everything look Harsher in Hindsight.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OriginsChapter
...Or So I Heard - TV Tropes "Vince McMahon did stage his own death a couple of years ago, his limo blew up. How do I know that? I read it in a... in a book somewhere. I wouldn't have known it otherwise." [ clears throat ] — Chris Cotter, FOX Business A trope wherein a character delivers some advice or information relating to a field which it would be incredibly embarrassing or contrary to their public image to know. For instance, Mannfred M. Manly informs you on the plot of the latest My Little Pony episode, or Miss Chastity McInnocence blurts out directions for Amsterdam's red light district. Whatever the subject and whomever the person, they then try to cover up their association with it by appending "Or So I Heard", "or so I've been told", "I read it in an article", etc. Please do not pothole links to here where they don't belong. Related to Suspiciously Specific Denial, It's for a Book, Shameful Source of Knowledge, and I Have This Friend. Similar to Knows a Guy Who Knows a Guy in cases where the character wants to downplay his association with the "guy" in question. Compare But He Sounds Handsome and Verbal Backspace. ## Examples: - Case Closed - After giving a lengthy rant on subjects a six year old definitely shouldn't know about, Conan covers up (or at least, tries to) by saying "At least, that's what it said on TV!" (or something similar). - I Think Our Son Is Gay: When Hiroki, who's in the Transparent Closet, realizes he's been telling his mother what he finds attractive in a man, he tries to pass it off as relaying the opinions of the girls in his class. She is not fooled. - Tonto says this when he is called out by the Lone Ranger in Dynamyte's comic book series. - Preacher: Cassidy, the Vampire — "This gravy tastes like semen.." Seeming to understand the implication of his choice of words hastily adds "Or so I'd imagine". \|\|This becomes a Harsher in Hindsight moment when Jesse learns more about his friend's history than he'd care to know.\|\| - In Vacation 1975 a time-traveling Harry who's pretending to be Snape's future son comments that the then-current Divination professor is probably miles better than Sybill Trelawney. Harry: She is a complete fraud. She spends most of her time predicting her students' deaths; all you need to do to pass her class is predict your own death in the most gruesome way. Or...well, you know, that's what I've heard. - Like Broken Glass: Luna: Divination has been turned into a sham in recent decades but true Seers can indeed see parts of the future. It's rather difficult as the images keep changing or so I've read. - In Meddling of a Mischief Maker Voldemort, having physically reverted to a seventeen-year-old after reabsorbing most of his Horcruxes, attends Hogwarts as a sixth-year transfer student under the name Thomlyn Moore. Thomlyn: Hogwarts has always been terrible about actually teaching the students to understand their magical core and how to connect with it... or so I've been told. - Early in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, when Ash seems confused about the special treatment he gets just because he owns a Pokédex, Misty gives him a small lecture about their value, how Pokémon Professors assemble them by hand and how they're usually given to trainers who end up rather prominent such as Cynthia and Alder. Ash gives her a look and Misty (a bit embarrassed) says she read it in National Poké-Geographic magazine. - My Old Kentucky Home: Sirius: So how would Peter or Bella know about this Hardy place? Thomas: Its an old ghost town. It used to be a mining company town until someone blew up the mine and burned the owner's house. Almost everyone knows about it in the area. Sirius: And this Massie person that owns it? Will they say anything? Lily: Massey is a big corporation that bought out a lot of the smaller mines in the area. If we do it right they'll never even know we're there. Harry: Yeah its too creepy to be a good make out spot and security checks on the place too often for any of the potheads to do any growing there. Or so I've heard. - In Corpse Bride song "Remains of the Day", "You don't need much when you're really in love/except for a few things, or so [Bonejangles is] told/like the family jewels and a satchel of gold". - Choose Me: Nancy's friends and acquaintances do not know that she is "Dr. Nancy Love", the host of a late-night radio call-in show where people call her for advice with their love lives. She is telling Mickey how she thinks Dr. Love is a case of The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes, when she realizes she's giving too much away. "She can help others, but not herself, she gives advice to the lovelorn all day, but she's never been in love herself...or so I've heard." - Mr. Deeds: features Deeds telling his butler, Emilio, that he dreamt about a girl he liked, after an entire night of drinking booze. Emilio anwers, "Usually, when you're black out drunk, you don't dream" which elicits a suspicious stare from Deeds. Emilio then explains "...so I read". - Serenity: Inverted during a dialog in the Firefly movie, to show a character's Hidden Depths. Mal: Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint. - Sister Act: Sister Mary Lazarus: I'd rather sing than do anything. Sister Mary Patrick: Its better than ice cream! Sister Mary Lazarus: Its better than springtime! Deloris (as Sister Mary Clarence): Its Better than Sex ! [Beat] . No, no, Ive heard. - Early on in Speed, Jack wonders why the villain set a bomb off early, and Harry speculates he "probably couldn't hold his wad. It's a common problem among middle-aged men... or so I'm told." - Discworld: Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, regarding a printing company of excellent quality. "They're the very devil to forge, I know that," said Moist. "Or so I've been told," he added quickly. - 30 Rock: Jack and Tracy find out that Liz has been taking pain medication. To find out why, Jack asks Tracy what building is next to Penn Station. Tracy says "The Manhattan Center for Penis Enlargement? I know because my friend goes there. His name is Tracy". - In an early episode of Angel, Doyle tries to talk Angel into wearing a magical ring that makes him invulnerable to sunlight, and comes out with: I know a couple of strip clubs that have a fabulous luncheon buffet... I mean, it's... I've heard. - Ashes to Ashes (2008): "It's like something out of a German porn film... apparently." - Bones: Not referring to a work of fiction specifically, but does reference this. Booth : Yeah, well, a woman finds out a man is cheating on her, she can get really angry. (Others stare at him) That's what I heard, okay? - Detective Beckett in Castle says this after making reference to Showgirls. - Cheers: When discussing Sam's bachelor party, Woody suggests having Diane jump out of a cake. Cliff claims that nobody would want their fiancée jumping out of a cake, as it's comparable to "taking your mother to the prom... or so I'm told". - During the opening of one episode of The Colbert Report, Colbert gives "a shout-out to all of my Bronies", followed by an insincere "And I do want to reiterate that I do not know what that means." - From Cops: L.A.C.: Samantha: Our dead stripper reported a break and enter about two months ago. Someone broke into his place, shredded his clothes and left him a message on the lounge room wall. Rhys: "Romnett liar"? Samantha: Yeah. He was living in Gladesville then. He moved soon after — can't blame him. Rhys: What's Romnett? Therese: It's an online dating agency. So I've been told. - Though she straight up admits to being a member later, after they find out someone is still using the victim's account. - CSI: Cyber: In "5 Deadly Sins," Brody mentions that one of the victims had been posting 'sex selfies' and explains these are photos taken during or immediately after sex. When Raven gives him a significant look, he awkwardly adds that he has read about them. - CSI: NY: - In "It Happened to Me," Adam gives an in-detail explanation of what a "food sploshing" party is before playing this trope hilariously straight. Adam does this a lot. - Flack does it as well in "Vigilante," as he and Lindsay arrive to question a woman at an exercise studio: Flack: Pole dancing is good cardio. Lindsay: [gives him a look] Flack: So I've heard. - DCI Banks: In "Ghosts", the squad are discussing the lap dancing club the Victim of the Week had visited before being murdered. Kenny wonders how a student could have afforded to go there, and mentions the exorbitant cover price. This earns him a significant look from DI Morton, and he adds "... or that's what I've been told". - Death in Paradise: In "In the Footsteps of a Killer", the team find credit card charges on the statement of one of the suspects from a business called Cupid's Arrow. JD: It's a high end lingerie shop on the other side of the island. (Curious looks from the other three) JD: So I've heard. - Doctor Who: In "The Runaway Bride", after the Doctor rescues Donna from being kidnapped by an evil robot Santa, she laments that they've missed her wedding service, and says she wishes he had a time machine so they could go back and change things. The Doctor mumbles that even if he did, he couldn't go back along someone's personal timeline "apparently". - Father Ted: Uses this in one episode, wherein the titular character and his fellow priest, Father Dougal, accidentally find themselves in "Ireland's biggest lingerie section, I understand. Yeah I read that... somewhere." \|\|They then proceed to meet a number of other priests who have "accidentally" found themselves in the store, and the scene turns into a war film parody as Ted leads the band to escape out the fire exit without anyone noticing half a dozen priests surrounded by ladies' intimate items.\|\| - Firefly: when Shepherd Book is able to identify the exact kind of rifle used merely by examining the body killed by a gunshot, Jayne sarcastically asks how much shooting Book did at the Abbey. Book replies "Rabbits." without missing a beat (Jayne: "For stew, right."), but this is just one of many hints that Book has a very dark and violent past. - A variation appears in The Golden Girls, when Dorothy asks her prospective daughter-in-law's mother if it's true about black men in bed. Blanche shouts "Oh yes, definitely!" When everyone stares at her, she amends it to "Oh yes, definitely that is something I would like to know too." - The Gruen Transfer: When discussing the 'Black Friday' phenomenon, Wil says: Even drug dealers are offering Black Friday deals...Or so I hear - Subverted in an episode of Happy Endings, Max, Brad, and Penny complain about 'thumb-face' Larry. Brad doesn't like how he forcibly looks at his shirt tags, Penny doesn't like his repetitive stories, and Max has this to say... Max: Yeah, plus he's bad in bed . [Shocked looks from the others] Max: I've heard. From people. Who are me. - On an episode of Law & Order, Briscoe tells Curtis about a dockside location where detectives in the old days would go to waterboard difficult suspects. He immediately follows up with "or so I've heard." - In "Boy Gone Astray" an ex-boyfriend of ADA Connie Rubrirosa tells her and her boss information on various drug cartels. Quickly adding "So I hear" after each piece of information. - Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 12 Episode 9: Pharmacy employee: He looked a little young for a penis pump. Detective Fin Tutuola: One of those vacuum tube things they sell on the back of magazines to make you bigger... (seeing Stabler's smirk) or so I've heard. - "Lowdown" had Fin telling the others about the lifestyle of black men who have gay sex on the D.L. while living straight lives with wives and children. He then responds to their weird looks with "Don't look at me, I just know stuff." - One character on Little Britain is a retired actor who always steals his sister's Meals on Wheels dinners. He is very bad at hiding it, as he tends to praise the meals to the delivery boy's face, adding "Kitty said," when he realises he's almost given himself away. - MASH: Klinger: I get my lingerie from Chicago. Trapper: And it's beautiful... I hear. - In a Monty Python's Flying Circus* sketch about Nazis hiding in England: Landlady: This is Ron Vibbentrop. Mr. Johnson: Oh, not Von Ribbentrop, eh? "Ron Vibbentrop": (shouting) Nein! Nein! (calms down) Oh. Ha ha. Different other chap. I in Somerset am being born. Von Ribbentrop is born Gotterdammerstrasse 46, Dusseldorf Vest 8... so they say! - Motive: Happens twice while the team an investigating what appears to be a bondage session gone wrong in "Angels with Dirty Faces". Angie remarks that it is odd that the victim wasn't using quick-release handcuffs as bondage fetishists usually want an easy escape route, which earns a glance from Oscar and is followed by "Or so I've head". Later Betty is discussing the autopsy findings and says that the lack of drugs isn't unusual as downers would take the edge of the adrenaline rush you get from being tied up. This gets a glance from Angie and is followed by "Or so I've heard". - Mystery Science Theater 3000: - In the NCIS episode "Singled Out", McGee describes a speed dating service as "designed to introduce successful men to a wide assortment of eligible women. Each night brings the promise of romance and the chance of finding your soul mate." His team mates look at him questioningly and he hurriedly adds "...or so I've heard." - In an early episode of Seinfeld, Jerry and Elaine have been looking forward to seeing a film together, but when something comes up and Elaine can't make it, Jerry watches the film without her knowing, planning to watch it with her later and pretend he's seeing it for the first time... but after actually watching the movie, he tries to get out of seeing it again. Jerry: It's so bad, there's no story, it's really boring... I've heard. - Torchwood: uses this in the episode "Sleeper", when the Monster of the Week comments on Jack's bedside manner, Gwen responds "You should see his manners in bed, they're atrocious. Apparently, so I've heard..." - White Collar: Neal: You'd need some muscle, a cargo plane, and a few grand in bribe money just to get started. Peter: You would? Neal: And who knows what else, because I have never considered stealing gems in Burma. - The lyrics of "California Earthquake" by Cass Elliot note : you may have heard the Lloyd Cole cover are full of these. It's bit of a hippie song and you can't quote seismologists without losing your aquarius cred. - At ECW Guilty As Charged 99, January 10, 1999, "The Hardcore Chair-Swinging Freaks" Axl Rotten and Balls Mahoney interrupted the match between The Full-Blooded Italians (Tracy Smothers and Little Guido Maritato) and "Dastardly" Danny Doring "The Angry Amish Warrior" Roadkill, with Axl saying that it looked like a "homosexual dance party." He did not explain how he would know what that would look like. note : For the record, the match was turned into a Three-Way Dance, with The FBI eliminating Doring and Roadkill and Axl/Balls eliminating The FBI. - The Devil in Old Harry's Game does this whenever he is describing one of his own deeds while disguised as a mortal. - In an episode of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, the panellists are playing a game based on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire... except all about hats. Humph: Who is the odd one out of Henry Ford, Fred Astaire, Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln? ...I'm sorry, Tim, the answer is Henry Ford. His hat size was six-and-seven-eights, and the others were all seven-and-one-eighths. And I have to tell you that these are all true, I don't believe this—six-and-seven-eights? Tim: That's tiny! That's a schoolboy's size! ...I'm told. - This strip from Loserz. Cuz that's when you black out and come to stark naked with your ankles behind your head and some guy you don't even know licking your asshole...or so I hear. - This strip from It's Walky!. - Shabot 6000 asked a Rabbi about Kosher Bacos: They don't taste like real bacon...or so I've been told. - Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire: "Gosh... That could explain... (beat) Uh... All sorts of things. That I've heard. From other people." - Most Definitely Not Ferretina in Girl Genius side story, on giant rabbits. - Big Boss, currently secretly possessing his son Liquid, remembers The End in The Last Days of Foxhound. - Eerie Cuties, when Tiffany with her next scheme of staking her vampire best friend and presumably-vampire boys tried to involve Melissa: Melissa: Why do you even want to kill vampires? Sure, they're snobby and insufferable... uh... I mean... I'd imagine so, anyway... - In the Square Root of Minus Garfield strip "Blubber Lumps! They're chewy!", Garfield says that certain types of lumps of blubber can go for a pretty penny on Ebay. Or so he heard... - El Goonish Shive: "But, that uh... that's just a theory and not at all based on anything from my first year of college... - Black Mage of 8-Bit Theater has an unfortunate habit of doing this, as he tends to forget that the mass-murderous evil he so gleefully perpetrates is rather frowned upon by the general populace. For instance, when questioned by the city guard, he carefully details his flippant murder of a cobbler and only realizes after the fact that he'd all-but-confessed before attempting a recovery. Black Mage : [...]Of course, that plan assumes that my knife can cut through bone, which as I discovered last night, it can't. ...Er, hypothetically speaking, as I don't have any knives. - In Cinema Snob Reviews Frozen (a fan comic where The Cinema Snob reviews Frozen (2013)), Snob says that Anna is lying about not judging Kristoff for crying about ice. He says that she'll just mock him over it on Facebook when his back is turned. "Not that it ever happened to me!" - In The Order of the Stick strip 1038, the Monster in the Darkness delivers a surprisingly insightful criticism of Redcloak's "pan-goblinoid narrative" — and then, belatedly remembering that he's Obfuscating Stupidity, tacks on a hasty "... is a thing I totally overheard some guy say". - This comic based on Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series. - Tim Minchin tells of a time when he caught Mariah Carey lipsynching. Tim Minchin: All of a sudden the magic that is Mariah Carey is gone. It's like watching a cheap drag show, but without the intrigue of transvestism. [pause] To my knowledge. - Skippy's List has examples: 207. The Chicken and Rice MRE is not a personal lubricant. (Skippy wanted this noted for the record that this is not something he has ever attempted or considered! It was something we heard at dinner on 22 September 2001 and it was just so obscene it had to go here.) 209. An airsickness bag is to be used for airsickness only. (Also not a Skippy-ism... this was the same dinner.) - In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Girls Night Out", the Penguin points Batgirl and Supergirl to Harley and Ivy's hideout while maintaining his (rather flimsy) veneer as a respectable businessman: Penguin: Oh, all right. Not that I know anything, mind you. Batgirl: Of course not. Penguin: But I do hear rumors about where our green little vixen and her jaded jester may be hiding... - The Fairly OddParents!: When Wanda takes over her father's business, she put a ficus in the meeting room. One of the men comments on a gardening tip for it, then quickly invokes this trope when the others stare at him surprised. "A ficus? That's gonna need more light... not that, I would know." - Not only has he said this about at least 2 other things, he later says "I hear the ficus is doing quite well" everyone looks at him "...or so I heard", the name of the trope. - In "The Tale of the Dash of the Dark" on Peter Rabbit, Benjamin says this when Peter's sister Cottontail is having trouble sleeping and he says that nightlights are good for helping little kids to get to sleep. - South Park episode "The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers" plays this for laughs; all the men in town only have to hear the title "Backdoor Sluts 9" and they all know exactly which porn it is. Mr. Stotch: Backdoor Sluts 9 makes Crotch Capers 3 look like Naughty Nurses 2! Mr. Brovloski: It is the most depraved, vile porno ever made... Mrs. Brovloski: And how do you know? Mr. Brovloski: I, uh, read about it in People. - Actual quote from a review by Germany's leading culinary critic Wolfram Siebeck: "The soup tasted the way I imagine packet soups would taste." - Sometimes, this can happen when trying to teach Martial Arts to others. "Yeah, if you cut the quadriceps right here, the other guy will drop like a rock." "...Not that I would know personally, though." - When pornstar Stormy Daniels was in the news with accusations that Donald Trump had paid her to keep quiet about an affair, it was interesting to watch all the male newscasters trying like hell to make it seem like they'd only heard of her in the context of the story and not for any other reason.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrSoIHeard
...Or So I Heard - TV Tropes "Vince McMahon did stage his own death a couple of years ago, his limo blew up. How do I know that? I read it in a... in a book somewhere. I wouldn't have known it otherwise." [ clears throat ] — Chris Cotter, FOX Business A trope wherein a character delivers some advice or information relating to a field which it would be incredibly embarrassing or contrary to their public image to know. For instance, Mannfred M. Manly informs you on the plot of the latest My Little Pony episode, or Miss Chastity McInnocence blurts out directions for Amsterdam's red light district. Whatever the subject and whomever the person, they then try to cover up their association with it by appending "Or So I Heard", "or so I've been told", "I read it in an article", etc. Please do not pothole links to here where they don't belong. Related to Suspiciously Specific Denial, It's for a Book, Shameful Source of Knowledge, and I Have This Friend. Similar to Knows a Guy Who Knows a Guy in cases where the character wants to downplay his association with the "guy" in question. Compare But He Sounds Handsome and Verbal Backspace. ## Examples: - Case Closed - After giving a lengthy rant on subjects a six year old definitely shouldn't know about, Conan covers up (or at least, tries to) by saying "At least, that's what it said on TV!" (or something similar). - I Think Our Son Is Gay: When Hiroki, who's in the Transparent Closet, realizes he's been telling his mother what he finds attractive in a man, he tries to pass it off as relaying the opinions of the girls in his class. She is not fooled. - Tonto says this when he is called out by the Lone Ranger in Dynamyte's comic book series. - Preacher: Cassidy, the Vampire — "This gravy tastes like semen.." Seeming to understand the implication of his choice of words hastily adds "Or so I'd imagine". \|\|This becomes a Harsher in Hindsight moment when Jesse learns more about his friend's history than he'd care to know.\|\| - In Vacation 1975 a time-traveling Harry who's pretending to be Snape's future son comments that the then-current Divination professor is probably miles better than Sybill Trelawney. Harry: She is a complete fraud. She spends most of her time predicting her students' deaths; all you need to do to pass her class is predict your own death in the most gruesome way. Or...well, you know, that's what I've heard. - Like Broken Glass: Luna: Divination has been turned into a sham in recent decades but true Seers can indeed see parts of the future. It's rather difficult as the images keep changing or so I've read. - In Meddling of a Mischief Maker Voldemort, having physically reverted to a seventeen-year-old after reabsorbing most of his Horcruxes, attends Hogwarts as a sixth-year transfer student under the name Thomlyn Moore. Thomlyn: Hogwarts has always been terrible about actually teaching the students to understand their magical core and how to connect with it... or so I've been told. - Early in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, when Ash seems confused about the special treatment he gets just because he owns a Pokédex, Misty gives him a small lecture about their value, how Pokémon Professors assemble them by hand and how they're usually given to trainers who end up rather prominent such as Cynthia and Alder. Ash gives her a look and Misty (a bit embarrassed) says she read it in National Poké-Geographic magazine. - My Old Kentucky Home: Sirius: So how would Peter or Bella know about this Hardy place? Thomas: Its an old ghost town. It used to be a mining company town until someone blew up the mine and burned the owner's house. Almost everyone knows about it in the area. Sirius: And this Massie person that owns it? Will they say anything? Lily: Massey is a big corporation that bought out a lot of the smaller mines in the area. If we do it right they'll never even know we're there. Harry: Yeah its too creepy to be a good make out spot and security checks on the place too often for any of the potheads to do any growing there. Or so I've heard. - In Corpse Bride song "Remains of the Day", "You don't need much when you're really in love/except for a few things, or so [Bonejangles is] told/like the family jewels and a satchel of gold". - Choose Me: Nancy's friends and acquaintances do not know that she is "Dr. Nancy Love", the host of a late-night radio call-in show where people call her for advice with their love lives. She is telling Mickey how she thinks Dr. Love is a case of The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes, when she realizes she's giving too much away. "She can help others, but not herself, she gives advice to the lovelorn all day, but she's never been in love herself...or so I've heard." - Mr. Deeds: features Deeds telling his butler, Emilio, that he dreamt about a girl he liked, after an entire night of drinking booze. Emilio anwers, "Usually, when you're black out drunk, you don't dream" which elicits a suspicious stare from Deeds. Emilio then explains "...so I read". - Serenity: Inverted during a dialog in the Firefly movie, to show a character's Hidden Depths. Mal: Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint. - Sister Act: Sister Mary Lazarus: I'd rather sing than do anything. Sister Mary Patrick: Its better than ice cream! Sister Mary Lazarus: Its better than springtime! Deloris (as Sister Mary Clarence): Its Better than Sex ! [Beat] . No, no, Ive heard. - Early on in Speed, Jack wonders why the villain set a bomb off early, and Harry speculates he "probably couldn't hold his wad. It's a common problem among middle-aged men... or so I'm told." - Discworld: Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, regarding a printing company of excellent quality. "They're the very devil to forge, I know that," said Moist. "Or so I've been told," he added quickly. - 30 Rock: Jack and Tracy find out that Liz has been taking pain medication. To find out why, Jack asks Tracy what building is next to Penn Station. Tracy says "The Manhattan Center for Penis Enlargement? I know because my friend goes there. His name is Tracy". - In an early episode of Angel, Doyle tries to talk Angel into wearing a magical ring that makes him invulnerable to sunlight, and comes out with: I know a couple of strip clubs that have a fabulous luncheon buffet... I mean, it's... I've heard. - Ashes to Ashes (2008): "It's like something out of a German porn film... apparently." - Bones: Not referring to a work of fiction specifically, but does reference this. Booth : Yeah, well, a woman finds out a man is cheating on her, she can get really angry. (Others stare at him) That's what I heard, okay? - Detective Beckett in Castle says this after making reference to Showgirls. - Cheers: When discussing Sam's bachelor party, Woody suggests having Diane jump out of a cake. Cliff claims that nobody would want their fiancée jumping out of a cake, as it's comparable to "taking your mother to the prom... or so I'm told". - During the opening of one episode of The Colbert Report, Colbert gives "a shout-out to all of my Bronies", followed by an insincere "And I do want to reiterate that I do not know what that means." - From Cops: L.A.C.: Samantha: Our dead stripper reported a break and enter about two months ago. Someone broke into his place, shredded his clothes and left him a message on the lounge room wall. Rhys: "Romnett liar"? Samantha: Yeah. He was living in Gladesville then. He moved soon after — can't blame him. Rhys: What's Romnett? Therese: It's an online dating agency. So I've been told. - Though she straight up admits to being a member later, after they find out someone is still using the victim's account. - CSI: Cyber: In "5 Deadly Sins," Brody mentions that one of the victims had been posting 'sex selfies' and explains these are photos taken during or immediately after sex. When Raven gives him a significant look, he awkwardly adds that he has read about them. - CSI: NY: - In "It Happened to Me," Adam gives an in-detail explanation of what a "food sploshing" party is before playing this trope hilariously straight. Adam does this a lot. - Flack does it as well in "Vigilante," as he and Lindsay arrive to question a woman at an exercise studio: Flack: Pole dancing is good cardio. Lindsay: [gives him a look] Flack: So I've heard. - DCI Banks: In "Ghosts", the squad are discussing the lap dancing club the Victim of the Week had visited before being murdered. Kenny wonders how a student could have afforded to go there, and mentions the exorbitant cover price. This earns him a significant look from DI Morton, and he adds "... or that's what I've been told". - Death in Paradise: In "In the Footsteps of a Killer", the team find credit card charges on the statement of one of the suspects from a business called Cupid's Arrow. JD: It's a high end lingerie shop on the other side of the island. (Curious looks from the other three) JD: So I've heard. - Doctor Who: In "The Runaway Bride", after the Doctor rescues Donna from being kidnapped by an evil robot Santa, she laments that they've missed her wedding service, and says she wishes he had a time machine so they could go back and change things. The Doctor mumbles that even if he did, he couldn't go back along someone's personal timeline "apparently". - Father Ted: Uses this in one episode, wherein the titular character and his fellow priest, Father Dougal, accidentally find themselves in "Ireland's biggest lingerie section, I understand. Yeah I read that... somewhere." \|\|They then proceed to meet a number of other priests who have "accidentally" found themselves in the store, and the scene turns into a war film parody as Ted leads the band to escape out the fire exit without anyone noticing half a dozen priests surrounded by ladies' intimate items.\|\| - Firefly: when Shepherd Book is able to identify the exact kind of rifle used merely by examining the body killed by a gunshot, Jayne sarcastically asks how much shooting Book did at the Abbey. Book replies "Rabbits." without missing a beat (Jayne: "For stew, right."), but this is just one of many hints that Book has a very dark and violent past. - A variation appears in The Golden Girls, when Dorothy asks her prospective daughter-in-law's mother if it's true about black men in bed. Blanche shouts "Oh yes, definitely!" When everyone stares at her, she amends it to "Oh yes, definitely that is something I would like to know too." - The Gruen Transfer: When discussing the 'Black Friday' phenomenon, Wil says: Even drug dealers are offering Black Friday deals...Or so I hear - Subverted in an episode of Happy Endings, Max, Brad, and Penny complain about 'thumb-face' Larry. Brad doesn't like how he forcibly looks at his shirt tags, Penny doesn't like his repetitive stories, and Max has this to say... Max: Yeah, plus he's bad in bed . [Shocked looks from the others] Max: I've heard. From people. Who are me. - On an episode of Law & Order, Briscoe tells Curtis about a dockside location where detectives in the old days would go to waterboard difficult suspects. He immediately follows up with "or so I've heard." - In "Boy Gone Astray" an ex-boyfriend of ADA Connie Rubrirosa tells her and her boss information on various drug cartels. Quickly adding "So I hear" after each piece of information. - Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 12 Episode 9: Pharmacy employee: He looked a little young for a penis pump. Detective Fin Tutuola: One of those vacuum tube things they sell on the back of magazines to make you bigger... (seeing Stabler's smirk) or so I've heard. - "Lowdown" had Fin telling the others about the lifestyle of black men who have gay sex on the D.L. while living straight lives with wives and children. He then responds to their weird looks with "Don't look at me, I just know stuff." - One character on Little Britain is a retired actor who always steals his sister's Meals on Wheels dinners. He is very bad at hiding it, as he tends to praise the meals to the delivery boy's face, adding "Kitty said," when he realises he's almost given himself away. - MASH: Klinger: I get my lingerie from Chicago. Trapper: And it's beautiful... I hear. - In a Monty Python's Flying Circus* sketch about Nazis hiding in England: Landlady: This is Ron Vibbentrop. Mr. Johnson: Oh, not Von Ribbentrop, eh? "Ron Vibbentrop": (shouting) Nein! Nein! (calms down) Oh. Ha ha. Different other chap. I in Somerset am being born. Von Ribbentrop is born Gotterdammerstrasse 46, Dusseldorf Vest 8... so they say! - Motive: Happens twice while the team an investigating what appears to be a bondage session gone wrong in "Angels with Dirty Faces". Angie remarks that it is odd that the victim wasn't using quick-release handcuffs as bondage fetishists usually want an easy escape route, which earns a glance from Oscar and is followed by "Or so I've head". Later Betty is discussing the autopsy findings and says that the lack of drugs isn't unusual as downers would take the edge of the adrenaline rush you get from being tied up. This gets a glance from Angie and is followed by "Or so I've heard". - Mystery Science Theater 3000: - In the NCIS episode "Singled Out", McGee describes a speed dating service as "designed to introduce successful men to a wide assortment of eligible women. Each night brings the promise of romance and the chance of finding your soul mate." His team mates look at him questioningly and he hurriedly adds "...or so I've heard." - In an early episode of Seinfeld, Jerry and Elaine have been looking forward to seeing a film together, but when something comes up and Elaine can't make it, Jerry watches the film without her knowing, planning to watch it with her later and pretend he's seeing it for the first time... but after actually watching the movie, he tries to get out of seeing it again. Jerry: It's so bad, there's no story, it's really boring... I've heard. - Torchwood: uses this in the episode "Sleeper", when the Monster of the Week comments on Jack's bedside manner, Gwen responds "You should see his manners in bed, they're atrocious. Apparently, so I've heard..." - White Collar: Neal: You'd need some muscle, a cargo plane, and a few grand in bribe money just to get started. Peter: You would? Neal: And who knows what else, because I have never considered stealing gems in Burma. - The lyrics of "California Earthquake" by Cass Elliot note : you may have heard the Lloyd Cole cover are full of these. It's bit of a hippie song and you can't quote seismologists without losing your aquarius cred. - At ECW Guilty As Charged 99, January 10, 1999, "The Hardcore Chair-Swinging Freaks" Axl Rotten and Balls Mahoney interrupted the match between The Full-Blooded Italians (Tracy Smothers and Little Guido Maritato) and "Dastardly" Danny Doring "The Angry Amish Warrior" Roadkill, with Axl saying that it looked like a "homosexual dance party." He did not explain how he would know what that would look like. note : For the record, the match was turned into a Three-Way Dance, with The FBI eliminating Doring and Roadkill and Axl/Balls eliminating The FBI. - The Devil in Old Harry's Game does this whenever he is describing one of his own deeds while disguised as a mortal. - In an episode of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, the panellists are playing a game based on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire... except all about hats. Humph: Who is the odd one out of Henry Ford, Fred Astaire, Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln? ...I'm sorry, Tim, the answer is Henry Ford. His hat size was six-and-seven-eights, and the others were all seven-and-one-eighths. And I have to tell you that these are all true, I don't believe this—six-and-seven-eights? Tim: That's tiny! That's a schoolboy's size! ...I'm told. - This strip from Loserz. Cuz that's when you black out and come to stark naked with your ankles behind your head and some guy you don't even know licking your asshole...or so I hear. - This strip from It's Walky!. - Shabot 6000 asked a Rabbi about Kosher Bacos: They don't taste like real bacon...or so I've been told. - Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire: "Gosh... That could explain... (beat) Uh... All sorts of things. That I've heard. From other people." - Most Definitely Not Ferretina in Girl Genius side story, on giant rabbits. - Big Boss, currently secretly possessing his son Liquid, remembers The End in The Last Days of Foxhound. - Eerie Cuties, when Tiffany with her next scheme of staking her vampire best friend and presumably-vampire boys tried to involve Melissa: Melissa: Why do you even want to kill vampires? Sure, they're snobby and insufferable... uh... I mean... I'd imagine so, anyway... - In the Square Root of Minus Garfield strip "Blubber Lumps! They're chewy!", Garfield says that certain types of lumps of blubber can go for a pretty penny on Ebay. Or so he heard... - El Goonish Shive: "But, that uh... that's just a theory and not at all based on anything from my first year of college... - Black Mage of 8-Bit Theater has an unfortunate habit of doing this, as he tends to forget that the mass-murderous evil he so gleefully perpetrates is rather frowned upon by the general populace. For instance, when questioned by the city guard, he carefully details his flippant murder of a cobbler and only realizes after the fact that he'd all-but-confessed before attempting a recovery. Black Mage : [...]Of course, that plan assumes that my knife can cut through bone, which as I discovered last night, it can't. ...Er, hypothetically speaking, as I don't have any knives. - In Cinema Snob Reviews Frozen (a fan comic where The Cinema Snob reviews Frozen (2013)), Snob says that Anna is lying about not judging Kristoff for crying about ice. He says that she'll just mock him over it on Facebook when his back is turned. "Not that it ever happened to me!" - In The Order of the Stick strip 1038, the Monster in the Darkness delivers a surprisingly insightful criticism of Redcloak's "pan-goblinoid narrative" — and then, belatedly remembering that he's Obfuscating Stupidity, tacks on a hasty "... is a thing I totally overheard some guy say". - This comic based on Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series. - Tim Minchin tells of a time when he caught Mariah Carey lipsynching. Tim Minchin: All of a sudden the magic that is Mariah Carey is gone. It's like watching a cheap drag show, but without the intrigue of transvestism. [pause] To my knowledge. - Skippy's List has examples: 207. The Chicken and Rice MRE is not a personal lubricant. (Skippy wanted this noted for the record that this is not something he has ever attempted or considered! It was something we heard at dinner on 22 September 2001 and it was just so obscene it had to go here.) 209. An airsickness bag is to be used for airsickness only. (Also not a Skippy-ism... this was the same dinner.) - In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Girls Night Out", the Penguin points Batgirl and Supergirl to Harley and Ivy's hideout while maintaining his (rather flimsy) veneer as a respectable businessman: Penguin: Oh, all right. Not that I know anything, mind you. Batgirl: Of course not. Penguin: But I do hear rumors about where our green little vixen and her jaded jester may be hiding... - The Fairly OddParents!: When Wanda takes over her father's business, she put a ficus in the meeting room. One of the men comments on a gardening tip for it, then quickly invokes this trope when the others stare at him surprised. "A ficus? That's gonna need more light... not that, I would know." - Not only has he said this about at least 2 other things, he later says "I hear the ficus is doing quite well" everyone looks at him "...or so I heard", the name of the trope. - In "The Tale of the Dash of the Dark" on Peter Rabbit, Benjamin says this when Peter's sister Cottontail is having trouble sleeping and he says that nightlights are good for helping little kids to get to sleep. - South Park episode "The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers" plays this for laughs; all the men in town only have to hear the title "Backdoor Sluts 9" and they all know exactly which porn it is. Mr. Stotch: Backdoor Sluts 9 makes Crotch Capers 3 look like Naughty Nurses 2! Mr. Brovloski: It is the most depraved, vile porno ever made... Mrs. Brovloski: And how do you know? Mr. Brovloski: I, uh, read about it in People. - Actual quote from a review by Germany's leading culinary critic Wolfram Siebeck: "The soup tasted the way I imagine packet soups would taste." - Sometimes, this can happen when trying to teach Martial Arts to others. "Yeah, if you cut the quadriceps right here, the other guy will drop like a rock." "...Not that I would know personally, though." - When pornstar Stormy Daniels was in the news with accusations that Donald Trump had paid her to keep quiet about an affair, it was interesting to watch all the male newscasters trying like hell to make it seem like they'd only heard of her in the context of the story and not for any other reason.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrSoIveHeard
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/OrwellianEditor
Oscar Bait - TV Tropes "The diseased/addicted/mentally impaired character always gets the Oscar." It would be naïve to think filmmakers always make movies according to whatever story they want to tell, and that a prestigious award like an Oscar, if they're lucky enough to be honored with one, is just icing on the cake. An Oscar is a big deal. It enhances the studio's reputation and boosts future ticket sales. Since around the early 1980s, instead of expecting an Oscar to be a natural side-effect of a film being exceptionally good, studios and producers have often tried to engineer certain films specifically to attract Oscar nominations. Typically, the results are more serious, depressing, or "artistic" films. They're called Oscar Bait, and the practice is also derisively known as "Oscarbation". The trend started in the 1980s in the wake of the emergence of the Summer Blockbuster, and as New Hollywood ended. Before then, it was a pretty good bet that the most popular movies were also the best ones and thus the likely Oscar winners. But as directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas hit their stride, they made beloved and well-received movies which were nevertheless seen as too lightweight to win the "important" categories (acting, direction, writing, and picture) if/when they were nominated. At the same time, the "serious" fare that did win those categories slowly became less popular. While into the mid-'90s it was common for at least one major, mainstream hit to make it to the highest categories when it came to Oscar nominations, and sometimes they even won ( Rain Man and Forrest Gump were the highest-grossing films domestically in their respective years, for instance), there was a growing focus from studios on targeting younger audiences with simpler Summer Blockbusters that didn't deal with realistic concerns of people over the age of 30. With fewer and fewer opportunities for "serious" films to get made and widely released at all since the Turn of the Millennium, what ones are made tend to focus on going for the gold and making their studios at least look like they care about True Art. Such films are usually depressing dramas, Glurgey inspirational films, and examples of man's inhumanity to man an abnormally large proportion of Oscar Bait films have been set during The Holocaust. There's also a big focus on mental illness or Inspirationally Disadvantaged characters. It's rare for a comedy film to do well at the Oscars (in fact, one of the biggest clichés of this trope is a comedic actor starring in a heavy-handed drama in an attempt to be taken seriously); sci-fi and horror don't do much better, and animated films were given their own categories once they flirted with pushing into the big leagues. These aren't hard and fast rules; you might see a Dramedy or Dark Comedy get a nomination, mostly because there's still room for suffering. The cost of all this is that most Oscar Bait movies don't do well at the box office. Hype Backlash and Hype Aversion play into that — the heavy campaigning to win an Oscar can be a big turn-off. Furthermore, many Oscar Bait films are released around December or January (as a direct lead-in to the Academy Awards show in late February), so it's easy to tell them apart from Summer Blockbusters. Perhaps because the Academy can actually tell the difference between a good, honest movie and an Oscar Bait attempt, and partly because sometimes they respect the general public's opinion of a movie and will try to reflect that, there are many movies that are obviously gunning for awards that don't get nominated at all much less win. (This can mean an Award Snub.) And no matter how genuinely good these kind of films can be, depressing films about people suffering through tragedy, alienation, physical and mental disability, and/or the horrors of the worst periods in human history don't often have the makings of a fun night out at the movies. The phenomenon isn't exclusive to the Oscars, either; on TV it's "Emmy Bait", on Broadway it's "Tony Bait", and in music it's "Grammy Bait". See also Death by Newbery Medal and Award-Bait Song for the literary and musical equivalents, respectively. Contrast It's Not Supposed to Win Oscars. ## Oscar Bait tactics and examples: - 1978's The Deer Hunter was a game-changer. After a disastrous preview screening the studio brought in Allan Carr, a flamboyant producer (he was just coming off of Grease) and party-giver, as a consultant. He didn't expect much but loved the movie once he saw it. Still, he knew that it was so grim and depressing that people would only watch it if they had heard that it had been nominated for Oscars. Before then, it was the other way around — films (usually) got Oscar nominations based on their popular reception. Carr turned the system on its head and gave the film only a short run of screenings in New York and Los Angeles near the end of the year; the audience was mostly limited to film critics and Academy members. The former raved about the film, and the latter nominated it for multiple Oscars; it ultimately won Best Picture and Director among other honors. Only then was it put into wide release to the general public. - Oscar-worthy films tend to be released in the last two months of the year, to get them in before the December 31 deadline but as close to the February ceremony as possible to ensure that the film hasn't fallen out of the public consciousness. Sometimes this results in rushed productions. Specifically, to be considered for an Oscar a film must shown in a theater for at least one full week in the year of nomination in either Los Angeles or New York (more often L.A., due to it being, you know "Hollywood"). So to push it as close to that deadline as possible, studios will do two things: 1) release the film on/around the Christmas weekend, the last week of the year, and compound that with 2) only giving it in limited release to start. In this, they can technically qualify, letting the limited release period build up word-of-mouth as well as early nomination talk, then go into a wide release that will take the film, should it have legs, well into February and right up against the Oscars. - Long before Oscar Bait became a thing, studios would and still do shamelessly lobby the judges directly by: - Massive advertising directly to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ( i.e. the famed For Your Consideration ads). These campaigns got so out of hand at the Turn of the Millennium that people speculated that it may have been a reason the Oscar ceremony was moved from March to February to get people to pay attention to the films and not the ads. (The main reason, of course, was to coincide with Sweeps.) - Widespread distribution of free screeners, often for little films which may not have been in theaters for long. These were typically just DVDs mailed en masse to all the voting members (which are so pervasive that many Academy members never even go to theatrical screenings, although they often dont have the time to). Academy members have also been known to accidentally leak these screeners to smugglers, although that never dissuaded the studios (and a Mexican scientist did invent a watermarking technology for them). However, starting in The New '20s this was done away with in favor of special streaming sites made for voting members, due to environmental initiatives. - Studios will sometimes vie to be the one to get the most Oscars in a given year, which leads them to release several Oscar Bait films in a row. One of the most notorious for this was Miramax, who hit us with Shakespeare in Love, Chocolat, Chicago, and Cold Mountain within a few years. At the turn of the millennium, virtually all of the major studios set up subdivisions specifically for arthouse-style films, like Paramount Vantage, but most of these went out of business in The New '10s due to studio downsizing as more attention was paid to Summer Blockbuster tentpoles. - The typical Oscar Bait film is a Period Piece or Costume Drama with serious subject matter. This often leads them to be Biopics (or at least Based on a True Story) as well. But they dont always follow this pattern. Some Oscar Bait films can be lower-budget dramas aimed more at the age group of the Academy voters, such as Away From Her and Steel Magnolias. - From about 1993-2008, kicked off when Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List finally got him proper attention from the Academy, The Holocaust was a go-to setting for films gunning for Oscars. It checks all the boxes: historical, dramatic, mans inhumanity to man, Downer Ending, True Art Is Angsty; it also helps that a large number of Academy voters are Jewish. It even worked if you made it a comedy ( Life Is Beautiful did it); this was a license to print money. (One winner was about people in a concentration camp printing money!) However, for every film of this type that made it to the nominations there was at least one that didn't (i.e. the American remake of Jakob the Liar). Over 2008-09, there was a major backlash to The Reader being nominated for Best Picture in 2008 over more acclaimed but less "serious" fare like The Dark Knight and WALLE, and another film using the setting, Defiance, couldn't get anything more than technical nods. More details on those can be found in the next folder. After this, the setting became less popular and more recent films that have used it (such as the 2013 adaptation of The Book Thief) have largely been brushed off or at least viewed with suspicion by critics and commentators, some of whom have complained about creatives exploiting and/or trivializing the subject matter for awards glory and/or Glurge purposes. - It was particularly prominent in the Best Documentary Feature category from 1995 to 2000: three of the five winners directly involved the Holocaust ( Anne Frank Remembered, The Last Days, and Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport) and another winner, The Long Way Home, was about post-WWII Jewish refugees. See also the 1981 winner, Genocide. - Holocaust-themed foreign language films that have won the Foreign Language award include The Shop on Main Street, the aforementioned Life Is Beautiful, The Counterfeiters, and Son of Saul. There's also Nowhere in Africa, about a Jewish couple that fled to Africa before the war started, but have family members back in Germany that fall victim to the Holocaust, and Ida, about a Polish novitiate nun finds out that she's actually Jewish and that her parents were betrayed and murdered when she was an infant. - Short films about the Holocaust that have won the Short Film prize include Visas and Virtue and Toyland. - This phenomenon was referenced in Extras, where Kate Winslets character notes that the best way to win an Oscar was to play in a Holocaust movie. Amusingly, Winslet herself later won an Oscar for Best Actress for The Reader. - Over at the Cannes Film Festival, the most famous of the international festivals, Palme d'Or-winning films that center around the Holocaust include the feature The Pianist and short film With Hands Raised. - Broadway musicals adapted to films might pick up a Movie Bonus Song purely to snag a Best Original Song Oscar nomination. This was a common strategy even before that category existed, just as a way to differentiate the film version from the play (and get people to see both). But with the Oscar incentive added on, studios will add songs whether or not the score needs it. The movie versions of A Chorus Line, Little Shop of Horrors, Evita, Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera, Dreamgirls and Les Misérables all got original song nominations this way; the only one of these to win was You Must Love Me from Evita. - Make it about mental illness or disability. Its been a consistent Oscar winner over the years: - The first actor to win an Oscar for playing such a character was Cliff Robertson in 1968, for playing the mentally handicapped hero of Charly (an adaptation of the short story Flowers for Algernon), after a massive For Your Consideration campaign. - John Mills won Best Supporting Actor in 1970 for playing a mentally deficient, mute, and crippled character in Ryan's Daughter, baffling his costar Sarah Miles. - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of only three films to win all of the Big Five Oscars (Picture, Screenplay, Director, Actor, and Actress). note : The other two, for those keeping score, are It Happened One Night and The Silence of the Lambs Oddly, though, the acting awards were given to actors who played non-mentally ill characters. - Peter Sellers was the subject of an infamous Award Snub when he was nominated but didnt win an Oscar for playing the mentally-challenged Chance the Gardener in 1979s Being There. He was hit by the Comedy Ghetto and his insistence on treating the film not as Oscar Bait, but rather the roles inherent challenge and extremely personal Reality Subtext. When people later found out how much Sellers put himself into that role and how badly he wanted that Oscar, Sellers himself became the subject of award bait in 2004s The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (where he was even played by Geoffrey Rush, who had himself won an Oscar for playing a mentally disabled character in Shine) that film, released on TV in the U.S., nearly swept that years Emmy and Golden Globe awards. Amusingly, Being There is something of an Unbuilt Trope version of the modern trend, since the central joke of the story is that Chance has nothing profound to say about the world or to teach others but has those things projected onto him by people who don't know he's handicapped. - Rain Man gets a lot of credit for kicking off the modern trend. The film won Best Picture, Best Direction, and Best Original Screenplay in 1988, and Dustin Hoffman won Best Actor for his portrayal of the autistic savant Deuteragonist (the protagonist is played by Tom Cruise). It was also a huge box-office hit, unlike some of the films that followed it. - Leonardo DiCaprio got his first Oscar nomination for playing a mentally handicapped boy in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. He kept up acting in typical Oscar Bait films, often to genuine acclaim, but wouldnt win for another 22 years! - Forrest Gump won four of the Big Five (Actor, Director, Screenplay, and Picture) plus two more in 1994, and it centered around a mentally handicapped man. Its considered a textbook example of how to win an Oscar because of its historical setting and social commentary. It was also a gigantic box-office hit long before the awards started rolling in, being released in the middle of the 1994 Summer Blockbuster season. - Live-action shorts about disabilities that have won the Oscar include I'll Find a Way (spina bifida), Board and Care (Down syndrome), Stutterer, and The Silent Child (deafness). - The female equivalent of the mental health angle is having an attractive actress play an ugly character. But Hollywood Homely isnt good enough; you would have to drastically change your physical appearance to do it. Actresses who have won Oscars this way include Charlize Theron, who put on 30 pounds and thinned her hair and eyebrows for Monster; Nicole Kidman, who wore a number of prosthetics to play Virginia Woolf (a character with mental illness, to boot) in The Hours; Anne Hathaway, who played a bald, emaciated, filthy, and apparently toothless Broken Bird in Les Misérables (2012); and Allison Janney, who played a heavily aged abusive mother living in the backwoods area in I, Tonya. - Physical disability can get you an Oscar. This is what got Jamie Foxx a win for Ray, Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman, and Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot. Even John Wayne got his only Oscar this way, by playing the half-blind Marshall Rooster Cogburn in True Grit; he joked he would have put on an eyepatch sooner if he'd known it would net him one! The Trope Maker for this sub-category is probably Jane Wyman, winning the gold statuette for playing a deaf woman in Johnny Belinda. - White Man's Burden is a common trend; a privileged white character will take it upon himself to help an underprivileged minority and thus show his nobility. It earns nominations like for Gran Torino, The Blind Side, Freedom Writers, Glory Road, The Soloist, and Dangerous Minds but of these, only The Blind Side was either nominated for or won anything (with Sandra Bullock winning Best Actress). Green Book went all the way to a Best Picture win for 2018...but many critics and commentators were upset by this, especially as it won over films that made minority characters the center of their stories (such as Black Panther, Roma, and BlacKkKlansman). - An oddly specific recurring theme related to that is the subject of abused, often illiterate, black women. It's more or less "Oscar Bait: Black Edition". The Ur-Example of this trend is The Color Purple, which got eleven Oscar nominations but didn't win any (it was controversial in the black community for its portrayals of abusive black men and lesbianism, and other commentators felt director Steven Spielberg's approach to original Alice Walker novel was too sentimental — this was his first attempt at Oscar Bait). Monster's Ball featured a black woman whose husband is on Death Row, has to deal with a problematic, overweight son who later dies as well, and then enters a relationship with a similarly troubled white man before she finds out that he's her late husband's executioner. Halle Berry earned an Oscar for it. Precious was about an almost implausibly depressing character an illiterate black teenager who's raped by her father, abused by her mother, has a child called "Mongo" (short for "Mongoloid"), and whose uplifting ending to the film is just getting the chance to take the GED test. It garnered six Oscars nominations and won two, one of them going to Mo'Nique (who played the abusive mother). - A more recent phenomenon is playing a gay, lesbian, or transgender character and outlining the injustices or tragedies they face. Examples include Sean Penn in Milk; Tom Hanks in Philadelphia; Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote; Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry; Christopher Plummer in Beginners; and Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club. It wasnt always a winning formula; films like Transamerica and Brokeback Mountain are considered Award Snub victims (although the latter did win Best Director). This trend began losing credibility at the dawn of the 2020s as many of these actors aren't LGBTQ+ note : One notable exception being Daniela Vega, a transgender actress who played the lead role in A Fantastic Woman, a Chilean film that won for Best Foreign Language Film in 2018, meaning that actual LGBTQ+ performers are not getting opportunities to tell their stories — and are not often nominated when they do. (For similar reasons there are increasing complaints about able-bodied/neurotypical performers playing disabled characters.) - Dyeing for Your Art is a common way to win, but only if its bad for you; actors tend to do better by losing weight, gaining body fat, or otherwise becoming uglier as opposed to adding muscle mass or becoming more attractive. Actors who have won by punishing their body to look less attractive include: - Robert De Niro is credited with starting this trend by training and bulking up to become a convincing boxer, then binge eating for months on end to portray the same boxer as a washed-up has-been, and winning Best Actor for Raging Bull. - George Clooney, who gained 35 pounds for his Oscar-winning role in Syriana; - Philip Seymour Hoffman, who lost 40 pounds for his winning role in Capote; - Tom Hanks and his generally downtrodden and disheveled look in Cast Away; - Charlize Theron, who gained 30 pounds and underwent an extreme Beauty Inversion to win for Monster; - Heath Ledger, whose extreme Method Acting to play The Joker in The Dark Knight may have contributed to his untimely death but won him an Oscar anyway; - Natalie Portman, who did it twice first slimming down to 97 pounds and undergoing intense ballet training to win for Black Swan, and second for shaving her head in V for Vendetta to win the Best Actress Saturn; - Christian Bale, who lost a lot of weight to win Best Supporting Actor for The Fighter; - Anne Hathaway, who lost 25 pounds, had her head shaved, and picked up the general look of a tuberculosis-stricken prostitute to win Best Supporting Actress for Les Misérables; - Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, both of whom lost a lot of weight to earn Oscars for Dallas Buyers Club (Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively); and - Leonardo DiCaprio, who broke his long losing streak by doing extreme things for his role in The Revenant, including putting on weight, eating raw bison, and sleeping in animal carcasses. Observers joked that the Academy should give him the Oscar right away before he kills himself trying. - If youre going to make it more lighthearted, at least have it star an underdog. Winning examples include Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Erin Brockovich, On the Waterfront, and Cinderella Man. - Make it foreign. If nothing else, Europeans are very responsive to Oscar Bait films. And the Academy likes films set in interesting foreign locations. Films like Slumdog Millionaire, City of God, and Babel are successful examples. - An interesting trend is to subvert the typical Oscar Bait film by creating a "quirky" independent dramedy - among the winners and nominees in the field of such movies are Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, Silver Linings Playbook, Sideways, The Big Sick, Lady Bird and Happy-Go-Lucky. These films always feature hip dialogue, eccentric characters, and many a Snark Knight. - Don't make it sci-fi, fantasy, or to a lesser extent action; the Sci Fi Ghetto is very much in effect at the Oscars. They usually only get nominated for Visuals, Sound, or Makeup rather than the Big Five categories. The only way they get one of those nominations is if they are more cerebral or philosophical, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Dark Knight, Avatar, Inception, Gravity, Arrival and Black Panther. If you actually want to win with a sci-fi or fantasy film, it should be based on a highly acclaimed previous work (no, not Star Trek, older than that) this was a big reason The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won Best Picture (because it was a big-budget groundbreaking adaptation of a highly acclaimed work of literature). Mad Max: Fury Road notably bucked both trends - it was neither cerebral nor based on a particularly critically acclaimed work - but was nominated for Best Picture regardless. - Very, very few actors from horror movies have been nominated, much less won — especially if they're not seen as sufficiently arty. - No actors from animated movies have been recognized, and the Academy had to create a new category to try and make sure an Animated movie didn't get nominated for Best Picture after Beauty and the Beast was nominated in 1991. It didn't entirely work, but it has blocked most animated films from any category besides Best Animated Feature. Actors doing mo-cap fit in here as well, since they're not technically on screen. A good example is Andy Serkis for his roles in Lord of the Rings and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. - An unusually specific type of Oscar Bait is the movie about a troubled country singer. Robert Duvall (for Tender Mercies), Jeff Bridges (for Crazy Heart), and Sissy Spacek (for Coal Miner's Daughter) all won Oscars this way. And Reese Witherspoon won hers for Walk the Line, where she plays a troubled country singer helping an even more troubled country singer (played by Joaquin Phoenix, who snagged a nomination). - Actors have had success playing previously celebrated actors (or big stars in general). Examples include Robert Downey Jr. as Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin; Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood; Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator; Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn; and Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. Ironically, of these older famous actors, only Hepburn ever won Best Actor or Actress herself. - Films about film-making and acting or who include Hollywood and the film industry as a part of their setting such as The Artist, Argo, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Trumbo (a Biopic whose plot includes three historical Academy Awards ceremonies) and La La Land. And those are just from The New '10s! ## Films (or otherwise) that come across as particularly obvious in their ambitions: - The West Wing episode "The Long Goodbye" was painfully obviously designed to score Allison Janney an Emmy nomination. It did so by omitting most of the regular cast to show her character battling her father's Alzheimer's disease. This was particularly strange because Janney won four Emmys on her own over the course of the series, so she didn't need a weepy Emmy-bait episode. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "The Body" is a massive tearjerker episode where the cast deals with Joyce's death and seems to be pushing all the Emmy Bait buttons. It didn't get a nomination, but the No-Dialogue Episode "Hush" did. - Baywatch tried several times to net itself an Emmy with various Very Special Episodes dealing with death or another weighty topic. Despite all their efforts, it never worked and the show failed to even get nominated during its entire run. - American Son, a Netflix film (based on a play) that deals with racial tensions in America, is similar to Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close in that it was critically-drubbed upon release for its heavy-handed dealing with the topic, but managed to earn an Emmy nomination for Outstanding TV Movie. - The Good Place: Episode 3x09, "Janets" was the last episode to air before the mid-season break, meaning only three episodes were left at the start of 2019. According to the show's official podcast, part of the reason they split the season up this way was so D'Arcy Carden's performance would be fresh in the minds of awards groups like the Golden Globes and SAG awards. The episode involves the other main characters transforming into a likeness of Janet, meaning Carden had to essentially play every character. Despite receiving praise for her performance(s), Carden failed to be nominated at any of the major groups. (The Emmys did nominate her for the following season, however.) - He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): Animator Tom Tataranowicz, who came up with the idea for the Unexpectedly Dark Episode "The Problem With Power", openly admitted in the DVD commentary that he did so to enforce this trope, as episodes in which someone died always won Emmys. It didn't work, though the episode is considered to be one of the very best of the show. - Hawking, a biopic of famously disabled genius astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, was saturated with topics designed to warrant nominations from the BAFTA and not just about Hawking struggling with his ALS or his efforts in science. It even managed to include a few Holocaust references; a supporting character had to flee Nazi Germany with his family as a child. - Stranger Things dropped the first volume of Season 4 on May 27, 2022, four days before the 2022 cutoff. The most notable episode was "Dear Billy", a Max-focussed episode that deals with depression, suicidial ideations and survivor's guilt, giving Sadie Sink a lot of angsty material, before ending in massively emotional style via the use of the Kate Bush song "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)". The show was nominated for Best Drama Series (losing to Succession) and got twelve Creative Arts nominations, winning five. Two of the wins, for music supervision and prosthetic make-up, were for "Dear Billy". Sadie Sink, however, failed to get an Emmy nomination despite the trades predicting one, although won a HCA award and ended 2022 with a much bigger profile. - In the Heights centers around an inspirational Fourth of July where impoverished immigrants in Washington Heights win the lottery and struggle with issues of college debt, gentrification, and American identity. The characters angst over everything, including (but not limited to): boatloads of Unresolved Sexual Tension, the hypocrisy of The American Dream, the expenses of living in the heights, and \|\|the death of a beloved community member\|\|. Sprinkle in some modern, catchy infusions of hip-hop and salsa music, and you have a Tony-winning musical. It was nominated for thirteen categories, winning four (but none for writing). - Hamilton, which centers around the titular character during the Revolutionary War, and has the special honor of being one of the only shows with a cast made up of people of color. It won 11 Tonys, and had 16 nominations in total. If you weren't Hamilton at the 2016 Tonys, there was no point in showing up. - Young @ Heart was not eligible for either an Oscar or an Emmy (for various reasons), so it set its sights on international film festivals, particularly the Rose d'Or. It's a documentary about a pensioners' choir going on tour, and it hit so many of the Oscar Bait buttons that it's a surprise that it didn't fall victim to Hype Backlash. It won almost everything it ran for (only Man on Wire could beat it in anything). - The Last of Us Part II has been accused by its detractors of being Oscar Bait in Video Game form, featuring a female lesbian protagonist in an extremely bleak and realistically violent revenge story set in a Zombie Apocalypse where the real focus is on human cruelty. While fan reception was divisive to say the least, it certainly wowed critics by sweeping The Game Awards 2020 and becoming the most awarded game of all time. Some critics even went so far as to (in a positive way) call it gaming's Schindler's List moment. The Oscar Bait trope is so pervasive that it defines the formula that wins Oscars. When a different kind of film wins big, and no one else can replicate that success, its worth noting. - 1931 film Skippy was an unexceptional little family movie about a nine-year-old boy who gets into mischief. Somehow it got four nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Jackie Cooper (the youngest nominee ever), and it won Best Director for Norman Taurog. Even more amazing? It was based on a newspaper comic strip. It wasn't until the 2019 Oscars that another film based on a comic strip, comic book, or graphic novel ( Black Panther) was nominated for Best Picture. - The 1934 film It Happened One Night was a small, low-budget romantic comedy Road Movie, released during a time when Oscar Bait meant elaborate musical and dancing showcases. It gained universal acclaim from both critics and audiences and swept the "Big Five" awards: Best Picture, Best Director (Frank Capra), Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Actress (Claudette Colbert), and Best Screenplay. This has only been done twice more in all the years since: by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1976 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1992. - The Silence of the Lambs is dark, deals with mental illness, and addresses man's inhumanity to man. It's also a horror film, a genre that usually gets no love at the Oscars. (The producers were aware of that and billed it as a "Psychological Thriller".) It was the first horror film to win any of the "Big Five" since Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1932 and was only the third film of any kind to sweep all of the Big Five categories. - Beauty and the Beast, against all odds, found its way out of the Animation Age Ghetto and wound up being nominated for Best Picture in 1991. It didn't win, but this in itself was an incredible feat (which Disney would futilely try to replicate). It remains the only animated feature to ever get nominated from when the field was five movies ( Toy Story 3 and Up got nods after the field was expanded to 8-10 movies). - Star Wars broke out of the Sci Fi Ghetto and got Oscar nominations for Best Director (George Lucas), Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Alec Guinness), and Best Screenplay. It didn't win any of them, but it showed that a hugely popular sci-fi film might catch the Academys attention. It opened the door for such films as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Avatar, Aliens, and District 9 to get nominations as well, and non-sci-fi films in the same vein (like Raiders of the Lost Ark). That said, the fact that they didnt win anything big pointed towards Oscar Bait becoming an end in and of itself in years to follow. - Titanic was unusual in that it wasn't meant to be Oscar Bait — just James Cameron's dream project that was supposed to be committed to the screen, and was originally being positioned as a Summer Blockbuster. People latched onto it, and it won almost everything. It does, however, tick a few of the boxes: it's a Period Piece centered around a famous historical event, yet still has a decade-spanning story thanks to said Period Piece story being told by a character in the the present, and Forbidden Love between people of different socio-economic classes. Critics who appreciated Cameron's dedication to dutifully recreating many of the details of the Titanic and its sinking, but didn't care for the fictional love story often accue the director of shoehorning said love story in to increase his chances during award season instead of letting the real history of the Titanic stand on its own as a story. - The Lord of the Rings is a strange case; although it is fantasy, it was also adapted from one of literature's most important and ground-breaking fantasy works, and it was also a huge spectacle that changed the game in epic filmmaking. But what was truly unexpected was for The Return of the King to sweep its awards. Perhaps its wins were meant to be for the trilogy as a whole — it was filmed as one project, so it might have been unfair for it to eat up all the important awards for all three years it was released over — but that is still a phenomenal accomplishment for a fantasy film series. More cynical explanations involve the series' great commercial success: either the Academy felt unable to ignore such a big hit, or it wanted to reward the series for helping the cinema industry by getting so many people through the door. - Annie Hall won Best Picture, Best Actress (Diane Keaton), Best Screenplay, and Best Director (Woody Allen). It was unusual in that it was a romantic comedy (although one with a Bittersweet Ending). It beat out Julia (a biopic about sticking it to the Nazis) and Star Wars to Best Picture as well. - The Dark Knight was the first comic book movie to win an acting nomination (for Heath Ledger) and only the fifth film based on a comic strip, comic book or graphic novel to earn an acting nomination. note : The others, for those keeping score at home, were the aforementioned Jackie Cooper for Skippy, Al Pacino for Dick Tracy, Paul Newman for Road to Perdition, and William Hurt for A History of Violence. With the pervasiveness of serious Oscar Bait fare, the idea that friggin' Batman can win an Oscar was unreal. Then again, Ledger may have had the advantage of sadly being dead. - The Departed was gritty, violent, and serious, but it was also not a war movie, very profane (relative to most Oscar Bait), and otherwise didn't touch on Oscar-baity subjects. And it won Best Picture. It was directed by Martin Scorsese, who had previously whiffed on the more baity The Aviator and Gangs of New York — although this led some observers to believe that its win was a "lifetime achievement" Oscar to make up for Scorsese not winning for previous line of work. - No Country for Old Men followed up on The Departed and won Best Picture the very next year with the same formula. This, though, was a relentlessly cynical film which won very big — rather than most Oscar Bait, it presents humanity's failure as inevitable and comments on the meaninglessness of the material world. It was also kind of an upset winner over There Will Be Blood — an even bleaker film. - There Will Be Blood was a Period Drama about the oil boom in Southern California during the early 20th century, but that's where the Oscar Bait qualities end - the movie's main character is a ruthless and sociopathic oilman who descends further into madness, greed, and cruelty the more successful he gets throughout the film, and eventually culminates in him driving away all of his loved ones, with his main rival being \|\|a weaselly False Prophet\|\|. - The Hurt Locker, other than being a Post-9/11 Terrorism Movie, had very little going for it on the Oscar front; it had a low budget, no big stars, no big studio to promote it, and not even a political message. It wound up winning Best Picture in 2010, in spite of having at the time the lowest box office numbers of any Best Picture winner ever. One thing that did work in its favor was the narrative of Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first female director to win Best Director — over her ex-husband James Cameron (but some suggest that this was why she wasn't nominated for Zero Dark Thirty a few years later). - The French Connection, the 1971 Best Picture winner, is a gritty and suspenseful genre film with a nihilistic tone. But unlike most Oscar winners, it has a morally ambiguous protagonist and an ending where \|\|The Bad Guy Wins and most of the other villains receive a Karma Houdini\|\|. Some speculate that the Academy gave the win to a film this dark to distance itself from the saccharine musicals that won in The '60s. - The Artist won Best Picture in spite of it being a Silent Movie from 2011. It's not often that Le Film Artistique (or something vaguely resembling it anyway) gets nominations beyond Best Foreign Film, but this one won the whole thing. It helped that it was also an unashamed love letter to Old Hollywood, which probably appealed to Academy viewers. - Quentin Tarantino's films Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained certainly seem like Oscar Bait at first glance, the first being set in World War II and the second tackling American slavery. They wound up getting seven and five nominations respectively. They're also quintessential Tarantino films — fictional and bizarre, so never feeling like Oscar Bait. - Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the least Oscar-friendly movies ever made. It's the fourth film in a franchise that never saw any Oscar attention before, and had its last installment all the way back in 1985. It's a loud, explosive, and unapologetic pure action movie. It has very little dialogue and is essentially a nonstop two-hour car chase scene. And it was released all the way back in May. But it got critical acclaim for its action sequences, Show, Don't Tell storytelling, and hidden themes and was regarded as one of the best movies of 2015, topping more official Top 10 lists than any other. It ended up being an unexpected Oscar contender, being nominated for ten awards (including Best Picture) and winning six, the most of that year. - In the same vein and in the same year as Fury Road, there was The Revenant, an ultraviolent pulp western, which got nominated for many Oscars and won three, including Best Director (Alejandro González Iñárritu's second consecutive win after Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)) and Best Actor (Leonardo Dicaprio's first). - Black Swan is a horror movie, and the director never denied that. (The producers, on the other hand, marketed it as a "Psychological Thriller"). It also features a lesbian sex scene, just to get eyeballs on it. It still got five Oscar nominations and was regarded as one of the best films of the year. - Get Out is a horror movie about a black man in a white suburb and was released in February. It earned acclaim for not only its storyline, but its hidden social commentary, and was nominated for dozens of movie awards, winning quite a few, including the Best Screenplay Oscar, and in doing so became the first horror movie to win a Big Five Oscar since The Silence of the Lambs. - The Shape of Water had one of the most oddball premises ever for an Oscar nominee (a love story between a mute woman and a fish person), which you might think would've alienated the Academy. Instead, it won Best Picture and Director. - Black Panther, the eighteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is a solo film about one of the most popular black superheroes. At first glance, it still feels like your typical superhero movie and the plot is about the hero inheriting the throne of his kingdom only to be challenged by an adversary who wants to lead a global revolution, which is not a common topic for an Oscar Bait. But Black Panther had an edge over the other solo superhero movies because the film touches on social and political issues that have significant cultural importance to the African and African-American communities. It earned many accolades and became the first superhero film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. And like Get Out, it was even released during the dump month of February. - Being (technically) a non-technical category, the Best Animated Feature category is a good place to subvert traditional Oscar Bait, as the following winners and nominees have shown: - Shrek was a subversive, Toilet Humor-involving Fractured Fairy Tale released when most animated movies were Strictly Formula. It was warmly received by critics and not only did it win the inaugural Best Animated Feature Oscar, but it also managed to be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. - Big Hero 6, which won in 2015, heavily touches on death and revenge, two very common Oscar Bait themes... and it's still a superhero movie where one of the main characters is a huggable robot. It ended up the first Marvel-related movie to win any major non-technical category. - Four years later, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse repeated the trick, having themes of loss and redemption, though its main achievement is its artstyle. It earned Sony Pictures Animation an Oscar among many other accolades. - Wreck-It Ralph deserves special mention purely for the fact that it's a video game movie, in an industry not well known for producing quality video game movies. Beyond that, it's about a video game bad guy who wants to prove he can actually be good. No Oscar (it lost to the more Oscar-baity Brave), but several other awards and nominations anyway, including the Best Animated Feature Annie Award over Brave. - Parasite is an interesting case. While it was a South Korean film (let alone the country's first showing for even the now-renamed Best International Film category) against established directors with credbility like Martin Scorsese, Sam Mendes and Quentin Tarantino and ostensible lockins like Joker, it also dealt with Capitalism Is Bad and Eat the Rich themes that made it popular with critics and audiences alike, even netting it a Palme d'Or win (notably one of the few unanimous wins of that prize). Still, the supposed odds against it had many people predicting wins for the aforementioned directors and their films, which wasn't helped by Director Bong Joon-ho making a critical comments toward the Academy by comparing them to "local film festivals" for having a bias towards recognizing "safe" movies, which is why it shocked everyone by setting historical wins by: - Being not just the first South Korean film but the first foreign language film note : while 2011 winner The Artist was a French production, it was also a silent film \|\|with the sole dialogue being in English\|\| to win Best Picture. - Having Bong also win for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. - Making Bong the second person in Oscar history to win four Oscars (together with an aforementioned International Film win, the only category it was considered a lock for caveat : though technically he is not a named recepient in the Best International Feature (it is ascribed to the country of origin)) in one night, a distinction only shared by Walt Disney. - More impressively, Disney's four wins for four different films, all of Bong's wins were for just this one. - Speaking of the Palme d'Or, it was also just the third film in history to win both it and the Best Picture Oscar, this last happening back in 1956 with Marty. - CODA had the disability angle going for it, with a mostly deaf cast, but as a remake of a French film that wasn't particularly known or loved outside France, by a writer-director only making her second feature film, it got lost in the shuffle during awards season and only netted three Oscar nominations. But then it built up tremendous buzz during the Oscar campaign and ended up winning all three nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Troy Kotsur) and Best Adapted Screenplay. - The 2023 Oscars had two major exceptions: - Everything Everywhere All at Once touches on themes of Generational Trauma, nihilism, and is about the reparation of a mother-daughter relationship. Sounds like something the Academy would love. What did you say? It's also a humorous, action-heavy, and very surreal trip into The Multiverse, featuring concepts like a universe where everyone has hot dogs for fingers, sentient rocks, and an everything bagel capable of destroying universes? OK, maybe not so much. But it was distributed by A24, a studio that's carved out a special niche with quirky, auteur-driven Genre-Busting movies that do well with critics and audiences alike, and it became a Sleeper Hit that gradually gained traction throughout the 2022 awards season (and since A24 distributed the aforementioned Moonlight, they know how to navigate the awards circuit). It got eleven Oscar nominations, the most of any film that year, including Best Picture, and became the first film ever to win six of the seven topline Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, with Best Film Editing giving it a seventh win). - Top Gun: Maverick was the long-awaited sequel to a film that, while a hit with audiences, was never a critical darling, and was a big-budget action Summer Blockbuster released in May. However, it ended up receiving critical acclaim and began to be regarded as one of 2022's best films, which would lead to it getting six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and a surprise nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and eventually won for Best Sound. - Batman Beyond is an odd case of Emmy Bait. The show won an Emmy for the episode "The Eggbaby", which is a comedic slapstick romp that is light-hearted in tone and feels very out of place with the rest of the series. And yet, it won, even though superhero cartoons lived in the sewer of the animation ghetto. note : The producers did this deliberately ## Spoofs of this trope: - The Mask has a shootout sequence where the Mask, after dodging a ridiculous number of bullets, turns into a cowboy and allows himself to be shot — so that he can give several Final Speeches (all Shout Outs to award-winning movies) and die in another characters arms. Then the audience cheers, and he gets up and tearfully accepts an award. Even the mobsters shooting him check their hair and straighten their suits as if they were on TV. - In Wayne's World, Wayne gives a dramatic, teary-eyed note : He didn't actually cry, he just splashed water in his face speech, while the words Oscar Clip are emblazoned over the shot. He even finished it off by claiming to be illiterate, which he then admitted wasn't true after "Oscar Clip" stopped flashing on the screen. - From the Road to ... series: - At the end of Road to Morocco, Bob Hope's character has accidentally blown up the ship, leaving the main cast stranded on a raft. Hope chews up the scenery, acting as if they've been stranded there for weeks. Then the camera pans up to reveal the New York City skyline. Bing Crosbys character tells him to calm down, to which Hope bitterly remarks that theyve ruined his chance for an Academy Award. - In Road to Bali, Crosby finds the Oscar Humphrey Bogart won for The African Queen. Hope points out that Crosby already has an Oscar, snatches the trophy from him, and begins making an acceptance speech. (While Hope was never nominated for a competitive Oscar, he did win four Honorary Oscars and hosted the show a recorded fourteen times.) - In Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, after parodying one of the dramatic scenes from Boyz n the Hood, the main character tells his girlfriend that he's trying to win the Best Black Actor at the Soul Train awards. - In Tropic Thunder: - One of the fake trailers at the beginning of the movie shows Kirk Lazarus and Tobey Maguire playing Irish monks who fall in love with each other in a clearly Oscar-baity film, Satan's Alley. - Action star Tugg Speedman reflects on the failure of his Oscar Bait film Simple Jack, in which he plays a mentally-challenged farmhand. It was a total Box Office Bomb and called one of the worst films of all time. Kirk Lazarus explains that it's because people who won for playing Inspirationally Disadvantaged characters never went "full retard: Speedman: What do you mean? Lazarus: Check it out. Dustin Hoffman , Rain Man : look retarded, act retarded — not retarded. Counted toothpicks, cheated cards. Autistic, sho — not retarded. You know Tom Hanks , Forrest Gump : slow, yes. Retarded, maybe. Braces on his legs. But he charmed the pants off Nixon and won a ping-pong competition. That ain't retarded. And he was a goddamn war hero. You know any retarded war heroes? You went full retard, man. Never go full retard. You dont buy that? Ask Sean Penn , 2001, i am sam . Remember? Went full retard, went home empty-handed. - Lazarus has a lot of experience with these, as he himself is a spoof of Oscar Bait actors. He's a five-time Oscar winner, and that's before Satan's Alley. He mentions having played Neil Armstrong, ticking the "based on a true story" box. His third Oscar was for a Chinese film called Land of Silk and Money, which he prepped for by working eight months in a textile factory. According to supplemental material, one of his five Oscars is for Best Actress, having apparently tackled a Cross-Cast Role, going to extremes with the usual Oscar-worthy physical transformations. In the movie itself, he's attempting that again, having undergone "pigmentation alteration" surgery to play a black man, a move which has generated more in-universe controversy than Oscar buzz. He never breaks character, despite realizing very early on in the film that production is ruined. As the icing on the cake, Robert Downey Jr. actually received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Lazarus. - Want even more icing on the cake? Along with Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe, one of the inspirations for Lazarus is Daniel Day Lewis, an actor who is to Oscar Bait films what Sylvester Stallone is to action films and Julia Roberts is to chick flicks. - At the end of the film, the Oscar for Best Actor is presented. The stills of the nominees include Tom Hanks winning a race in a wheelchair and a blind Sean Penn learning braille. - In Bowfinger, black action star Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) weighs in on the trope: Ramsey: White boys get all the Oscars — it's a fact! Manager: I know that, but look— Ramsey: Did I get nominated? No, and you know why? Cos I havent played any of them slave roles, where I get my ass whipped — that's how you get the nominations! A black dude plays a slave role and gets his ass whipped, they get the nomination; a white boy plays an idiot, they get the Oscar. Maybe Ill split it; find me a script as a retarded slave, then I'll get the Oscar! Manager: (awkward pause) Uh, I'm gonna go schmooze. I'll be right back. (starts to leave) Ramsey: Yeah, and go find that script. Buck the Wonder-Slave! - In Blazing Saddles, villain Hedley Lamarr announces to his gang of thugs near the climax: You will only be risking your lives, while I will almost certainly be risking an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. - The first fifteen minutes of In & Out are rife with references to this trope. Matt Dillons character wins an Oscar for playing a gay soldier unfairly discharged from the military, in a film that appears to be equal parts A Few Good Men, Philadelphia, and Forrest Gump. The actors he beat: Paul Newman for Coot, Clint Eastwood for Codger, Michael Douglas for Primary Urges, and Steven Seagal for Snowball in Hell. - The Naked Gun 33 1/3 includes a scene at the Oscar ceremony, where all the films were ridiculously High Concept, like "the story of one woman's triumph over the death of her cat, set against the background of the Hindenburg disaster," and "the story of one woman's triumph over a yeast infection, set against the background of the tragic Buffalo Bills season of 1971." - Om Shanti Om: Parodied when Om has to play a blind deaf mute with no legs or arms. Sure, critics will love it but his fans will be bored. - Theres a monthly online contest called Bait an Oscar, where contestants write film pitches to be voted on as if they were Oscar contenders. Oddly enough, this is a subversion; most participants tend to be fans of this kind of movie and are genuinely trying to pitch good ideas. - Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: - Parodied in this spoof video done by BriTANicK.com and hosted on Cracked. It was such a spot-on parody that it even got its own page on TV Tropes, A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever. Catchphwase! - Kickassia has this in every scene regarding Spoonys attempts to avoid giving in to the madness ( i.e. his Enemy Within Dr. Insano). He even engages in Ham-to-Ham Combat with it. - In the third segment of Linkaras History of Power Rangers series, he shows a clip of Bulk and Skull trying to save a bunch of kids from drowning in a lake. They run down the pier in slow motion with inspirational music. Linkara responds by putting "Oscar Clip" at the bottom of the screen. (And it turns out the lake was knee-deep and the children were just playing.) - Nerd To The Third Power host Dr. Gonzo swore up and down that Precious would win Best Picture (based on his belief that Oscar winners were always the most depressing movie on the docket), because it's about an underprivileged black rape victim who gives birth to an incest baby with down syndrome. I haven't even seen the movie and I already want to kill myself! It has to win!" (It didnt; The Hurt Locker did.) - 11points.com had an 11 Points Countdown webisode about the 11 Least Deserving Best Picture Winners, which claimed that The English Patient and The King's Speech were Oscar Bait. One of the commentators even says that The King's Speech was blatantly pandering to the older Academy voters, saying that it wouldn't have looked out of place winning Best Picture in 1965. - On Midnight Screenings, Brad Jones says he thinks calling a film Oscar Bait is an overused criticism. But he says he thinks it fits at least the trailer for the film of The Book Thief. - CollegeHumor made a video on this topic titled 21 Steps to Making an Oscar Movie, including: high-contrast low-saturation lighting, suspenseful piano music, period clothing, disability, drug addiction, low camera angle, suicide, and a lot of other clichés. - Game Theorist Matthew Patrick on his second channel Film Theory spends fifteen minutes discussing the formula yielding the highest statistical chance of winning an Oscar. - Super Deluxe released an Oscar contender trailer for Straight Outta Compton, with the joke being that the film was made more appealing to the Academy voters by presenting it as an uplifting White Man's Burden movie about the group's Jewish manager. - The Nostalgia Critic gives a fierce Take That! to Selma, The Blind Side, 12 Years a Slave, and Django Unchained when Malcom refers to them as "White Guilt Oscar Bait movies" and points out the only reason he likes them is because The Critic always takes him out to dinner after they watch one. - Honest Trailers mocked Anne Hathaway's role as Fantine in Les Misérables (2012) as this, crediting her as "I Really Really Really Wanted To Win An Oscar". - A hilarious musical performance actually took place at the 79th Academy Awards, featuring Will Ferrell and Jack Black lamenting about how they never win Oscars for their comedy. They sing about beating up serious actors in the audience until John C. Reilly joins them on stage and tells them that they should also do serious films from time to time like he does. Reilly: Fellas! This madness must stop, there is no need to fear, you can have your cake and eat it too, just look at my career! I didn't cry when I would lose, I didnt pick silly fights, I chose to be in both Boogie and Talladega Nights ! Don't just be clowns, 'cause then you're just bores, mix it up, and Oscars shall be yours! Black: He's right! I'm gonna re-read that script about the guy who gets lead poisoning and then sues a major corporation, there's not a laugh in there! Farrell: And I'm gonna take that project about the guy with no arms and legs who teaches gangbangers Hamlet !	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OscarBaitMovies
Orphan's Ordeal - TV Tropes Some orphans have it easy, but not these ones. This trope is about fiction highlighting the unpleasant side of losing one's parents to death or abandonment. The parents have been lost recently, and the main plot (or at least a major subplot) involves dealing with this loss. This generally includes some combination of: The character is often a Heartwarming Orphan. If they're especially unlucky, they will be Raised by Orcs. Contrast with Conveniently an Orphan, where orphanhood is used simply as a plot-enabler. Also see Happily Adopted. ## Examples: - Attack on Titan: Orphans are extremely common, with many joining the military to survive. Eren, Mikasa, and Armin are all orphaned during the fall of Wall Maria, being among the many refugee children left without families. Later on, \|\|Connie\|\| is left orphaned when his village is destroyed. Discovering the secrets of his father's research is one of Eren's driving goals, and a major plot point of the series. - In Balancing My Support Magic And Summoning Magic In A Different World, two of the main characters, Arisu and Tamaki, are orphans, but rather than being adopted into loving homes from the orphanage, are taken in by Bitch in Sheep's Clothing Abusive Parents who treat them like shit and give them serious complexes, due to the trauma of severe emotional abuse over the tiniest slight, real or imagined. - Barefoot Gen: many, many children were made homeless orphans by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. - Chrono Crusade: - Although most of Rosette's history as an orphan is more of a case of Conveniently an Orphan, in the manga it's revealed that one of the major points of Rosette's personality — her difficulty with being able to sit and wait — partially comes from the trauma of being able to do nothing but wait as the adults that knew her parents arranged their funeral and sent her and her brother to an orphanage. - Joshua, Azmaria and Satella all show lingering affects of the deaths of their parents, as well. And, in fact, even \|\|Aion's issues stem partially from what happened to his mother\|\|. This trope is really one of the biggest reasons why the characters in Chrono Crusade come off as such a Dysfunction Junction. - In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, it is the champion motivator and common trait among all ranks in the Demon Slayer Corps, the slayers who are not orphaned in some manner are the exception in the series's narrative; their collective loss at the hands of demons is what makes the slayers so fervently determined to kill all of them, even if they are very likely to die in doing so, as long as they go out by taking a demon with them that's one duty fulfilled. Among the series's main characters their common orphaned status impact their characters in different ways: Tanjiro works solemnly to eradicate the suffering demons cause so no one else may lose their families like he did; Zenitsu has a traumatic and desperate sense of belonging since he was orphan since birth, wanting to make a family as soon as possible and have others look up to him as a hero; Inosuke was raised by wild boars in the mountains, with almost zero human contact save one exception, that made Inosuke socially unsympathetic at first, having no care for the fellow person. - In the Turning Red spinoff 4★Town 4★Real, Jesse is revealed to have been adopted as a baby and then to have lost his adoptive father to an accident as a toddler leaving him with an emotional void. - In Fruits Basket, the death of Tohru's mother Kyoko seems like a convenient plot device at first, since it leads to Tohru moving in with Yuki, Kyo, and Shigure and finding out about the Sohma clan's Hereditary Curse. However, it's later revealed that Kyoko's death affected Tohru much more than she lets on, since her over-attachment to her mother's memory keeps her from moving on in several aspects of her life, including \|\|falling in love with Kyo, since she feels she's disrespecting her mother by loving someone else\|\|. - Fullmetal Alchemist: Ed and Al. It all happens before the start of the actual story, but it still drives the plot: they begin their quest for the Philosopher's Stone after losing their bodies in an attempt to bring back their beloved mother, who'd raised them alone after their father left early on (albeit with good reason). \|\|They later find him, and the issues between them (namely, the reason he left) also drive most of the plot\|\|. - In Full Moon, not only is 12-year-old Mitsuki an orphan, she has terminal throat cancer, a cold grandmother who doesn't let her do anything remotely fun, and later finds out that \|\|her first childhood love died in a car accident. Geesus!\|\| - Hellsing: poor Integra Hellsing. Not only did she lose her mother years before, but the day that her father died of lung cancer, his brother Richard attempted to murder her in order to gain control of the family vampire-hunting organization. Fortunately, she is saved after fleeing to the basement when she discovers Alucard who was sealed there for the last twenty years and after he takes out the mooks and blocks a bullet for her, she shoots her uncle and lives to tell the tale, but damn, what a hell of a day that must have been. - Last Exile: Claus and Lavie swing between this and Conveniently an Orphan — after all, they wouldn't be teenage vanship pilots in their father's old vanship if their mother and fathers were still around — but the loss of both their fathers in the Grand Stream and the later death of Claus' mother is a hard blow that forces the two together into a makeshift family, to learn how to fly the vanship on their own so they can support themselves and is tied in with their ambition to succeed at the task their fathers failed in, as well as certain plot points involving Alex, captain of the Silvana. - In March Comes in Like a Lion, Rei's dealt with a lot since his family's death. At their funeral, most of his remaining blood relatives were none too concerned about him, with one even promising to send him to a "nice" orphanage. His foster care was built upon a lie on how much he liked shogi, and even when he was taken in, there was friction between him and the real children in the family as he surpassed them in shogi and fell into the most favor with their father. These problems never really went away until he pushed himself forward into the professional shogi circuit and left home early to live on his own. - Monster: Aside from Johan and Nina (obviously), the former of whom is raised at an orphanage designed for brainwashing children into becoming perfect soldiers, there is a whole slew of orphans whose lives are horribly screwed up. A little Czech boy, for example, receives a hint that his mother might be found at the local Red Light District, where he ends up witnessing a borderline rape of a druggie hooker. - Naruto: - Sasuke Uchiha. A perfectly happy child with a large clan that he viewed as an extended family, he returned one night to discover they were dead. All of them except for his beloved older brother. Who had just killed their parents. Needless to say, this had a rather large impact on his future personality (disorders) and career and life goals. - Naruto Uzumaki is an orphan too, and he also has it pretty rough. In fact, there are a lot of orphans, mostly because their parents worked in a high-risk profession, and all these orphans frequently wind up with severe psychological issues because There Are No Therapists. - In Natsume's Book of Friends, after his parents died, Natsume found himself passed around from distant relative to distant relative because nobody wanted to deal with the Creepy Child who claimed to see dead people and monsters everywhere. As a result, he has a great deal of difficulty being open and honest with anyone for fear of rejection. - Neon Genesis Evangelion: - Asuka and Shinji have been selected as the second and third children to pilot Evas because their mothers are dead. \|\|Their souls were used in the creation of Eva-01 and Eva-02.\|\| Shinji's father abandoned his son because he was afraid of him and of screwing him, while Asuka's father, almost immediately after her mother's death, married the woman with whom he was having an affair. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Rei doesn't have any parents at all. Also Misato's father was killed with the entire rest of the Antarctic expedition, and Ritsuko's mother killed herself \|\|after Gendo got her into his bed to exploit her\|\|. This is a major part of each of these characters' plots and one of the main reasons behind the show's Dysfunction Junction. - Kaji also discovers that Shinji's school is a front for the powers that be, and that all of Shinji's classmates are potential Children candidates, meaning many of them may be orphans as well. It's suggested for two side characters, and canonically stated for one, that their parents are dead as well. - In Pokémon Adventures, when Emerald's parents died in an unspecified accident, his relatives essentially played hot potato with him all across Hoenn as none of them wanted to be bothered with taking care with a kid with legit dwarfism. This, along with being bullied for said dwarfism, led to his self-esteem issues and inability to accept help from others. - In Princess Tutu, many of Fakir's flaws stem from his parents' deaths — particularly the fact that he witnessed them, and \|\|he was at least partially to blame\|\|. - Tiger & Bunny: Barnaby was orphaned at the age of four and \|\|has since been raised in an orphanage (though certain circumstances have lead him to believe otherwise).\|\| Flashbacks prove that he was a cheerful, contented kid before this; but twenty years later we see him as a cold, cynical Broken Ace who is hell-bent on avenging his murdered parents. Despite all this he was apparently quite popular at school, is fairly affluent as an adult and competent at his job — not that he'd allow such things to hinder his quest for vengeance. - Tokyo Ghoul has numerous characters that are orphans, and touches on not only the trauma of losing parents but the difficult life young Ghouls face once their parents have been killed. - After the death of his mother, Kaneki was left in the care of his maternal aunt and her family. Suffice to say, it was not a happy home life and he was subjected to considerable resentment, neglect, and outright abuse until he was finally able to move out. - Nishiki and his older sister were orphaned quite young, and shown to be living in destitute conditions throughout their life. His older sister worked hard to support them both, but her death left him alone and deeply bitter. - When their father was caught by Investigators, Touka and Ayato were shown to have waited for several days alone in their apartment until a neighbor came to check on them. She promptly turned them in to authorities, forcing them to flee and live on the streets, fighting for survival until Yoshimura took them in years later. - CCG takes full advantage of the emotional scars, taking in children orphaned by Ghoul attacks and encouraging them to train to become Ghoul Investigators, fostering as much resentment and hate as possible rather than encourage them to heal. - Tower of God: Anaak Jahad's parents relationship was an illegal one, so her parents were killed and Anaak just barely managed to survive. She tries to get revenge on the perpetrators by wiping them out entirely, however, the Jahad family is not only the royal family, but also gathers the strongest warriors and adopts them. - DC Comics: - Batman's story is worse than average in some ways (he saw both parents violently killed up close), better in others (Alfred turned out to be the ideal Parental Substitute for him). This also happened with his adopted children. One of the explanations for why he adopted Dick Grayson is precisely so that Dick wouldn't end up as damaged as he is. Jason Todd never showed much grief for being an orphan until A Death in the Family, which also coincided with his emotional instability. And while Tim Drake wasn't orphaned until much later, and lost each of his parents in seperate instances, he went through a lot of trauma with their deaths and initially resisted being adopted, though that was due to his anger at Bruce for Stephanie's death. - Done in the Silver Age Doom Patrol with the character of Beast Boy (yes, that one). The poor kid was already a bright green shapeshifter, but he couldn't save his parents. And then his uncle Galtry took him in. The Patrol took care of Galtry, and Gar wound up Happily Adopted by Rita Farr and Mento...(well, until she got killed, too). - Post-Crisis versions of Supergirl suffer from PTSD and Survivor Guilt due to her parents' loss. Kara has been known to openly say she wishes she would have died together with them. - The Pre-Crisis version of Superman had him often fixated on the loss of his biological parents and his world with his super-memory of his short time there, made worse by several time travel adventures that allowed him to visit Krypton and get to know his parents, while knowing that there was nothing he could do to save them. The modern version however has no such baggage, having no memories of Krypton at all, having been raised as a normal Earthling by the Kents. Even learning of his past as an adult usually does little except give him an abstract sense of sadness. - Marvel Comics: - The Unstoppable Wasp: This is a heavy part of Nadia's backstory. Her mother was killed after being kidnapped and Nadia was placed inside the Russian Red Room. After years of being used for science, she was able to escape using Pym Particles and made her way towards her father, Hank Pym. However, he had died just before her escape and now she's trying to find a replacement family and a place in the world. - X-23: A substantial source of the lingering emotional damage suffered by Laura Kinney is the death of her mother/creator, Sarah Kinney, and not having her there to help her put her life together after breaking out of the Facility. It's made even worse by the fact Laura was the one who killed her, in a trigger-scent fueled Unstoppable Rage set up by Zander Rice. With Sarah's death, and Laura being forced to sever contact with her only remaining family to protect them, she was left with no one, which drives her into deep and at times suicidal depression, and eventually leads her into the clutches of Zebra Daddy and a life as a Streetwalker. - Omega the Unknown: James-Michael is orphaned and, as a result, is thrust from a life of isolated study in the mountains into NYC's Hell's Kitchen, where he goes to an Inner City School and is bullied by Delinquents, and trudges daily through a neighborhood full of sex workers, porno theaters, winos, drug pushers, and roving gangs of muggers. - Planet Terry: The series follows Terry as he tries to find his parents, since he was launched into space by accident upon his birth. He comes close to reaching them on Alphatraz, only to be separated by them when they launch off from that place to escape it. Vermin the Vile at one point leads Terry into believing he is Terry's father, but that proves to be false when Vermin's real son, the Hood, is found. - Usagi Yojimbo: Keiko lived in poverty with her grandfather after her parents died some time before the series began, only for him to be murdered by a group of bandits, who were in turn massacred by Jei. With her entire family dead, and her home burned down, Keiko ends up following Jei and becoming his travelling companion — which means she's now under the guardianship of a demonic mass-murderer, who only lets her live because she fulfills some abritrary standard of "innocence", and is now forced to witness every atrocity Jei commits. The original idea for her was apparently to serve as Jei's new host, but the writer ended up changing his mind, atleast until Senso, which is set 20 years after the main series, where a now adult Keiko finally does become possessed after Jei's original body is destroyed. - Little Orphan Annie. Since a stable home life is boring, and there's only so many variations on the plot of thieves trying to steal Daddy Warbuck's fortune, Annie would often be separated from her guardian and resume living on the street. - A Crown of Stars: The prologue describes how Shinji and Asuka had led tough lives after their mothers' deaths. Their fathers abandoned them, a shady organization forced them to fight a war against alien monsters, they died, outlived the end of the world and had to survive in a wrecked, desolated world inhabited by warlords, thugs and rapists... - Advice and Trust: After kissing for first time, Shinji and Asuka open up to each other and find out their childhoods were very similar: their mothers died, their fathers left them with no explanation or apology, they had nightmares the whole time about it, and they were always alone because no one cared about them or tried to understand their pain. - Adoption Nightmare: Brina has been adopted and abandoned by one hundred and ten households for various and uncontrollable reasons, resulting in her developing some rather serious trust issues. - all of the things we did wrong.: Artina's father passed before she was born, and her mother died when she was four. She honestly isn't certain just how much time she spent on the streets before Mother Edith found and took her in, but it was at least two years... as well as long enough for her to forget her original name. - The Bolt Chronicles: In The Seven, Young Bolt and his six friends lose their mothers when the owner abandons the puppy mill they call home. Theyre lucky to survive the harrowing ordeal, as most of the other dogs die on site or immediately afterwards. - The Child of Love: In chapter 5, Shinji and Asuka talk about their mothers' deaths during a festival. Shinji says he shut himself up because he was frightened of other people, and Asuka explains that she pushed people away because she didnt want to get hurt again. - Children of an Elder God: Shinji and Asuka lost their mothers and were abandoned by their fathers shortly after. Fortunately their parental substitutes were more competent in this story than in canon, so they were somewhat more stable and less introvert before the beginning of the War (and then a bunch of world-shatteringEldritch Abominations came along and their sanity suffered serious blows). - Diaries of a Madman: Taya's backstory is deeply unpleasant. After both her parents were murdered by bandits in front of her eyes, she was forced into living on the streets until being rescued by Navarone. - Doing It Right This Time: Shinji, Asuka and Rei led crappy lives after their mothers' deaths: Shinji thought he had no reason to go on living, Asuka fabricated a loud, attention-seeking personality to validate her existence and Rei was a Death Seeker. After dying during the end of the world and being given a second chance they decided to support each other to try to cope with the inminent trauna train. - Evangelion 303: In chapter 4 Shinji talked Asuka about his childhood. He revealed that he lost his mother when he was a baby, and his father sent him away afterwards. He changed schools constantly, barely made friends and developed little social skills. Although he is older than his canon self and is clearly better at dealing with it, it is clear losing his mother still haunts him. - Getting Back on Your Hooves: Applejack's grief over her parents' death, while touched on in the main stories, is the central point of "Happy Mother's Day", though all three Apple siblings are shown to be still be grieving on some level. According to Word of God, the reason it hit her the hardest is that, being the middle child, she was old enough to remember them (unlike her younger sister Apple Bloom), but young enough to still be emotionally dependent on them (unlike her older brother Big Macintosh) when they died. - In Ghosts of Evangelion Shinji and Asuka suffer from severe PTSD in their late thirties and have meager social skills. All of it can be traced back to teir mothers dying when they were little kids. - HERZ: Shinji and Asuka lost their mothers when they were barely four. Afterwards, their fathers and everybody else treated them like crap. In chapter 2 Asuka reflects that she lost much and suffered terribly after her mother's demise. - Higher Learning: Shinji and Asuka went through a lot after their mothers demises. Their new teacher, though, helped them to see matters from a different perspective and realize they did not have to be alone. Later, when he talks to Shinji, he does not beat around the bush when he tells that he and Asuka had led very tragic lives. - Last Child of Krypton: - After his mother Yui died and his father Gendo left him, Shinji lived virtually alone for one decade. During that time he found \|\|a recording revealed his DNA had been modified with Kryptonian chromosomes. When his DNA donor said\|\| he hoped his father raised him properly, Shinji snorted. - Shortly after her mother's suicide, Asuka's father married his mistress and abandoned her daughter. Asuka threw herself into becoming the best Humongous Mecha pilot ever to validate her existence. Unfortunately, no one in her organization cared about her, and she was regarded as a tool to use or discard, or lust target to be leered at by perverts. - The Last Draconequus: Discord becomes the last surviving member of his species when he's accidentally left out of a ritual that allows the other draconequi — including his mother and elder siblings — to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. As he was no older than five at the time, and had little experience or power with his magic, he was forced to spend his childhood and early adolescence as a feral child, including being hunted down like vermin by ponies unaware that he was a sapient being and being sold to a circus and becoming subject to a violently abusive animal trainer. His early isolation and the various misfortunes that followed it are implied to have played a very large part in shaping him into the person he became. - My Mirror, Sword and Shield: Suzaku lost his mother to her addiction and ends up homeless for a year with no relatives to take him in. He almost dies when a simple illness gets exacerbated by his poor living conditions. - In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide, all Evangelion pilots are considerably traumatized due to their mothers' loss. In a scene, Keiko tells Asuka about her mother's death leading her to want to kill herself, and both girls bond over their missing mothers. - The Night Unfurls: - Sanakan and Hugh. Forced to fend for themselves in the streets via pickpocketing due to Parental Abandonment. Forced to bear scars should they get caught. All because their respective parents are not there to protect them. And then the Black Dogs invade the village they are residing in to Rape, Pillage, and Burn. The two kids would not survive past Chapter 4 if Kyril, who would later become their mentor and grant them strength, arrived late for one second. - Hugh deserves special mention, as the story later reveals more details about his family. His mother, now a minor noble, married another man to have another son and daughter, which culminated in Hugh's abandonment. Before his apprenticeship under Kyril, Sanakan was the only person to show him genuine affection, being a fellow Street Urchin like he was. To end it off in a peculiar note, Hugh has made peace with the fact that he doesn't want to see his mother or his mother's family ever again, yet he is badgered by these people to come back and become their heir, letter of forgiveness and all. - Once More with Feeling: - Shinji makes repeatedly clear that it was very hard growing up without a mother. - After Kyokos death, Asuka was ditched by her family. She was raised by guardians who didnt care about her - save two exceptions — and grew up thinking that she could trust nobody and depend on nobody. - The One I Love Is...: Shinji had led a crappy life after his mother Yui's demise, and he thought Asuka was way more strong-willed and brave than him. However he gradually discovered Asuka was another orphan with a very fragile self-esteem regarded herself as a catalogue of failures. - The Outside: Much of the story revolves around some form of this, as Ryuuko was, after her parents splitting and Soichiro's death, living with her agoraphobic older sister, Satsuki, who raised her in isolation and kept her indoors, before being declared an unfit guardian, which thrusted Ryuuko into foster care, while social services tries to find her mother, Ragyo, who left when the former was a toddler. Later on, we get Shiro and Nui, who lost their families at young ages, the latter of the two wishing for a family to spend Christmas with. - Scar Tissue: Shinji and Asuka are horribly broken in this story, and it all began when their mothers died. The story starts out when they begin to try to recover from a decade of abuse and psychological trauma left them severely damaged. - Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: Asuka's mother died when she was barely four and her father — who never loved her because she had been conceived by sperm donor — abandoned her straight after. Asuka grew up thinking she had to be the best at everything or nobody would ever care about her, and she strove to excel and become self-reliant, but she was a very lonely, scared child whom everyone regarded as a tool. - Survivors: Kara loses her parents in the beginning of the story. More than one decade after landing on Earth, she is still traumatized over her loss; and torn between missing them and resenting them. - In The Second Try, Shinji and Asuka had suffered a great deal because their mothers died, and they needed to get over that trauma in order to \|\|become good parents to Aki.\|\| - In Thousand Shinji, Asuka told Shinji that piloting Eva became all what she had left after her mother's death. Later on, after a shopping trip Shinji told Asuka that he broke down after his mother died and his father ditched him with no explanation. - All Dogs Go to Heaven: Features an orphan girl, Anne Marie, who goes through a very peculiar ordeal; she lives in a junkyard and ends up kidnapped by a pack of talking, gambling dogs. Of course she's the only human who can understand them. Orphans being kidnapped by talking dogs to be exploited for gambling. What is the world coming to? - An American Tail: Feivel gets separated from his family, under circumstances leading his parents to assume he's dead. Most of his adventures come from trying to find his parents again. - Disney: - Frozen: Although its direct impact on the plot is only in the first ten minutes of the film and the reason for the coronation in the first place, the death of Anna and Elsa's parents still adds to the emotional weight of the movie. At the end of the song "Do You Want To Build A Snowman", after their parents have died at sea, Anna is forced to attend their funeral alone, since Elsa refuses to end her isolation for fear of losing control of her ice magic. Likewise, Elsa, who is now queen by default (and is nowhere near emotionally ready for the responsibility), is mourning in her room, her grief having caused her to frost over her entire room and for snow to hang in the air. During the final verse, Anna crumples into a fetal position against Elsa's door after the funeral, desperately asking for her to come out. Elsa, in the same position against her side of the door, can't bring herself to respond. The final shot for the song is both girls on their respective side of the door, quietly sobbing into their knees. - Meet the Robinsons: Lewis was left at the orphanage by his mother as a baby and has some pretty serious hang-ups at the start of the movie because of it. He initially believes he is destined to remain unloved, perpetuated by the fact that he's been through over 100 failed adoption interviews (due to his Mad Scientist ways), and that he believes that he was abandoned because his own mother didn't love him. He is also turning 13 in a matter of weeks, and knows teenagers almost never get adopted. - The Rescuers: Penny's need for a new family is a recurring point. Mme Medusa is marked as a true villain by her casual cruelty to Penny; she crosses the Moral Event Horizon by telling Penny, "What makes you think anyone would want a homely little girl like you?" That's more of a Kick the Dog moment than a Moral Event Horizon. She crossed the MEH whenever it was that she decided to make a small child dig in a frequently-flooded cave for diamonds. - Kung Fu Panda 2 has Po finally realize he was orphaned by the most horrific means, but he then achieves Inner Peace by remembering how Happily Adopted he was and how far he's come. \|\|We eventually find out his birth father is alive, and Po reunites with him in the third installment\|\|. - Storks: Tulip's delivery address was smashed and thus she was never delivered to her parents. She was instead raised by storks, who cannot wait until they can legally get rid of her. - Australia: It makes a hash of these issues, when a boy who is half-aboriginal loses his mother the characters say that he needs someone to take care of him, and Nicole Kidman's character should do it because she's a woman. - Batman: A boy witnesses the death of his parents and revenge becomes his all-consuming purpose. - By Hook or By Crook: Both protagonists, Shy and Val, have a backstory related to the loss of their parents. Shy's family home is foreclosed on after the death of his father, and Val was given up for adoption by his birth mother, then adopted by a family that institutionalized him when he was twelve for being Transgender. - Paulette in Forbidden Games is a 6-year-old French girl who is orphaned in June 1940, when both of her parents are killed by a Nazi plane while fleeing Paris. She temporarily finds a home with a farm family, but the film ends with the mean-spirited father turning her over to the Red Cross. - M3GAN: Poor Cady. She loses both her parents in a car crash, gets sent to live with a Maternally Challenged aunt, and worries that she will eventually forget her parents. When she gets M3GAN, she becomes unhealthily attached to her as a Parental Substitute. - Mustang is about the tragic destiny of five orphan girls. - Mosul (2020): The Nineveh Province SWAT team encounters a pair of orphans who are carting the body of a dead parent. The younger one wishes to go with the SWAT over to the safe zone, while the elder brother stubbornly refuses to leave the body, having sworn an oath to bury them. After a long argument between the two, the younger brother tearfully parts with his older brother and leaves with the SWAT. In the safe zone, Jasem then bribes (and threatens) a passing Iraqi refugee family to adopt the child they picked up. The fate of the older brother is sadly never revealed. - Prime Cut: Poppy endures a traumatic and abusive childhood in an Orphanage of Fear before being sold into prostitution. - Sabine Kleist Seven Years Old: The heroine loses her parents in a car crash and comes in the orphanage (the orphanage isn't really bad, but...). She runs away to try and find a new parents — but in the end she realizes this isn't going to happen and returns to the orphanage. - Star Wars: A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. This is a dual orphan plot in that a young man (Luke) is raised by "relatives", and tries to avenge the man who "killed his father" as well as seek his own identity. He wishes he wasn't an orphan but after he finds out that Big Bad is his father in the Luke, I Am Your Father scene then he wishes he WAS an orphan. - Nellie O'Malley from the Samantha books in the American Girls Collection goes through this. After her parents die of influenza, Nellie and her younger sisters have to go live with their estranged Uncle Mike. Mike exploits them for child labor money, then promptly abandons them so the sisters have to go to an Orphanage of Fear called the Coldrock House for Homeless Girls. There, Nellie almost gets separated from her sisters when she is selected to go out West aboard the Orphan Train. She and her sisters are luckily rescued and taken in by Samantha's family. But in Nellie's Promise, Uncle Mike returns and threatens to take back custody of Nellie and her sisters so he can make them work in a factory again for his own profit. It is only when Samantha's guardians formally request to be the legal guardians of the O'Malley sisters as well that the poor girl really starts to get a break. - The German author Antonia Michaelis has two books ( The Adopted Room and Secret of 12th Continent) which deal with two inmates of an orphanage. Both lost their parents and are very unhappy about it. \|\|in the end, one gets Happily Adopted, while the other manages to find his father\|\| - Black Dogs: This happens to Lyra, but she is quickly taken under the dog soldier Sadrao's wing. - Agatha Christie: Adoptive families in Christie's works tend to be dysfunctional at best — in 'Appointment With Death', Mrs. Boynton is a monster to her adopted children. - Dogsbody: This is essentially Kathleen's story. A bit different in that her father is kept apart from her in prison. \|\|When he does die during an escape attempt, her situation changes for the worse\|\|. She's taken in by relatives before the book begins, but some of them treat her as servant and abuse her emotionally. - The Dragonslayers: Brian loses both his parents as a child, and is saved and taken back to King Mildred's castle, where he works as a page but is treated poorly by the other pages because he does such a good job that it unintentionally makes them look bad. - The Dresden Files: Harry having been orphaned at the age of six (his mother died in childbirth and his father had an aneurysm) is still a source of anguish in his adulthood, both in itself (he is often lonely due to his lack of a family) and because of the situation it left him in (he was adopted by a man who turned out to be a dark wizard, who trained Harry in a particularly harsh manner, and eventually tried to enslave him and his other adopted child (who was also Harry's lover) when they were in their teens, forcing Harry to kill him). He eventually gets hints that his parents' deaths may not have been accidental, and that his mother (also a wizard) ran with a very bad crowd. \|\|In later books, it starts to work out. Harry discovers that his mother left her dark allies behind, that he has a brother and that his maternal grandfather is still alive and wants to be a part of his life. He also finds the identity of his mother's killer, allowing him to avenge her.\|\| - Escape to Witch Mountain begins the day after the death of Granny Malone, the guardian of the two protagonists, Tony and Tia. They're sent to an Orphanage of Fear (which is run as a juvenile home), and begin seriously trying to remember their past before Granny Malone took them in. They run away from the Orphanage of Fear when they are adopted by an Illegal Guardian because Tia remembers that he's not the blood relative he claims to be — he turned them over to Granny Malone in the first place, though neither she nor her brother remembers why. - In Flawed, though Flawed couples can get married, any children are taken away from them and raised by the government to be as perfect as possible. Making any attempt to find their birth parents gets them deemed as Flawed. \|\|Carrick, who was taken from his parents when he was five, didn't take well to his teachings, and sought out his parents as soon as he graduated, making him Flawed.\|\| - In Galaxy of Fear, Tash and Zak Arranda were offworld when Alderaan was destroyed, and with it their friends and family. The only one to take them in was their shapeshifting alien "uncle" Hoole, related only because his brother had married one of their aunts. Hoole was usually distant and cool, mostly leaving them to his droid assistant DV-9, who resented being relegated to babysitting and reminded them of this often. Both of them gradually warmed to the siblings, but it took time. As xenoanthropologist who didn't want to stop working, Hoole also took them across the galaxy into a succession of horrifying situations. It's not for nothing that this series is called Goosebumps IN STAR WARS. - Green-Sky Trilogy: Genaa D'Anhk is going through a version of this involving her father. A key plot point is what actually happened to him. - Exaggerated in The Hapless Child. The child protagonist not only loses both of her parents and her uncle, her only other living relative, but she is then sent to an orphanage where she is treated cruelly by the other children and teachers. She then runs off, gets kidnapped and sold to a mentally ill "brute", forced to make paper flowers in poor living conditions, becomes nearly-blind, and finally gets run over by her own father who was desperately looking for her. Made even worse when her father can no longer recognize her from all she's been through. - Harry Potter: In addition to being orphaned as a baby and having to spend the first eleven years of his life living with his abusive aunt and uncle, Harry spends a decent amount of time throughout the books looking for a father figure who won't die on him along with having to deal with all his other problems. - Anzha, one of the main characters of In Conquest Born, loses her parents by assassination, courtesy of a hideous poison, right in front of her. Her father's dying agony triggers her psychic awakening, driving her into years of psychosomatic sensory deprivation. The most painful part for Anzha is that she had some telepathic awareness before the poisoning and spotted the assassin before the attack, but as a 6-year-old child she did not fully comprehend or know how to communicate the threat she sensed. - James and the Giant Peach: The titular character's parents were mauled by a rhino when he was little, and is forced to live with two monster aunts who hate and abuse him so much, even the narration thinks death was the kinder fate. - A Little Princess: Sara's only living parent, her father, dies while she is at Boarding School. Sara never gives up though even after all the crap she goes through. - Oliver Twist: This could damn near be the trope namer. Oliver's mother dies in childbirth, he's raised in an abusive "baby farm" before being moved to an even worse workhouse where the children are beaten and starved, and finally ends up as an apprentice to an undertaker, which would have been somewhat better had it not been for the undertaker's cruel wife and another apprentice who is jealous of Oliver. He finally runs away, only to end up being drawn into the criminal world through pickpocket leader Fagin, and the robber and murderer Bill Sikes. - Protector of the Small: Tobe, a young boy living near the Scanran border in the last book. His mother died in childbirth and nobody would take him after the midwife passed away, since he has blond hair and blue eyes like a Scanran. He ends up an indentured servant to a violent innkeeper and has a few people give him false hope of rescue. When Kel finds him, he's bruised, malnourished, flea-bitten, and cynical. - Rissa Kerguelen: This is a prevalent theme. The heroine and her brother lose their parents very early and are raised, separately, in a "Total Welfare" institution. Their childhoods leave her with issues and him with what can only be described as a subscription. Bran Tregare is not orphaned, but his parents protect him from UET by abandoning him to its clutches — a military academy where the policy is, sometimes literally, "kill or be killed". Zelde M'tana's earliest clear memory is of being part of a band of "Wild Children". - Sassinak: Space Pirates destroy the title character's home, murder her parents, turn her best friend into a depressed wreck, and make her their slave. She spends the rest of her life setting things right. - A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Baudelaire children bounce from one Illegal Guardian or useless caretaker to the next, and investigate their family's secret past. The Quagmire triplets have their own set too, though a good deal of it is offscreen. - In The Sisters Grimm, Sabrina and Daphne Grimm go through one Illegal Guardian after another when their parents disappear. - The Someday Birds: After their parents were killed in the Siege of Sarajevo, Ludmila and her brother Amar were sent to America, where they were split up. Amar was sent to an abusive, bully-infested military school, while Ludmila went through a series of foster homes. Some were good, and some were terrible. One good thing came out of the experience — Ludmila's favorite foster mother, the astrophysicist Dr. Joan, with whom she's still in contact. - Someone Else's War: Most characters are Child Soldiers, and thus many of them have to deal with the reality of a world in which they can never go back to their parents. Special mention goes to Otto, who left his destitute parents in order to spare them the expenses of feeding an extra mouth. - The Stand: Leo Rockway was still a kid when the Superflu wiped out most of the human species and took his family. He afterwards nearly died of infection, and was so traumatized he stopped talking and took to carrying a knife around all the time. Nadine becames his Parental Substitute \|\|but it doesn't end well\|\|. In the end, he's adopted by Larry and Lucy. - Talion: Revenant: Nolan's whole family was murdered, and he joined the Talions in hopes of someday taking revenge on the person he holds responsible. He's still traumatized about it years after. - To Shape a Dragon's Breath: - Theod Knetch's family—and a great majority of his people, the Naquisit—were massacred in what the Anglish call the Nack Island Uprising (started when coal deposits were found on the island, leading to the Anglish breaking their treaty to get to it). Theod's mother was hanged immediately after his birth—as in the very next day—and he was sent to an orphanage in New Linvik, where he was raised until he was six and then made a servant of an Anglish household. He is painfully disconnected from his Native culture because of it, considering himself the son of murderers and only knowing the Anglish side of the history of the Naquipaug massacre until Anequs comes around. - Liberty's parents escaped enslavement in Berri Vaskos (the part of North Markesland colonized by the Vaskoshish) to New Anglesland where chattel slavery was outlawed. However, her father died in a mill fire when she was six and her mother of a fever when she was ten. She tried to get work but was turned out by her landlady and sent to the Vastergot Society for Friendless Girls and trained as a maid of all work, later hired to work as a laundry maid for the academy. - In The Wanderer, by Sharon Creech, Sophie is currently Happily Adopted. However, it becomes very clear in flashbacks, that for a few years, she was living in foster families which didn't really cared for her. - Warchild Series: Jos loses his parents in the opening page of the first book. He's then kidnapped along with several other children on the same starship, and gradually loses them too. He doesn't have much time to cope with the loss of his family, since he's also facing abuse and captivity at the hands of a psychopath. But when he escapes said psycho, he has a slew of issues to work out. Much of the book focuses on his emotional need for a surrogate family coupled with his trouble trusting anyone enough to make the connection. - The Witch of Knightcharm: A rookie witch named Janet Yawkly says that she doesn't have family anymore, heavily implying that she's an orphan and her family is dead. This means that, after Yawkly gets stuck in an evil Wizarding School and her life is endangered on a regular basis, nobody knows to look for her and there's no chance of her being rescued. - Women of the Otherworld: Elaine Michaels is orphaned in a car crash at five, goes through a series of foster families, some of them abusive. And then gets turned into a werewolf. Many other characters in the series have missing parents, and those that don't sometimes wish they did. - Ashita, Mama ga Inai: Kids at the orphanage go through a hell of a lot. Most of their parents are alive, but unable or unwilling to look after them. - Bones: While we never see it, Dr. Brennan did not have a happy time in foster care after her parents mysteriously vanished. It also serves as a Freudian Excuse for her being rather cold and detached. - Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Downplayed example with Nicholaj, Boyle's adoptive son from Latvia. He doesn't seem to have suffered any abuse, his ordeal mostly revolved around how unlucky he was, since apparently the orphanages he lived in kept suffering various natural disasters. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Faith's home life before she sides with the Mayor is terrible, as she is stuck living in a dump of a motel room, where the TV and A/C don't really work, and she is seen at least once arguing with the manager about rent. - Diff'rent Strokes: The premise (a white millionaire adopting two black boys from Harlem) is set up when the boys' mother dies. (A Back Story explains that father had passed some years earlier.) - Little House on the Prairie: Several episodes had children becoming orphans and the Ingalls becoming involved (in some way) to help the children grieve and/or find new housing. Prominent examples: - The Sanderson children — John Jr., Carl, and Alicia — are left parent-less after their mother dies of a long illness. Mr. Edwards and his wife-to-be, Grace Snider, agree to take in the children. - Albert Quinn, the street urchin left on the streets of Winoka after his drunken father (a dirt farmer) abandons him. The Ingalls take custody of Albert and legally adopt him, but not until overcoming custody challenge by the boy's father (who comes forward only after learning he could lose his potential farmhand). - In 1980, a one-up episode was a re-write of an old Bonanza episode ("A Silent Cry") featured a cranky old man (Dub Taylor as caretaker of the Blind School, where Mary is a teacher) wanting to adopt both a "normal" boy and his mute brother and adoption officials want to separate them). - In 1981, Charles and Albert are hauling freight with a young couple and their two children (Jason Bateman and Missy Francis, as James and Cassandra Cooper) when a tragic accident involving the other couple's wagon (the horses became spooked and, in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the runaway wagon, the brakes fail) crashes, killing both parents. The two children — who stay behind with Charles and Albert, and witness everything unfold — go into shock, and the Ingalls agree to take them in ... temporarily, until a suitable family is found that will adopt them. It's thought at first James and Cassandra will be taken to a loving home, but the father proves to be anything but (he whips James when he is unfairly accused of stealing). When the children take refuge at the Ingalls after the whipping incident, and Charles — after visiting with the father, who was out looking for the children — senses that the man is abusive, he and Caroline conclude that, despite their already crowded house, they have a moral obligation to take custody of the children. Both James and Cassandra remain a part of the cast for the 1981-1982 season, until the Ingalls' departure for Burr Oak, Iowa, in the fall of 1982. - Later in 1981, the bratty orphan, Nancy, is legally adopted by the Olesons. Nancy claims that she was abandoned by her "loving" mother, but she tells this lie to help her cope with the truth: her birth mother had died while giving birth to her (a condition today known as pre-eclampsia), and with hospital officials unable to find her biological father, she is taken to an orphanage. Of all people, it is Mrs. Oleson — the series villain, who had wanted to adopt Nancy just to spoil — who helps her realize she has people who love her and are willing to give her a stable home. And truth be told, Nancy's own unstable life prior to being taken in by the Olesons may have played a large role in her personality: Moving around from orphanage to orphanage, likely much of it not her fault; and abuse (both physical and sexual) that was likely unchecked given the era. - In 1982, Laura and Almanzo (by now, the series two main leads) take in their niece, Jenny (Shannen Doherty, in her first major role). Jenny becomes orphaned when her father dies suddenly of heart disease; her mother had died some years earlier. Jenny is shaken by losing her father and tries suicide, but it is a friend of the Wilders — Jeb Carter, who is Jenny's age — that rescues her from suicide by drowning ... and at the same time, overcome his fear of water and shut up Nancy for good. - During the 1982-1983 season, Mr. Edwards (a year after divorcing his wife, due to his alcoholism) is involved in two custody battles. In "The Wild Boy," a mute boy is discovered to be orphaned, although he does have someone — a cruel circus master, who had doped the boy so high he acts like "The Wild Boy" — "taking care" of him, and Edwards rescues him from the circus to give him a stable home. (An episode later in the season has the boy returning home to his loving biological father.) An episode played more for laughs is when Edwards agrees to take care of Blanche the orangutan, after her master dies suddenly. - Party of Five: The show's basic concept. The creators stated that they set the show six months after the parents' deaths to avoid making it all about the grieving process, but things are pretty much a mess all around for the Salinger clan, old wounds are constantly reopened, and the story makes it quite clear that being orphaned has changed them into completely different people. Although it was often criticized for being overly sentimental and melodramatic, the cast admitted that while the largest section of the show's fanbase watched for the show's three attractive leads (especially Scott Wolf and Matthew Fox — while Party was consistently one of Fox's worst-performing shows overall, it was consistently Fox's best-performing show in the 18-49 age range for females), most of the fan mail they received was from orphans praising the show for its' realistic depiction of orphaned life. - Star Trek: Discovery: Michael Burnham lost both of her parents to a Klingon raid when she was a child, and has carried Survivor's Guilt for it ever since. She was fostered by Spock's parents, Sarek and Amanda, and her attempts to immerse herself in the stoic culture of Vulcan has done nothing for her ability to handle grief in a healthy fashion. \|\|She later learns that her mother is alive, but trapped in the distant future due to Time Travel.\|\| - Voyagers!: A recurring plot point is Jeff dealing with the deaths of his parents. As emotionally close as he becomes to Bogg, he still remembers his mother and father and frequently finds his memories of them being triggered. The loss of his parents also heightens his fear when it seems like something might happen to Bogg or the two might be separated. - In Jemjammer, Ælfgifu's earliest memories are of a caravan she and her parents were on being attacked and her parents dying. After that she was raised by a kind man in the woods. - Battle Arena Toshinden: David has one of the darkest and nightmarish childhoods to be had. When he was six, his parents were burned alive and his home razed to the ground by an organization who had their eyes set on him to become the incarnate body of a dark fighting god, and the event was so traumatizing that he fell into a deep confused depression and detachment from any sense of connection and affection. He was eventually accepted into an orphanage — one used as a front to provide said organization with plenty of children and teenagers to sacrifice for their messy magic rituals — and ripened to a nice age of sixteen, where his birthday would find him witness to the horrific fates that would befall the rest of his lifelong friends. Panicking and fearful of death before being sacrificed in the actual ceremony, David only escaped after snapping and taking the chances into his own hands, arming himself with a chainsaw and leaving behind a bloody massacre on the way out. - Diablo III: This applies to a majority of the Demon Hunters; their ranks are mainly survivors of demon raids on villages and entire cities, who have usually lost family members to the unrelenting war machine. The player character herself has lost her parents to the demon raids, but what hurt the most was losing her sister to demon-inflicted PTSD later. - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: There are several orphans in the game, and they all have it pretty rough. Lucia in Whiterun in particular is a sad case. Her parents are gone, her aunt and uncle kicked her out because they don't want to raise her, the only person in Whiterun who has shown her any kindness is the surly town drunk, and she has to beg for a living. And that's not even mentioning pretty much everyone at Riften's Honorhall Orphanage, run with an iron fist by Grelod the Kind. - Final Fantasy X: - Yuna has a horrific time of it, although it's heavily implied at best. Her mother died when a world-killing god-whale named "Sin" wrecked the ship she was in, which left her father so broken that he went to defeat it so nobody else would have to feel that sort of pain. Of course, Yuna then had to go through the next ten years being reminded of her father's sacrifice, which turned out to be futile since Sin just ended up coming back. It leads to Yuna herself undertaking the same journey to kill Sin for good in memory of him. - Tidus didn't have it that easy either. When he was still a little kid his dad, who he never got along with that well, vanished overseas and his mother died of heartbreak. Auron looked out for him \|\|as a favor to Tidus' father Jecht\|\| but Tidus still developed a lot of parental issues. - Fire Emblem: Nah. I soon learned that I'd have to work hard to fit in and survive in my new home. I did chores before I was asked. I helped defend the house from marauding Risen. I thought that if I could make myself useful, they would stop... hating me. I mean, how could they resent a child that always helped and never asked for anything? But they never accepted me... I just learned to deal with disappointment. I had no friends. No one to talk to. ...I was utterly alone. And I never once mentioned how much I missed my father and mother. Sniff I... I didn't even ask... when... when they would come back for me... - Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade just hates orphans. Lucius, after having his father killed by \|\|Renault\|\|, has his mother die of disease. He is then put in an orphanage where he was tormented and brutally picked on by adults and children alike. After this, he's hired on with the Cornwells, who become sort of a surrogate family to him \|\|until they die, too, by committing suicide when their house is attacked\|\|. As a result, he has a "sickness of the soul" that he cannot get rid of and that plagues him frequently. After the end of the game, he opens his own orphanage \|\|which is heavily implied to be destroyed shortly before Sword of Seals with Lucius sacrificing himself to save his charges\|\|. - Genealogy of the Holy War: The vast majority of the members of your army in the second half of the game have both of their parents dead or missing. This is because \|\|they are the children of your army members from the first half who were all slaughtered halfway through the game.\|\| - Mass Effect: - If you choose the Colonist background, Commander Shepard watched batarian pirates destroy his/her home town shortly after s/he turned sixteen. Not only did Shepard's parents die, but everyone except Shepard who wasn't killed was Made a Slave as they were dragged off. Not the happy origin, clearly. - Taken even further for a Colonist with the Sole Survivor military history, as Shepard went on to join the military, but during one of their first missions was forced to watch as their entire squad was killed off by a thresher maw. By the second game, Shepard is forced to work for the group responsible for orchestrating the Thresher Maw attack, but sadly there is no dialogue to address this. - Mother 3: \|\|Lucas\|\| has his mother die in front of his eyes, his brother disappears into the mountains trying to avenge her immediately afterward, then his grandfather yells at him for letting his brother leave without telling anyone, and, finally his father spends most of the next 3 years in the mountains looking for his brother, leaving him all alone and very, very sad. - Rule of Rose all the way. There's a reason why the narration never fails to refer to Jennifer as the "poor, unlucky girl", and the other orphans aren't much better; at least Clara, the "Frightened Princess" is probably actually significantly worse off, but she isn't the focus of the story. - Suikoden II: Pilika had a horrible childhood. Her whole family and village were butchered by Luca, the bloodthirsty prince of the Highlands Kingdom, becoming a war orphan and the sole survivor of her village. Later, the same man nearly cut her in half, while smiling and laughing. She is saved at the last minute, but becomes mute for most of the game. She is then separated from Jowy, her replacement father, who joins Luca's side (although he has good reasons) and is forced to stay with the hero who ends fighting Jowy (the hero's best friend), in the opposite army. When Luca finally dies and Jowy replaces him as the king of Highlands, the war isn't quite over yet: during a meeting where both sides should have signed a peace treaty, she is being used by Shu, the hero's strategist, as a human shield in order to save the hero's hide (turns out the peace treaty was a trap set up by Jowy), abandoning her to the enemy side (which is, in fact, a good thing since Jowy will take care of her, and it's her reunion with Jowy which grants her speech back). In the end, when Highlands is losing the war, she is sent to Harmonia, a distant country, by Jowy along with Jillia, Luca's sister, in order to survive and start a new life, Jowy staying behind. Yes, she has to leave her only parental figure remaining forever, and flee with the sister of her parents' murderer (in Jillia's defense, she's not crazy like her brother). You can't help but to feel sorry for her. - In The Walking Dead, it's established early on for the player (and for Lee) that Clementine's parents are dead. However, she herself remains completely unaware for most of Season 1 and insists on trying to find them when possible, despite Lee's awkward attempts to address the subject. When she finally finds out the truth in Episode 5 (via seeing them as walkers with her own eyes), she takes it about as well as you'd expect. In Season 3, when Gabe laments how "parents always think that we can't hear them", she makes an offhand comment about not knowing about that, due to her parents' deaths during the events of Season 1. - Another Code: Both games could be described as Ashley learning about what happened to her mom in the past before she died and seeing how her dad is coping with the grief after leaving her. - In Fate/stay night, Shirou Emiya loses his biological parents in the fire that Kiritsugu saved him from, then lost Kiritsugu, his adoptive father, five years later. Fortunately, he does have Taiga and her grandfather Raiga. - Hatoful Boyfriend has multiple characters who are orphaned, but Hitori in particular has his entire life trajectory set by it. He deals with the pain of losing his birth family by devoting himself to the care of the other orphans he lives with... so the eventual loss of this second family becomes unbearably destabilizing for him. - Last Window: While Kyle still had his mom, the game does explore the ramifications of his dad's death and his attempts to find out more about why he died. - Little Busters!: It isn't obvious at first, but much of the plot of Little Busters! revolves around exploring the long-term consequences of Riki's parents dying when he was a small child and how it left him scared of the outer world and overly dependent on the only people who were there for him at the time — the other Little Busters. - In Mystic Messenger, part of Jaehee's route is discussing how losing both her parents (her father when she was a child and her mother when she was a teenager) has taken its toll on her mental health and self-identity, which is to say that she doesn't really know who she is because she's spent her life since their deaths working to be completely self-sufficient so she wouldn't have to rely on anyone else, and thus didn't have any time or energy to spend leaning about herself. - A number of cases in Crepuscule: - Lark's parents individually died before/shortly after he was born, leaving him all the more lonely in a world where he's persecuted — and all the happier when he leaves and finds new family in the form of Angela. \|\|Who then dies ten years later, causing him to lose it and spends the entirety of the season learning how to cope.\|\| - Carne's parents died in an accident, and she's shown to be fairly lonely after the fact, thus bonding with Setz — her main companion afterwards — all the more easily, if not unhealthily so. \|\|That's not even getting into what happens when, ten years later, she remembers that she actually killed her parents.\|\| - Bathory's mother abandoned her and thus she spent most of her life searching for another relative, desperate for some sort of family bond. \|\|Unfortunately for her, said relative is Angela who, as mentioned, bites it, nearly causing Bathory to cross the Despair Event Horizon.\|\| - A far more well-adjusted example, but it's mentioned that Sia's father died a few years back and that he took it badly, which is why he \|\|tries to reach out to Lark after Angela's death and stop him from doing anything stupid, as he can't sit back and watch him be self-destructive\|\|. - Digger: \|\|The hyena Grim Eyes is technically not an orphan at the start, but her mother Blood Eyes was abusive to Grim Eyes and her father Skin Painter. Skin Painter killed Blood Eyes for it, and as punishment his "name was eaten", a treatment considered a Fate Worse than Death by hyenas.\|\| - Gunnerkrigg Court. Antimony spends the first several chapters dealing in her own way with the double-whammy of her mum's death and her father's subsequent disappearance. Now she's trying to solve some of the mysteries from the Court's and her own parent's histories. \|\|And when her father finally does show up, he's an emotionally abusive jackass who treats her like dirt, and all the other adults in the court just shrug it off with "you just have to get to know him better."\|\| - Kevin & Kell takes the trope every which way: - The most standard play on this is mouse Tyler Meadowvole, the nephew of Mark Meadowvole. His father was eaten in 2018 when he was 7, leaving him an orphan. Faced with going into "spawn services"—implied to be a hopeless fate for many young mice—Mark's case to adopt him is bolstered when his girlfriend, Aby Eyeshine, proposes to him. Despite being a cat herself, there are plenty of friends willing to vouch on her behalf, so they are allowed to adopt him. - Then comes a massively extreme case with Ophelia Stoat. Her family was gradually wiped out by pelt hunters, leaving her vagrant by age 13. At age 20, she crossed paths with George Gopher, who saved her from the pelt hunters with the help of several connections at his college, Beige University (such as Lindesfarne Dewclaw, fellow student Greta Garter, and Greta's boyfriend Todd). She eventually got a job as a nanny for Savanna, the daughter of Leona Mangle and Carl. - The case for rabbit Miranda Hutch is much more muted. Her parents were hunted when she was a baby, but she was quickly adopted by her uncle and his male partner. This is considered a fact of life for rabbits, and she doesn't have any angst over it. - Corrie Dale, a sheep, is a strange case. She was put up for adoption by her parents, Wanda Woolstone and Ralph Dewclaw, who were teenagers when she was conceived (as well as being a sheep and a wolf, respectively, which would've been frowned upon at the time). Her mother died in childbirth, and she was fraudulently adopted by medical researchers. She eventually escaped the facility, and became friends with a young wolf, Bruno Lupulin, who wore her as a sheepskin to keep her safe (and they fell in love as they matured). Around age 14, Bruno ended up caught by the researchers (they were moles, and he smelled like Corrie), and learned Corrie's parentage. When they found out her father was the uncle of one of their friends, she revealed herself, and Ralph took her in. - Muted: Camille loses her mother and sister in a fire, is given to her abusive Aunt Athalie, and the plot kicks off when she starts discovering things about her parents' past. - The Silver Eye: After his father's death, Apen Shephard was exiled from his country and had to struggle for survival in the Deadlands. After miraculously surviving, he has a hard time coming to terms with the fact that he might have to start his entire life over again from scratch, but eventually accepts the family that took him in and realizes that he might be able to start over again. This is before Enel shows up, ruining everything, of course. - True Villains: Played for Laughs with the six-year-old orphan girl Mia, who's such a Pollyanna that she describes the whole thing cheerfully and ends up Happily Adopted by the Villain Protagonists. - Robin from the Tales from the SMP episode "The Village That Went Mad" fits the trope. He lost his parents in a Great Offscreen War and is looked down upon by most of the village for being an orphan child; while he does have a surrogate father-figure in the form of Catboy, he ends up executed for supposedly murdering someone. Ultimately, Robin is heavily implied to become a Death Seeker as a result of his trauma, not defending himself when the townsfolk turn their accusations on him and have him killed. - Adventure Time. Although Marceline's father isn't dead, he's pretty evil and not exactly a great parent. \|\|Marceline's mom is also implied to have died in the great Mushroom War, leaving Marceline without much of a family. Wandering the nuclear wasteland, her only real father figure, Simon Petrikov/The Ice King slowly went insane due to the power of the Crown.\|\| Overall, her life just wasn't great. - Avatar: The Last Airbender. Aang wakes up from his nap as a Human Popsicle to discover that he is the Last of His Kind due to a genocide aimed at him. When he discovers the body of his Parental Substitute he goes into an Unstoppable Rage and is only calmed down — into an ordinary grief-stricken child — when Katara tells him she and Sokka are now his family. - In the Sequel Series The Legend of Korra, brothers Mako and Bolin had to live on the streets and eventually joined a gang to survive after their parents were killed in a mugging when they were eight and six respectively. - The Simpsons: In "The Wandering Juvie", \|\|Gina turns out to be without a family, explaining her violent path\|\|. - South Park: An episode touches on this when the McKormick children are sent to a crowded foster home where the children are suspended from the ceiling and hosed down with Dr. Pepper for not being ambiguous about God, angels, or other religious icons. - For context, the episode parodied the "abusive fundamentalist" type of foster family you often see in media using this trope, except the family in question were fundamentalist agnostics, and applied their extreme ambivalence in all aspects of their lives, even what they drank. Since Dr. Pepper is neither cola, nor root beer, that's all they would keep at home. - Star Wars Rebels has Ezra, a street rat turned Jedi who lost his parents at age seven when they were seized by the Empire, and then had to grow up alone until the Ghost crew found him at fourteen. This left him with severe abandonment issues and a deep fear of losing his new family, which for good and ill forms the basis of his Character Arc.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphansOrdeal
Orphanage of Fear - TV Tropes Grelod the Kind: Those who shirk their duties will get an extra beating. Do I make myself clear? Orphans: Yes, Grelod. Grelod the Kind: And one more thing! I will hear no more talk of adoptions! None of you riff-raff is getting adopted. Ever! Nobody needs you, nobody wants you. That, my darlings, is why you're here. Why you will always be here, until the day you come of age and get thrown into that wide, horrible world. Now, what do you all say? Orphans: [unenthusiastically] We love you, Grelod. Thank you for your kindness. Grelod the Kind: That's better. Now scurry off, my little guttersnipes. Losing your parents is no fun. Depending on your circumstances (and the relative benevolence of your creator), you may end up with some clueless but good-natured Muggle Foster Parents, or you could be Raised by Wolves. If you're really unlucky, though — or if you need an appropriately tragic backstory — you'll end up in an Orphanage of Fear. No one cares for you a smidge when you're living in an Orphanage of Fear. You will usually be presided over by gaunt, dour women — often brutal nuns — with nasty sneers. Your chores are long, grueling, and mandatory; toys and other amusements are strictly forbidden. You can expect to be spanked, smacked, and otherwise "punished" frequently; no matter what you do, you can't please the Evil Orphanage Lady in charge. The food is usually unidentifiable, mushy, and foul-smelling if it's solid at all; you may have nothing to eat but thin, probably cold vegetable broth. You will be in bed by 8 and up by 5, and you will never, ever, ever be allowed to have any fun. Your only hope of escaping is either to get adopted, find your real parents (after all, they're probably only hiding), or simply run away. Or kill everyone/destroy the place. In darker and more adult-oriented versions, the people directing the orphanage will be downright criminal or insane; sometimes secretly enslaving the children as unpaid labor and punishing them harshly or even tortuously if they fail, refuse, or for no reason at all. Other times, the directors are using the orphanage as a cover for their evil cult, using the children as Human Sacrifices to appease their subject of worship. And those are if you're lucky. Sometimes, the orphanage directors like to do the unthinkable... The opposite of an Orphanage of Fear is the Orphanage of Love — a place where you will be cuddled, given plenty of toys, read to before bed, and have all your boo-boos kissed, even if you never get adopted. Although you will rarely find the series's Kid Hero thrust into one of these — right off the bat, anyway — a good way to make a character seem kind or loving is to put them in charge of an Orphanage of Love. Orphanages have been largely phased out in the western world, but they are still in use in parts of Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia, and parts of North America have them if there are no foster homes. Compare Boarding School of Horrors. Sadly, both institutions are still Truth in Television. Read up on conditions in Victorian orphanages some time; current group homes are not always significantly better. Modern orphanages are usually in disrepair. Also compare Department of Child Disservices. The ultimate setting to invoke Kids Versus Adults, especially when the kids want/have to save the orphanage from evil overrulers. Such a conflict can be terminated by the kids Burning the Orphanage. See also Juvenile Hell, which is about children being imprisoned for criminal offenses, but plays out in a similar way. ## Examples - The main characters in the prequel story in The Canis series live in one, since it's a front for human trafficking. - Bungo Stray Dogs: - During his childhood in an orphanage, Nakajima Atsushi was shamefully singled out for the most mundane things and then tortured relentlessly for just existing. He was starved, bullied, and beaten until his self-esteem was crushed into fine powder. \|\|It's later revealed that the Headmaster did this in hopes of toughening Atsushi in preparation for facing the even crueler real world, but that doesn't erase the horrendous childhood Atsushi had.\|\| - It turns out that \|\|the Headmaster\|\| was in one of these himself as a child. And it's said that it made what Atsushi went through seem like nothing in comparison. - Lucy Montgomery was raised in another such orphanage, where physical abuse was quite common. She also mentions having been forced to clean all day with a sponge dumped in ice-cold water, to the point that her fingers wouldn't function for a long time after. - In Chainsaw Man, Asa ended up in a orphanage after her parents were killed by devils. The other children treated her fine, but the caretaker \|\|murdered her cat out of jealousy.\|\| - Though it varies by personal fanon, Death Note's Wammy's House can qualify — the place is set up to produce the ultimate Tyke Bomb, after all, which is bound to be an unpleasant process. Another Note tells us that it doesn't work out so well for all of the kids, but L, Near, Matt, and Mello all seem pretty content with their upbringing, and L's absolute trust toward Watari would imply that Wammy's is something of an Orphanage of Love; however, all four of them have their not-so-normal traits. Then we get the ones like A and Beyond Birthday... - Dokuro has one of these, where the future warden Kawashima is the head, and children are horribly abused. - Lucy/Nyuu\|\|/Kaede\|\| from Elfen Lied grew up in one of these. It wouldn't have been so bad except for the torment Lucy was subjected to by the other orphans for being different. She would eventually \|\|snap out and murder a room full of the little hellions into literal bloody paste after they beat a dog she had started caring for to death right in front of her and made her watch, with the cherry on top being the girl she thought she could entrust the secret of her taking care of a dog, this is shown when, as her "friend" is crying after the boys mention she told them about her dog, a wicked smile can be seen beneath the crying facade.\|\| - One of the stories of the Ghost in the Shell manga has Section 9 tackling one of these. It's used for manual labor because the water filters that the kids make are deemed more important than their human rights. It turns out to be \|\|a government brainwashing facility that got out of hand, punishing those who try to escape with "ghost-back" or "ghost-out" — cyber-brainwash or death\|\|. - Kinderheim 511, from Monster. It was a heartless and abusive attempt to breed the perfect soldier, through severe physical and psychological abuse and neglect. It meets its end when \|\|almost every single person kills themselves in a massive fight, instigated by none other than Johan\|\|. The children would do nice things for each other, in a desperate attempt to be remembered. Because they were starting to forget who they were. - The orphanage in The Promised Neverland looks like an Orphanage of Love on the surface. The orphans receive excellent care, good food, and education. \|\|All to make them more appetizing to the demons who rule the world.\|\| - Saint Seiya: All the future Saints had to deal with this at the Kido Fundation. They were taken away from normal orphanages by force (the one where Seiya was pretty much kidnapped from was a downright Orphanage of Love, for example), forced to train all day long, were beaten by Tatsumi if they stepped out of line, seen as mere objects and playthings for Saori (who was a Spoiled Brat at the time), and the place had electric fences, dogs, and security guards. Afterwards, they were sent to Training Grounds where 90% of them died at. - Spy X Family: At the start of the story, Anya is living in a clandestine orphanage run by a sleazy Fat Bastard guy who seems pretty eager to get rid of as many kids as possible, before she gets adopted by Loid. Loid didn't even need to fill out any paperwork to adopt Anya, which is the most convenient for Loid—he's a foreign spy and adopts Anya as part of a Deep Cover, who certainly doesn't want any inconsistencies regarding Anya be found. - Tokyo Ghoul features one in the back story of Koutarou Amon, who was raised in a Catholic orphanage. On the surface, it was an Orphanage of Love run by a kind-hearted Russian priest that loved Amon like his own son. But in truth, Donato Porpora was actually a sadistic Ghoul that enjoyed feasting on children and used the excuse that they had been adopted to cover up their deaths. After Amon uncovered the truth, \|\|Donato kept the boy at his side and had him assist in murdering the other children\|\|. Eventually, the CCG discovered the church and defeated Donato. - Tsukipro's Issei and Ichiru were raised in an Orphanage of Love, more or less, so when they get cast in a play with a setting like this, they're miffed at the stereotype and ask for it to be changed. - Yu-Gi-Oh!: Seto and Mokuba Kaiba lived in one of these after their parents' deaths, complete with facing bullying from other kids. - The EC Comics story "Halloween" is set in one of these: Though the direct childcare person is desperately trying to turn it into an Orphanage of Love, the management tells her that there simply isn't enough money for decent food, clothing, lights... and certainly not a jack-o-lantern! \|\|Naturally, the manager is revealed as having kept two-thirds of the orphanage's income for his own personal benefit... and then the children get their jack-o-lantern.\|\| - The Flash: Mis Pritchard's orphanage in a Max Mercury story set in 1910s New York. Mrs. P hates children but gets money from the city to raise them. She also gets a cut from child-hating toymaker Archimedes Schott, for supplying him with cheap labour. And then she takes the kids' wages as well. When Schott tells her that he's going to burn down his factory, because Max has pressurised him into giving the kids more rights, she decides to send them to work that day anyway. (And yes, Archimedes looks a lot like his presumed descendent, Winslow.) - Seven Soldiers: Bulleteer: Madame Eva Martinette's Bleakdale Home for Bereaved Children was run by an abusive woman, and given that Sara was only a child in appearance by the time she was forcibly sent there due to her lack of aging, the fact that she ran away is no surprise. - Supergirl: Pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El grew up in Midvale Orphanage after losing her parents and crashing into Earth in The Supergirl From Krypton (1959). Although she didn't get into details, in Supergirl (1982) she states that she hated her life in the orphanage, felt very lonely, and was extremely grateful when the Danvers adopted her and she escaped that place in The Unknown Supergirl. - X-Men: The State Home for Foundlings in Nebraska that Cyclops ended up living in for a large point in his childhood. We don't know for certain how many of the other orphans actually existed, but we do know that his roommate was the mental projection of the man running the place who had an unhealthy obsession with him. The children were experimented on, had their memories wiped, and had mental suggestions placed in their brains, which is implied to be the reason why any real children bullied young Scott mercilessly. The director actually stopped several attempts to get children adopted and wiped the minds of teachers who suggested it (he is implied to have outright murdered a couple who wanted to adopt Scott) and the other adults were just as bad as the children. - Naruto fanfiction tends to use this since if no one cared about Naruto, he would have had to have gone to an orphanage due to being an orphan. It's not known whether there was an actual Orphanage of Fear in the series, but given the status of Jinchuuriki, it doesn't seem at all unlikely. Not to mention, he's living by himself at the age of around twelve at the beginning of the series — it certainly seems to imply there was a place he couldn't get away from fast enough. - Sailor Moon fanfiction tended to paint Mamoru's childhood home as one of these, at least in the early days. At least one fanfiction lampshaded this assumption by stating that Mamoru actually had it pretty good in the orphanage what with charity and donations, so he doesn't get why all the girls think he had a terrible childhood there. - Within the fandom for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, many fanfiction writers take advantage of the fact that Scootaloo of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who accompanies the younger sisters of two other characters, has no visible family to portray her as an orphan. As such, Scootaloo is frequently depicted as either living in one of these or having run away to Ponyville in order to avoid living in one. This, combined with stories about Scootaloo having abusive parents, have resulted in the creation of an entire subgenre within the fandom dubbed "Scootabuse". In contrast, many "Scootalove" stories have Rainbow Dash adopting Scootaloo. - Starlight Glimmer's Freudian Excuse in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic canon is expanded in the Aftermath of the Games universe to involve this; Starlight was raised in an abusive orphanage where the staff never bothered to provide the foals other than the basic necessities, banned any of them from having personal possessions, and would take meals away and paddle them even for the tiniest amount of misbehavior. The only one who actually cared about her for the first nine years of her life was another orphan and her only friend Sunburst, who, after getting his cutie mark, was sent to Canterlot to study magic. Starlight Never Got to Say Goodbye because she accidentally overslept the day he left, and the staff showed her No Sympathy for her loss. She never heard from him again because \|\|he died in a freak accident at the school\|\|, and she blamed his Cutie Mark for it, leading to creating "Our Town". \|\|When Princess Twilight was left with no choice but to wipe the villainous Starlight out of existence when she refused any and all chances of redemption, she went to the filly Starlight shortly after Sunburst abandoned her and offered her the role as her personal student. It didn't take too much convincing because Starlight would have done anything to get out of the orphanage at that point. Unlike other stories involving this trope, Twilight didn't ignore the abuse that was dished out by Starlight's former caretakers; after getting Starlight settled into the present time, she used her authority to arrest the entire staff for child abuse, then hired trustworthy caretakers to change it for the better.\|\| - Starting in "How I Spent My Summer Vacation in Miller County, Kansas", barnabas930's Dawn-centric Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic American Girls invokes a special (read: black magic-powered) breed of Orphanage of Fear in Radclif's Home for Wayward Youths. - In The Bond of the Orphans, Harry and Laura end up at Draygone House, a decrepit establishment with substandard food and a matron who's unaffectionately known as "The Dragon". - The Homestuck fanfiction He Has A Name has Dave grow up in a particularly nasty example. Not only are the staff oppressive and dickish, but the children there are also being used as prostitutes. In Dave's case, this means that while staying there he was raped every night of his life from the age of about six and ended up a Cute Mute from the trauma. - In Smallville fanfic Stronger Together Kara's cover story is that she spent eighteen years trapped in a completely understaffed orphanage after her parents' deaths before finding her cousin. Lois asked if it was "one of those Dickens wet dream orphanages". - In The Witch of the Everfree, Sunset analogizes her orphanage's social food chain to the Everfree Forest's physical food chain. - In Despicable Me, Margo, Edith, and Agnes live in one of these. If they don't make their quota selling cookies they are banished to the "box of shame". - In Wakko's Wish, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot lived in one of these for a time, until it was shut down by Baron Von Plotz during his merciless taxation. In their own words (well, song), they were fed inedible gruel, the beds were broken and painful to sleep on, and the taps ran "hot and cold dirt". Ironically, they actually miss the orphanage, because homeless life is even worse. - Ana: Ana strongly objects to the idea of being put in a foster home, saying that the people there only care for kids to get money, with some molesting them. Rafa reluctantly concedes and doesn't put her in one. When she actually gets into one, two older girls bully her to get cash, but Ana soon makes her escape. - The Day Will Come is about two brothers in the 1960's being placed in a boys' orphanage that also doubles as a boarding school. The headmaster and teachers are unsympathetic and beat the kids for almost anything, even yelling at the brothers and stuffing their faces into their food when they loudly cry at dinner after learning that their sick mother passed away. In the end, the younger brother is able to get a former teacher (who was fired for interfering in their beatings) to help him get the orphanage investigated by an inspector. Sadly Based on a True Story, with Denmark having a history of abusive orphanages throughout the 1940s to the 1970s. - Deadpool 2 has Essex House, a white marbled hell ran by a vicious anti-mutant fundamentalist where mutant children are tortured with "alternative therapies" with the intention of "curing" their powers while being shackled with Power Limiter collars like animals. When Deadpool learns that Russel's breakdown with his powers was because he was being physically (possibly sexually) abused by an orderly, he doesn't even blink before shooting the orderly in the head. The main conflict of the film centers around Russel's desire to burn Essex House to the ground and kill the staff, which nobody particularly cares about him doing, but in the process he'd also kill the innocent children inside and find a taste for killing. In the film's climax Domino finds the orderlies planning to execute all the children and ends up killing them all protecting them, and the headmaster gets turned into paste by Dopinder at the end. - Despite the best intentions of the staff, the orphanage in The Devil's Backbone is an Orphanage of Fear thanks to the Spanish civil war, dwindling resources, and a ghost, but mostly the return of a now-adult orphan. - Dick Tracy: Downplayed. The Kid is constantly trying to run away whenever there's any talk of sending him to the orphanage. Once he actually gets sent there, though, the food isn't very good but he's otherwise treated okay. - The Kirkmans' house in The Gathering used to be the town's orphanage, which was rumored to be a hotbed of abuse. \|\|It was, with the children present sold for sexual encounters to the powerful men in town, leading to Argyle's rampage to get revenge on everyone associated, including the Kirkmans, whose only sin was buying the house, not knowing its history.\|\| - The ironically named "House of Happy Children" seen in a flashback in Hansel and Gretel (2007) is especially horrific — the girls are raped and the boys are starved and beaten, sometimes to death. - While not technically an orphanage, the juvenile detention facility House of Refuge from Newsies qualifies; the corrupt warden bribes judges to condemn orphans to imprisonment there so he can pocket the money the government gives him to take care of them. - The Orphanage, despite all expectations, is for the most part not an example. The movie is actually about a woman returning to an orphanage years after she grew up there. Although according to her, she was actually happy at the orphanage, and all the kids saw each other as one big happy family. Until they got on \|\|Benigna\|\|'s bad side, that is. It's \|\|after she poisons most of the kids that it becomes a place of actually supernatural fear, and even then the tortured souls of the kids only manifest because they wish to help Laura\|\|. - From Our Mother's House: "It's a place with bars on the windows. Big iron bars and you can't get out. And you're not allowed outside except when they say. And they whip you. They whip you with whips. And they never give you enough to eat. And you wear sackcloth and sleep on bare boards. And they put the girls in one place, and the boys in another. And you're not allowed to talk or they'll whip you!" - Prime Cut: Poppy grew up in an orphanage of this type and was sold into prostitution by the abusive madam as soon as she came of age. - The Rainbow Room orphanage from RoboCop is a good example. The director of the orphanage is more concerned with making commercials to earn money than taking care of the kids. - The orphanage in Slumdog Millionaire definitely qualifies. The seemingly kind owner \|\|drugs and blinds a boy so he'll earn more money busking\|\|. - Sparrows, starring Mary Pickford, is about a horrific "baby farm" in which unwanted children are fed barely enough to keep them alive while being used as slave labor. - Wanda from Wanda Nevada used to live in an orphanage staffed by nuns where she worked in the laundry room. She calls it a hellhole and is determined not to go back, although she never says exactly what was so horrible about it. - In Albertine And The House Of The Thousand Wonders by Frank Reifenberg and Jan Strathmann, the Children's Happiness Home where the heroine lives pretty much embodies the trope. Though the headmistress has her favorites, they aren't particularly happy either. The kids are forced to paint the lawn green to make the orphanage look at least halfway decent. - In the American Girls: Samantha stories, Samantha's friend Nellie gets sent to one of these with her two younger sisters Jenny and Bridget after their parents die and her uncle Mike squanders their funds on drink. At Coldrock House, the girls are taught to be fortunate to have anywhere to stay at all and how to defer to their betters. Any small gifts or luxuries, like sweets or gloves, are snapped up by the headmatron, Ms. Frouchy and not returned—or accused of being stolen resulting in punishment. The girls are trained to become servants and separated by age—or separated permanently by the orphan train. Samantha helps the three girls escape and they are adopted by Sam's extraordinarily wealthy aunt and uncle. It's made even worse in the movie; Mrs. Frouchy is stealing from the donations for her own self-use, and when they see her and soon escape, she accuses Samantha of stealing the money and her "dear girls." Fortunately, Cornelia and Gardner don't believe a word of it, and the maid sends Mrs. Frouchy away—and then, once Cornelia uses her connections, she's fired altogether. - Anne of Green Gables has a downplayed example: Anne mentions that the staff meant well, and she wasn't abused, but it was a cold and dreary place where no one was loved. For Anne, though, the orphanage was often a better option than living with some of the many families she grew up with. Not only was she only "adopted" to take care of other people's children, but often these families didn't have enough to feed and clothe themselves (let alone Anne), and a few of the fathers were implied to be mean drunks. - In Ascendance of a Bookworm, a combination of customs and circumstance turns the temple orphanage into this. The children are usually fed with leftovers and gifts from the noble-blood blue-robed priests, but a recent purge of the nobility has resulted in a recall of most of those, leaving precious few left in the temple. Worse, a custom that doesn't even consider the youngest orphans people until they hit baptism age means that by the time Myne stumbles upon the orphanage, the remainder are literally starving to death. It's telling that Myne putting them to work on her paper-making business is considered an improvement because the money she pays them can go to their own care. - The BFG: Sophie is living in one at the beginning before she is carried away by the Big Friendly Giant. The owner, Mrs. Clonkers, imposes all sorts of petty rules on the orphans and locks them in a rat-infested cellar as punishment for breaking them. - In Alison Croggon's Books of Pellinor series, the main character's younger brother (and the main character of book three) Hem grew up in a terrible orphanage in a corrupt and rotting town. It came complete with dismal living spaces, horribly abusive adults, murderously petty and emotionally scared children, all capped off with the disturbingly common instances of death by starvation or murder — because of the fierceness of the other children. - Brotherhood of the Rose by David Morrell. Although the protagonists aren't mistreated in their government-run orphanage, all the children are indoctrinated to become patriotic Cannon Fodder for the US military. - Anaïs Nin describes one of these in her novella Children of the Albatross, part of Cities Of The Interior. Djuna, a beautiful young woman with "enormous fairytale eyes", tells the story of how she grew up in one of these grim places. "The Watchman" was supposed to keep the girls within walls at night but would let them out for a few hours in return for sexual favors. - In Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs, Jerusha "Judy" Abbot grows up in a borderline example of the trope, John Grier House. The employers aren't directly abusive and the kids have what they basically need thanks to the sponsors, but it's still far from an Orphanage of Love and there is a lot of emotional/intellectual neglect of them. She's still smart and lucky enough to have one of the well-meaning sponsors, the titular DDL (\|\|aka Jervis Pendleton, local Bunny-Ears Lawyer and The Casanova\|\|), send her to a local college. \|\|They meet in person, fall in love, and get married.\|\| The sequel, Dear Enemy, has Judy's school friend Sallie McBride struggling to turn John Grier House into a proper Orphanage of Love, under Judy's explicit request. She manages to do it with the help of the orphanage's doctor, Dr. Robin TragicHero McRae. Whom Sallie falls in love with. - In The Declaration by Gemma Malley, Surpluses, or children born to people taking the immortality drug, are put in these. They are often told they do not deserve to exist and have futures as servants. The main character, Anna, escapes with the help of a boy named Peter. They are allowed to stay out of the group home because \|\|both Anna's parents died, and Peter's father died, and the only way to get out of the homes is if one person in your family dies. That way, you're not adding more people to the world.\|\| - Discworld: - The Working House for Young Women, from Monstrous Regiment, was one of these (and implied to be run by a Pedophile Priest), with three characters having escaped from it, all of them pretty damaged. One lives on a hair-trigger, one became a pyromaniac, and one thinks that the Duchess, the deified ruler of their country, talks to her. \|\|As it turns out, she does, and eventually reveals her presence. The first two, though, become bank robbers, and come back and burn the place down near the end.\|\| - We don't learn much about the Home for the Destitute in The Wee Free Men, except that Miss Female Infant Robinson, who grew up there, also ends up damaged, and this is apparently not uncommon — the Chalk's only prison is next door, and there's popularly believed to be a connecting door to save time. - A Drowned Maiden's Hair: Girls live in squalor in the severely underfunded Barbary Asylum for Female Orphans, which is run by Miss Kitteridge, who seems to dislike kids and Maud in particular and is constantly inflicting harsh punishments. - In Faraway Dream, by Jane Flory, Seafarers Safe Harbor for Orphans is run by Mrs. Dempey, who is physically abusive and lazy. - In Gene Stratton-Porter's Freckles, Freckles grew up in one of the not actively cruel ones. Still — "Were they kind to you?" McLean regretted the question the minute it was asked. "I don't know," answered Freckles. The reply sounded so hopeless, even to his own ears, that he hastened to qualify it by adding: "You see, it's like this, sir. Kindnesses that people are paid to lay off in job lots and that belong equally to several hundred others, ain't going to be soaking into any one fellow so much." [...] "When I was too old for the training they gave to the little children, they sent me to the closest ward school as long as the law would let them; but I was never like any of the other children, and they all knew it. I'd to go and come like a prisoner, and be working around the Home early and late for me board and clothes. I always wanted to learn mighty bad, but I was glad when that was over." - St. Aegolius' Academy for Orphaned Owls in the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series is a pretty good example; stealing hundreds of eggs and owlets and going on to indoctrinate them through brainwashing techniques, completely erasing their sense of self, fiercely punishing any who ask any questions, forcing them to do labor such as picking through pellets and organizing what is found in them, and so on... Also, one of the owls in charge \|\|eats owl eggs\|\|. - Harry Potter: - Played with in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Aunt Marge declares that Harry should be grateful to the Dursleys for taking him as he would have gone straight to an orphanage if he'd been dumped on her doorstop. Harry's unspoken retort is that he would've preferred the orphanage. - Played with. Voldemort grew up in a Muggle orphanage that Harry thinks is "grim", but the overworked staff is clearly taking care of the kids' needs as best they can. The scariest thing about the orphanage was actually Voldemort (then called Tom) himself, an Enfant Terrible who used his undeveloped magic to traumatize his peers, even if the staff could never figure out how he did it. - The House of Silk features an orphanage doubling as \|\|a pedophile ring\|\|. - In The Hunger Games, Katniss says that if it was ever discovered that their mother was depressed and couldn't take care of them, she and her sister Prim would be sent to the community home. The kids who live there always look sad, and Katniss was afraid it would crush Prim's spirit, so she began providing for the family herself to cover up her mother's illness. - In Jack Blank and the Imagine Nation, the orphanage that the titular character comes from is called "St. Barnaby's Home for the Hopeless, Abandoned, Forgotten, and Lost". In fact, at one point, the headmaster attempts to change the title from "Home" to "Ward" simply because "home" sounds too pleasant. - In The Kid, St. Ailanthus doesn't appear to be this at first, as it's actually a high-quality orphanage and school whose students often go on to college or trades if they aren't adopted. What makes it this trope is the fact that two of the priests are pedophiles who rape the protagonist repeatedly and then, when he begins doing the same thing to other students, they cover it all up to preserve their reputation and then kick him out. - The Kite Runner has one of these, though it's more the fault of the setting (Taliban-occupied Afghanistan) than any malevolence on the part of the owners. - The children's home in the second half of The Last Dragon is pretty much this — no food, horrible "caretakers", and so on. The children are told all day long about how their parents were selfish, horrible people and they deserved to die. Robi doesn't quite believe it. - In Sam Gayton's Lilliput, Finn was an orphan at one of these, ironically called "The House of Safekeeping". The clocks there were designed to run quickly during the orphans' free time, and slowly during their work time. Christmas Day was forty minutes long there. - In Gene Stratton-Porter's Michael O'Halloran, Mickey's mother had raised him to be able to look after himself because otherwise he would be taken to the home. When he meets Peaches after her granny died, other boarders are talking of how the girl will be taken to the home, and she's terrified. - The Missing Piece of Charlie O'Reilly: Before the New York Asylum for Orphaned Children burned down, it was a miserable, filthy place where the children were barely fed enough to stay alive. - Momo: Momo is an orphan who lives in a ruined amphitheater on the outskirts of the city. The neighboring families keep her supplied with food and other essentials, but she refuses to have anything to do with official social services because she previously lived in an orphanage that had bars on the windows and daily beatings, and doesn't want to end up in another. - Older Than Radio: Oliver Twist starts out in one of these. Technically it's a workhouse — a homeless shelter where the inhabitants did grueling physical labor to pay for their extremely basic accommodation (though in reality, they were more like work camps for the crime of being broke and desperate); these would encompass a section for children (some of whom would actually have one or both parents living in the men's or women's wards respectively). In fact, social reformers of the time actually regarded orphanages as a more humane alternative to workhouses. - While the children of John C. Wright's Orphans of Chaos are not actively maltreated, they are certainly kept in the dark about their origins, and apparently kept captive past the age of majority. \|\|They also learn that their keepers have used Laser-Guided Amnesia and Restraining Bolts on them.\|\| - In Benjamin Black's (a.k.a. John Banville's) novels about pathologist Quirke, set in mid-twentieth-century Ireland, Quirke spent his childhood in Carricklea, a horribly abusive orphanage run by the Christian Brothers. Truth in Television, unfortunately, as the novels are responding to recent revelations about what such orphanages could be like. - The Ravenor short story Playing Patience features the Kindred Youth Scholam, a seemingly respectable institution that takes in orphans from the slums and gives them a home and an education. In reality, the whole place is a front for laundering children and young adults into the hands of criminals for nefarious purposes. Ravenor shuts the place down as part of an investigation. - Richard Sharpe, from Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series, grew up in the workhouse as a child. In one of the later books, it is shown that despite twenty years and numerous battles, Sharpe still has PTSD when he returns and faces the orphanage master. If that weren't enough, the children are served gruel. \|\|Of course, he savagely murders said orphanage master... right in front of a little orphaned girl before proceeding to the main plot, so you could say the book brutally explores this trope front, back, and sideways.\|\| - "Thrift House", run by the corrupt and abusive Mrs. Spindletrap in The Silver Spoon Of Solomon Snow, by Kaye Umansky. - In the Spellsinger books, one city orphanage is considered a great place with well-behaved kids. Jon-Tom discovers that it is \|\|an Orphanage of Fear with every child required to be "perfect". The food is great and healthy, however any misbehavior is whipped and all kids have their sexual organs removed because sex isn't "perfect". When they learn this, it's one of the only times Jon-Tom's usually amoral sidekick Mudge gets truly angry.\|\| - Philip Pullman's Spring-Heeled Jack includes the trio of orphaned protagonists escaping from one of these. The ones who run it pursue them relentlessly, because they don't get paid unless the orphanage is full to capacity. - The Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys in The Supernaturalist qualifies. The institute gets the money for the boys' maintenance by making them test all kinds of products. - The Sunlight Home from The Talisman probably qualifies, with boys who don't love Jesus enough being beaten, locked in a tiny shed, or even killed. Inspired the Ash song "Jack Names the Planets". - They Cage the Animals at Night, which is supposedly an autobiography, puts the protagonist in one of these. It is run by nuns some of them are nice, while others are... not. Apparently, the punishment for bed-wetting is * stripping the child naked and telling the rest of the orphans about it. And whipping them the whole time. - Thursday's Child, by Noel Streatfeild. St. Luke's Orphanage is run by "Matron", who steals from the children to enrich herself and is physically abusive. After she leaves, it becomes an Orphanage of Love, due to the influence of Lady Corkberry. - As Simon aptly describes it in The Witch Watch, Ravenstead Academy takes in orphans and teaches them to fear Lord Mordaunt. - In Barney Miller, Jilly Pappalardo has similar feelings about the New York City Children's Centers. "I'm not going back to Children's Center. I hate it, I don't want to live there, you get pushed around and the food stinks!" Sgt. Fish's reply: "If I can take it, you can take it." - Dark Matter (2015): The Orphanage where Five grew up hasn't been described in any detail, but kids don't run away from such homes to try and survive alone on the streets at age 12 for no reason. And even without any conscious memories of the place, her reaction to the plan of having her sent to a group home after \|\|the rest of the crew of the Raza is arrested and thrown into prison\|\| is basically: "I'd rather go to (adult, high security) prison instead." - The Doctor Who* episode "Day of the Moon" features one of these, with a Mind Raped single occupant, and "GET OUT NOW" scrawled all over the walls for extra goodness. \|\|Oh, and it's full of sleeping Silents on the ceiling.\|\| Made even worse later when you realize that the little girl living there was \|\|young Melody Pond/River Song\|\|. - In the first episode of Y Gwyll, "Devil's Bridge," the murder victim, Helen Jenkins, ran one of these. The Pontarfynach Children's Home also took in juvenile delinquents as a sort of "last resort" effort. The "fear" part of this trope is downplayed, but terrifying things that took place there included removing the children's teeth without anaesthesia, locking them in the "hard room" when they misbehaved, and \|\|holding secret burials for the dead infants of one of the teens\|\|. - Law & Order: - In Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a mother who is completely paranoid raised her children to believe that they would go to an Orphanage of Fear where they would be raped and murdered if they were ever taken away from her. Her son is then convinced that they're going there, so she has him kill his brother and then commit suicide, but for him, the gun jams. Adding to this, she even tells them that their older brother wound up in such an orphanage where he was killed. In fact, the brother in question went to an Orphanage of Love and came out of is reasonably well-adjusted, and even came back to shred their mother's lies. - On an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, a wealthy man embroiled in a custody dispute is found murdered in his home. It eventually comes out that he was killed by his adopted sons, over whom he was engaged in a custody dispute: they had been raised in an Eastern-European Orphanage of Fear, and their mother had tried to turn them against him by telling them that he would send them back if he got custody. - Leverage: In "The Stork Job", the Leverage team end up rescuing all the kids from one of these in Serbia, which is being used as a front for arms dealers. This wasn't the original mission, but Parker refuses to leave the kids behind. - Smallville: Granny Goodness's orphanage in "Abandoned", St. Louise's Orphanage. The place is made of pure horror, as scared young girls are psychologically abused (and it's heavily implied if not outright stated that they are beaten as well) and forcibly re-programmed into sadistic soldiers-in-training to pave the way for Darkseid's coming invasion of the Earth, sometimes by being blood-thirsty assassins, but sometimes by becoming sleeper agents and penetrating the Earth's upper institutions to secretly spy on them and destabilize them for Darkseid, the revelation of which ends up being Paranoia Fuel among the good guys in-universe. What makes it even scarier is the possibility that St. Louise's used to be a regular orphanage until Granny Goodness showed up one day and took over. When \|\|Tess\|\| rediscovers the place — which is where she grew up — a whole montage of very disturbing repressed memories play out on-screen. What makes the place even more disturbing is that Granny Goodness is very much a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, and Faux Affably Evil to boot. She forcibly (and, by all accounts, painfully) erases the memories of the girls in her care so that they have no memory of their Parental Abandonment. And if she is forced to let one of her girls leave the orphanage, as is what happened in \|\|Tess\|\|'s case, she also erases their memory of the orphanage completely. The entire first few years of \|\|Tess's\|\| life were completely eradicated, only popping back up as nightmares after Granny wanted her back twenty-five years later. - In the back-story for Street Justice, shortly after losing his parents and getting separated from Marine veteran Adam in Vietnam, Grady grew up in one of these, whose caretaker frequently beat him. Grady ran away from there eventually... but unfortunately he wound up in prison, where he would spend a significant portion of time before eventually making his way to the United States. - Not orphanages per se, but the group homes for unplaced foster children on The Wire are complete hellholes. Said to be the source of Laetitia's anger, and later shown to be where \|\|Randy\|\|'s youthful innocence goes to die. - Exalted gives us the orphanage run by the Dowager of the Irreverent Vulgate in Unrent Veils. Just how bad can you make an orphanage? Well, if it's run by one of the Deathlords... and she's the one who made them orphans in the first place... and she's basically using it as a backup plan in case her favored Deathknight gets killed in the field... pretty damn bad. Not to mention that the previous orphans in the orphanage were the parents of the current ones, and the toys the orphans play with are made out of their parents' souls. It's not very nice in general. Oh, and another thing? She started this after the Great Contagion... which is to say, several centuries before the first Deathknights. Before then? She was just entertaining herself. - Warhammer 40,000's Schola Progenium is a system of orphanages run by the Ecclesiarchy which trains orphans to fill various offices in the Imperial military, especially Commissars and Sisters of Battle. Harsh discipline and brutal training methods are commonplace, and deaths, while meant to be avoided, are expected and not uncommon. - Universal's Halloween Horror Nights 2010 features a house called The Orfanage, which is a prequel to the popular Screamhouse series revolving around the Caretaker, Albert Caine. The Orfanage features his daughter, fan favorite ex-icon Cindy, before her adoption in an orphanage where she and the other students were tortured until Cindy's latent pyrokinetic powers allowed her to free the children and burn down the orphanage. The house has you going through the burnt-down remains of the orphanage, facing the (ghosts of?) children and Cindy, with a spectacular scene involving fire roaring next to the window you walk by. - Dr. Bumby's Home For Wayward Children in Alice: Madness Returns has to be the worst "orphanage" in videogame history. In a normal Orphanage of Fear the kids get neglected, emotionally abused, beaten, and probably half-starved. Here, their caretaker and therapist \|\|brainwashes them and then pimps them as child prostitutes\|\|. And not even very secretly. The little plaque says it all: "Earn Your Keep." - Arc the Lad II gives us the White House: unlike most examples of this trope, the kids are not openly mistreated by uncaring or sadistic by the people in charge (in fact, \|\|one of its former managers, Vilmer, is shown to be a descent, loving grandfather\|\|), but when the employees are pretty much on Cthulhu's payroll, you know that the facility hides very dark, horrific secrets, and oh boy does it not disappoint: the orphans (which were forcibly taken from their family at best, \|\|witnesses of their family's slaughter and people's genocide at worst\|\|) are kept compliant by \|\|being forced to take "control medicines" suspiciously similar to rape drugs which pretty much end up wiping their memories — the protagonist had amnesia for the better part of a decade thanks to them —\|\| until they are dissected (chairs equipped with huge rotating saws are found in the basement)... if they are lucky. If they are unlucky, the paid-by-the-local-Cthulhu scientists overseeing the orphanage will use \|\|a mix of genetic engineering and dark magics which will turn the kids into sentient monsters whose free-will will then be overridden by powerful mind-control devices\|\|. - Battle Arena Toshinden 3 makes mention of the Organization's brands of orphanages set up all across the world. Their function? A shelter for children and youths, and a holding place for their blood-required black occult magic rituals at night. Fridge Horror abound. - In BioShock there is the Little Sister Orphanage, which is really a front for little girls to be used in science experiments. - St. Martha's Orphanage from the backstories of the Vestal and the Runaway from the Darkest Dungeon games seems to have been this, especially if the backstory of the Runaway from Darkest Dungeon 2, who had to escape the nuns who ran the place after they took to branding her with hot irons, is any indication. - Willow from Don't Starve is revealed to have grown up in one in the short "From the Ashes". After she's attacked by Shadow Creatures and protected by her beloved teddy bear Bernie, the two Evil Orphanage Ladies running the place confiscate Bernie and lock her in a supply closet as punishment for being up past bedtime, with the one who took Bernie giving her a sadistic little smile just to rub it in. She ends up doing something off screen that causes an explosion that sets the orphanage ablaze and is implied to kill at least one of the matrons, and possibly also the other people in the orphanage. - The orphanage in the Elven Alienage in Dragon Age: Origins. It's an example because it was overrun by demons after a massacre during The Purge ordered by Arl Howe. The demons and ghosts only arrived after the horrific bloodshed and lingering feelings of pain and rage tore a hole in the Veil. - In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Honorhall Orphanage in Riften is run by a terrible old woman called Grelod the Kind. She constantly gives speeches to the kids about how worthless they are and that they won't be adopted, ever. The kids themselves tell you that beatings are frequent and snooping around the building reveals that there is a cell with shackles on the wall. The kind normally seen in prisons. Grelod also starves the children by giving them only one meal a day in the afternoon. She even keeps them from being adopted — she's that much of a power-hungry Control Freak. It's so bad that one of the kids, Aventus Aretino, escaped and tried to recruit the Dark Brotherhood to kill Grelod. \|\|You can pretend to be from the Brotherhood and kill Grelod yourself (though nothing's stopping you from slicing the evil old bat into hamburger before even meeting Aretino, which the latter will even comment on). The children will cheer and praise the Dark Brotherhood. Needless to say, the Dark Brotherhood is not happy about this, but it does mark the beginning of the Dark Brotherhood questline. It is the only character in the game that you can murder in plain sight and not be bothered by guards afterwards, as your Riften bounty will not increase for it. She is disliked that much by everyone.\|\| Once you install the Hearthfire DLC and \|\|kill Grelod\|\|, management of the orphanage will be taken by her assistant, Constance Michel. Michel is a much nicer person then Grelod was and is willing to make the orphanage better, allowing you to adopt children from it. - Fallen London: - The mysterious institution, known only as The Orphanage, where \|\|agents of the Masters experiment on kidnapped orphans; you have the choice to burn it down.\|\| - High-level characters can open their own, and act as The Fagin to its residents. - Gunhouse: While the Caretaker does care for her charges (in an aloof and distant sort of way), the fact that the orphanage is constantly under attack by various bizarre monsters bent on kidnapping the children definitely pushes it into this territory. - In Higurashi: When They Cry, after her parents died in an accident, \|\|Miyoko Tanishi\|\| aka the Big Bad \|\|Miyo Takano\|\| spent some time in a horrific orphanage in the middle of the woods as part of her Start of Darkness. The orphanage is run by bitter ex-military staff, who take joy in torturing and sexually abusing the children, including subjecting them to cruel and unusual punishments or deaths, like making Tanishi lick a toilet after a soldier just defecated in it or feeding a kid to hungry chickens. Fortunately, Tanishi was able to call for help and was adopted by \|\|a man named Takano\|\|, but we never find out what happened to the orphanage or the other kids... - Hitman: The novel Enemy Within depicts Agent 47 on a quest to hunt down a mole in the ICA, which takes him to Morocco in pursuit of a drug lord that runs an orphanage as part of his legitimate businessman appearance. The orphanage turns out to be a child brothel that also doubles as a slave trafficking ring. - Subverted in Morpheus: The Goodman Home for Boys was really an Orphanage of Love, just that the caretaker, Grace Thermon, was cruel to all involved, so much that she was repeatedly disciplined, and eventually fired. Although one particular orphan, Jan Pharris, still suffered in more ways than one throughout his life, leading to his inviting Grace and Jan's family to his father's ship, Herculania. - Mother's Garden from Octopath Traveler II is a place dedicated to the training of future Blacksnakes members disguised as an orphanage. The children there are trained to be thieves and killers, and they are frequently abused by Mother during the process. It would eventually become a formal orphanage following the game's events. - The Edgewood Home for Lost Children in Our Darker Purpose fits here. The enigmatic teachers are noted to be pleasant enough, but the administrators are capricious, and the entire place is an Eldritch Location where the architecture shifts and inanimate objects spring to hostile life. Once the teachers disappear and the children go feral, things get even worse. - Painkiller features the ultimate Orphanage Of Fear, full of undead psychopathic children, a butcher with no feet, and sad children in sacks who explode. - In Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus, the orphanage the Progs were at seems to have been unpleasant at best; Vendra's holo-diaries mention that she and Neftin don't have any friends and the adults don't care that they're being bullied. On the inside, the nature of how the orphanage was run becomes noticeable. There are small metal baskets lying around and robotic claws are going along the ceiling, some still holding some of the baskets. Said claws follow a path that goes through some showers before ending at a conveyor belt which leads into the basement. The basement turns out to have been the windowless sleeping room for the children, with three giant hamster drinking stations. - Resident Evil 2: The Racoon City Orphanage sells its children to Umbrella Corporation as test subjects for their Bio-Organic Weapon development. After one kid escaped Umbrella and snuck back into the orphanage, the staff massacred every kid inside, fearing contamination. - Shadow Hearts 1 has Jack's orphanage. Jack was creepy before he got his hands on the Emigre Manuscript. Now he sees the kids as ingredients. Unfortunately for him, one of the kids sent to it is a friend of Halley's, and Halley gets Yuri and allies involved... If you visit the orphanage after the story events, you learn that it's now run by a woman who plans to make it an Orphanage of Love. - The Silent Hill cult ran one of these, where they brainwashed the children into new members. One of the areas you go to in Silent Hill 4 is subtly implied to be part of it — a mysterious cylindrical outbuilding alluded to in earlier games, then again here in case you forgot. - Silversoul Orphanage, an indie horror game set in an abandoned orphanage since the 1940s where you're exploring the whole building. Notes recovered from various rooms and an old set of newspapers reveals that the caretakers, tired with dealing with "annoying kids", decide to discreetly allow a Serial Killer into said orphanage to "deal with them". - The Shalebridge Cradle from Thief: Deadly Shadows. The Cradle started out as a dedicated orphanage. Then when financial problems struck, it was sold to people who turned it into an asylum for the criminally insane. Out of the goodness of their hearts, the doctors allowed the orphans to remain there. So to clarify, The Cradle was an Orphanage of Fear and a Bedlam House simultaneously. Then it burned down with both children and lunatics inside. Then the building developed sentience and imprisoned the souls of the children and inmates inside itself so it could play with them... for all eternity. - The White Orphanage from Wild ARMs 4 was actually a laboratory where war orphans were experimented on to make them more compatible with ARMS. Given that Yulie was there from around the age of five, you can see why she's so downbeat and apologetic. - Helluva Boss: "Seeing Stars" portrays hellhound adoption centers like these in a flashback, mixed with Pounds Are Animal Prisons. The pups are malnourished and deformed, the cells are filled with grime, and the social worker's dialog implies the pups are mostly sold as slaves or family pets, and she doesn't acknowledge pups being violent towards each other, even when one is threating his cellmate with a bloody nail bat in front of her, implying it's a regular occurrence. \|\|This is where Blitzo found and adopted Loona, a month before she turned 18.\|\| - A number of the main characters of Dreamkeepers live in an orphanage run by Grunn, an angry shark who hates kids \|\|and is probably only doing it as a cover\|\|. - In When She Was Bad, Gail Swanson grew up in an orphanage where "catching the biggest cockroaches was considered a fun past-time". She ran away from it when she was eleven years old. - Pinkie Pie from Friendship is Witchcraft lived in at least an emotionally abusive one as a filly. It left her with deep insecurities about being Romani and being an Earth Pony. - Ultra Fast Pony plays this for black comedy. Young Rainbow Dash grew up in a lot of abusive orphanages (and with a lot of equally-abusive foster families). As she explains in "Shameless Self Reference": Rainbow Dash: Anyway, this is the seventh orphanage I got kicked out of. I think it was my third longest-running orphanage. [...] Aw, coming back here, so many good memories. I mean, there's a lot more bad memories, but there's a few good memories, too. - As we learn in the Alvin and the Chipmunks episode "The Chipette Story", Brittany, Jeanette, and Eleanor spent their early life in this trope in Australia with their best friend Olivia. In this orphanage, the caretaker Miss Grudge would try to force some of the orphans to sing to make more money, but they all had rotten singing voices. When Olivia is lucky enough to be adopted, Grudge kidnapped and locked the Chipettes away so she wouldn't be able to take them with her, intending to make money off the three little chipmunk girls. They barely managed to escape and then hid in a ship sailing to the USA. - In American Dad!, Francine used to live in an orphanage before her Chinese parents adopted her. In that orphanage, any time she tried to use her left hand (being naturally left-handed), the nuns would smack her with a fish. Which is a reference to a now rarer practice of forcing people to be right-handed that was once common in Catholic schools, and also happened in some secular schools. - In the Arthur episode "Mom and Dad Have a Great Big Fight", Arthur and D.W. fear that their parents may be getting a divorce and worry that they will be abandoned. Cue Oliver Twist-inspired Imagine Spot. Arthur: We have to avoid going to an orphanage at all costs, especially one set in the 1800s. - Boo Boom! The Long Way Home: In episode 20, Boo-Boom and a group of war orphans are forcefully taken from a red cross camp and placed in one of these. The place, a partly destroyed rundown building, is run by a group of very strict female soldiers who enforce an iron discipline, and the building houses an industrial laundromat where the orphans are put to work. Fortunately, thanks to Boo-Boom's animal friends, they are all able to escape and the place itself is burned to the ground. - The Christmas Special The Christmas Tree is set in one these, where the lady in charge gambles away the orphanage's money on a regular basis. It's so bad that the children latch onto a huge pine tree for emotional comfort. - The Cuphead Show!: As revealed in "Dance With Danger", Miss Chalice lived in one of these for a time, with the heads all being tyrants who refused to let the kids have any fun and any attempt to do so was punished with harder chores and getting Denied Food as Punishment. It says something about how bad it was that Chalice preferred living on the streets to living there. - In Futurama, Leela grew up in Cookieville, a minimum-security orphanarium. With a warden. Who used to tell her, daily, that she's worthless and no one will ever love her. And there are bars on the windows. By her own account, the best day ever of her entire life was Double Soup Tuesday at the orphanarium. Although she is shown laughing about it all later, with the very same warden, and looks at this time of her life with some fondness. Leela: Just like old times. Gosh. The bars on the windows seemed so much thicker back then. Mr. Vogel? Remember me? Warden: Leela! You're worthless and no one will ever love you! [they laugh and hug] Leela: You used to say that all the time! Warden: Oh, those were happier days. - - Also, there's an episode where Warden Vogel tries to take the kids ice-skating in Central Park and seems genuinely saddened when he's forced to cancel the field trip. - The orphanage in Tigress's backstory in Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five qualifies... but not in the way you might think. The orphanage in question did have darkness underneath its brighter front, but rather than the traditional Evil Orphanage Lady enforcing fear in the orphanage, Tigress herself was the source of this fear, as despite the young cub being genuinely innocent in her motives for the most part, everyone else feared her because of her fangs, claws, temper, and overall strength, and she was left alone and ashamed. With some help by Master Shifu, Tigress managed to learn to control herself and turned the place into an Orphanage of Love. - In The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Flapjack gets sent to another unique variation in "Oh, You Animal!". The caretaker is actually a good person and just wants to protect, even adopt Flapjack. What makes the orphanage horrifying is the fact that the other "orphaned boys" are actually grown men disguised as little boys so they could have free meals and a roof over their head, and Flapjack, being the only real kid in the place, is bullied mercilessly. - In Time Squad, Otto lived in an orphanage ran by a cruel nun who used the children that were in her care for cheap labor, kept them well underfed and is shown to be able to willingly physically harm children with a whip.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanageOfFear
Other Sites - TV Tropes Legend has it that there are other internet sites besides This Very Wiki. This page lists the details of this absurd idea. The difference between a "web site" and a "web page" isn't always clear. Being the main page of a domain name seems like a rule of thumb, but even domains can be part of a larger site. Its probably better to discuss on a case-by-case basis. Sub-categories include: Blogs, Image Boards, Image Boorus, Journal Roleplay, Webcomics, Web Games, Web Original Fiction, Web Serial Novels, Web Videos, Wikis & some Fora. ## Sites that have their own pages here: ## Sites without their own pages: New Media under discussion and under way: - ifwiki - Borindom music a blog written by a musician who is involved in the cloud music business. Not only does he analyze mainstream and indie music but pop culture in general. Writer's Guides - Jeffery Carver's Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy online course. Blogs What blogs get included here? Blogs of a troper nature of course, analysis of media etc. but basically anything that you think we would like. Include a brief blurb about the website and which areas of the wiki it is relevant to. - Nancy Friedman — Marvellously written blog entry, from someone who actually gets us. - http://www.minaidehazukashii.com/ — Anime Blog that has been referenced multiple times around the wiki. The writer inserts trope talk into alot of his entries. - RIUVA — Another anime blog rich with entries about anime and otaku culture analysis. - The Watchtower Of Destruction — The blog of "The Ferret", a writer and Webcomic author who provides interesting and informative musings, many of which are troper related material (Mostly television, sci-fi and writing). It is also one of the best webcomic review sites since Websnark cut back its operations. - Musings Of The Chatty DM - A Tabletop Games blog operated by a troper, brings tropes from all over the catalogue and looks at how they effect Role Playing Games. Well worth a read (His "Trope" and "Rule of Cool" tags are useful for seeing topics related to our interests). - Polite Dissent — written by a doctor, this includes medical reviews of various media of interest to him (episode reviews of House are a regular feature). Good writing and the commenters are of above-average intelligence and literacy for blog commenters, based on they're writing. - The Writer's Pad is a blog by an out of work small-time reporter. It features quite a few rants, some snarky pictures (a la Cracked style captioning) and curse words. - It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time is a blog written by a troper. Tropes (including the one that shares its name with the blog) are periodically referenced in the posts, and a permanent link to the site can be found on the links page, along with a warning that TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life. The posts meander over internet culture, video games, movies, charity promotion, and weird stories from the writer's actual daily life. - Tricia's Obligatory Art Blog is always a fun read. It's full of well researched paleontology diatribes, Disney movie reviews, and gardening. And she frequently links here, which is neat. Miscellaneous - The Flame Warrior Roster - Electric Ferret - The Gossamer Project — The X-Files Fan Fic archive. Naturally, writing quality varies greatly, ratings range from G to NC-17. - kuro5hin - io9 - Site that deals with Sci-Fi shows and books, new technology, space. They come from the future. Had an article about this very site. Seems alot of us hang out there too. - mobygames - "An online, historic and archival database of the entertainment software industry's products" established 1999 - AniDB.net - catalog and review site for Japanese animated television, film, and OVA. - ferretbrain A website populated by (mostly) Sophisticated as Hell geeks who talk about quite alot of things, really, but predominately popular culture. Notable for frightfully intelligent analyses, laugh-out-loud humor, and a generally negative outlook on such popular icons as 300, Joss Whedon, and J. K. Rowling. - 27b/6 - humor website in which an Australian makes fun of everything in a hilarious tone. - Bilibili - One of the most popular video-sharing sites on Mainland China. It features the same scrolling comments as Japan's Nico Nico Douga and is also quite heavy on otaku culture. The name is a reference to Mikoto Misaka's In-Series Nickname, otherwise romanized as Biri-biri or translated as Bug-Zapper. - zh.moegirl.org - An anime-focused Chinese wiki that is technically all about documenting moe girls. Has branched out into a very diverse array of other genres and topics, and is a pseudo-counterpart to TV Tropes as one of these topics is documentation of character traits. - Mystic Investigations - Claims to be a paranormal investigation company and that All Myths Are True. - Posmotre.li - a Russian sister site to TV Tropes.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtherSites
Orphaned Punchline - TV Tropes Zuko: Would you like to hear Uncle's favorite tea joke? [...] Okay. Well, I can't remember how it starts, but the punchline is "leaf me alone, I'm bushed!" [awkward silence] Zuko: Well, it's funnier when Uncle tells it. Katara: Right, maybe that's because he remembers the whole thing. When characters are seen telling jokes to one another, we rarely get to hear the entire joke: usually we will just hear the setup or the punchline. Punchlines are often more common, as it allows us to cut to the end and see other people's reaction to the joke, whether it be rip-roaring hilarity, monocle-popping disgust or a deathly quiet. An advantage of this over actually telling the joke is that the writer's sense of humor may not match with the viewers, leading to a different reading of the joke, when it's easier to just suggest it. It can also be a form of Getting Crap Past the Radar, hinting at filth in works that would never allow it. The punchlines or setups are often from actual jokes (usually dirty or obscure ones), so there are several stock punchlines you hear; "The Aristocrats" is a popular one. Alternatively they're intended to be as weird as possible, leaving the audience wondering what the setup/punchline could possibly be — in most of these cases, the setup/punchline never existed in the first place. Another alternative is a dirty Limerick which is cut off before the end. People from Nantucket are common (with the implication being that the previous line ended in "Fuck it"), as well as something akin to: ... and then I told him, "That's no dragon, that's my mother!" A subtrope of Nothing Is Funnier, as the setup is left entirely for the listener to imagine. See also Orphaned Setup, Subverted Punchline, Late to the Punchline, Lost in Transmission, Noodle Implements, Faux Final Line, Forgotten Trope, And Then I Said. ## Examples: - In one Darker than Black episode, April calls the phone of her partner, November 11 and gets a recorded message in which he tells a joke. In the English dub, the audience hears the beginning in which he starts talking about a Shepherd, and then the ending which is the traditional "That's my wife". - In Lucky Star, some scenes cut in just as a character finishes a joke regarding 'something stinky'. Variations on this are played as a Running Gag. There's also a number of examples that don't follow that pattern. - In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's, Vita tells Nanoha, "We Belkans have a saying: If you're an ambassador of peace, don't carry a spear!". Zafira points out that it isn't a saying, it's the punchline to a joke. - A surprisingly smutty one appears in the English dub of Pokémon 2000: One character is heard finishing a joke with "...and then she says 'No, but I have Krabbys!'" - In the "dream" episode/chapter of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei, everyone's personalities are reversed, and so instead of his usual insightful/hopeful stories, Jun Kudo whispers a dirty joke in Sensei's ear. The audience doesn't hear it, but Nozomu comments that it was about a man who injured both of his hands and was helped by his mother-in-law. In a way, most of Kudo's stories are this, as the audience generally doesn't hear the whole story, but just sees the cast's reaction. - The beauty/comedy contest in episode 18 of Sgt. Frog features a few of these. This is made more obvious in Funimation's Gag Dub version, highlights of which include the punchline of the funniest joke in Keroro's repertoire ("And she gets mad when I suck my thumb!") and a reference to the infamous "Japanese golfer" joke ("What do you mean, it's the wrong hole?"). - Lewis Black has an entire bit about having overheard one and being driven insane in pondering what the hell would trigger the phrase "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college." - Dave Chappelle admits he does this on purpose, writing a punchline, putting it in a fishbowl and working from what he pulls out. In this case the punchline was "So I kicked her in the pussy". He then tells a story about how his white friend invited him over to have Stove Top stuffing for dinner, then learning from his mom that they won't have enough for him. - From The Firesign Theatre's album Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, there's this: Patty: That's why he's so MEAN!! Hugh: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!! (Fake-sounding laughter) Patty: Well, well, well, yes, yes. So what else happened in history today, Hugh? - In Gabriel Iglesias's special Aloha, Fluffy, there was one point where he was going over a time he went touring in Saudi Arabia. As he was transitioning to the next story about the trip, an audience member yelled out, "I love you Fluffy!" This caused him to reply, "Sit down mahu" which was a previous bit that he decided to return to that one, leaving the rest of the Saudi Arabia story unfinished. - Australian comedian Glynn Nicholas would use this to puzzle/punish latecomers to his show. Tipped off that some people were coming in late, he would tell the audience to laugh uproariously at a punchline. The latecomers would be allowed into the audience and Glynn would wait patiently. Then, when they had settled, he would pretend to be finishing the joke. Audience wets themselves laughing, with the exception of four unfortunates. - Gilbert Gottfried will occasionally recite a string of punchlines to dirty jokes without the vulgar set ups. ("You told me yesterday." "If you help me find my keys, we can DRIVE out of here." "Let me see that map again." "For a nickel I will." "Could you quit keeping score on my ass?") - Astro City: - It gives us Crackerjack's "...so the woman says 'You idiot — This is a duck, not a pig!' And the bartender says "I was talking to the duck!'" - "A woman walks into a bar holding a duck and orders a drink. The bartender says "What are you doing in here with that pig?" - Batman '66 #31 has one joke from the Joker with an orphaned punchline, though longtime comic book fans will know the setup very well: - In the Bone prequel Stupid, Stupid Rat-Tails, Big Johnson Bone, having been run out of town for cheating in a card game, gives his monkey companion a long-winded explanation as to why there was an ace up his sleeves. The story is so long that it goes on to the morning of the next day! "—Then what did I see at my feet? Completely untouched by the explosion that leveled a good hundred miles of forest— Yes sir, that's right, a single playing card— An Ace of Spades to be precise. So I picked it up and put it inside my coat in case whoever lost it came lookin'. - The original graphic novel of The Crow contains a scene in which one of T-Bird's henchmen is telling T-Bird a joke. He's gotten as far as "so then the hooker says" before he's interrupted, first by his own laughter and then by a shotgun blast to the head through the roof of the car. When T-Bird later attempts to escape in the same car, with the corpse still in the passenger's seat, he facetiously asks him to finish the joke. - In the graphic novel adaptation of Mort, King Olerve the Bastard dies halfway through the punchline "...And the farmer said 'I don't know, but they're green and they taste of peppermint'." The set-up is that a farmer was trying to breed his cattle, but was having trouble getting the bull interested. So he asked the vet about it and the vet provided these pills and told him to give one to the bull. As soon as he did so, the bull jumps up, services all the cows, and runs around the field looking for more. The next day, the farmer is telling his friends about this, and one of them asks what the pills were. And the farmer says... - The Hitman (1993) installment of DC One Million has Tommy teleported to the 853rd century while saying "...an' the cowboy says read my lips: posse!" - In the Judge Dredd story "The Torture Garden", a prisoner of the Dark Judges has managed to survive by telling a morbid joke that amused one of them. The reader is only shown the set-up and punchline, which involves an actress walking into a bar with a dead monkey, and at the end someone commenting that the monkey is still breathing. - In Dwayne McDuffie's Justice League run, one sequence◊ has a race-shifting superhero named the Brown Bomber (inspired by an aborted concept for DC's first black superhero, which ultimately became Black Lightning) introducing himself to the Vixen and explaining how his powers work, calling it "C.P.T." Then there's a Beat Panel before the Vixen, inexplicably, says to him, "No. You absolutely can't." As it turned out, the comic's editor removed set-up dialogue from the beat panel, which was the Brown Bomber asking if he can have N-Word Privileges. - The Pinkie Pie issue of My Little Pony Micro Series gives us this one from Equestria's funniest clown: Ponyacci: "...so I said 'Alligator? I thought you said bagpipes! '" - The Sandman (1989): - The story "Men of Good Fortune" began and ended with snippets of conversation in pubs, 600 years apart, with similarities including the punchline "... up her dress, and she says, 'Hunting for rabbits again, Vicar?'" ("friar" in the medieval version). - In the one-shot Sandman Midnight Theater a party scene includes what seems to be the middle of the same joke: "...so — no, this is funny — the farmer says, 'Vicar, I'll not say another word about the poaching, if only you'll tell me how you caught all those rabbits'..." - The joke can be found in the second reply here. It's not work-safe. - Also in The Sandman is Thor's joke resulting in the punchline, " You're Thor? I'm tho thore I can hardly pith!" It found a cold reception. There's several versions of the leadup to this one, involving sex and/or riding on horseback. Disney did a clean version of it in Aladdin and the King of Thieves with Genie doing both sides of the joke ("Well, it hurtth."). - In the XXXenophile story "Hoisters", we get the punchline "... so the butler says 'Well, if it's that kind of party, I'll just stick my nose in the mashed potatoes.'" This is a reference either to comedian Mantan Moreland, or more likely the Beastie Boys who sampled a line from That Ain't My Finger for "B-Boys Makin' with the Freak-Freak" on Ill Comunication. In both cases, something else is being stuck in the mashed potatoes. - A speech instead of a joke from Dilbert: Pointy-Haired Boss: Our top priority is quality. And our other top priority is price...and service...and... [one hour later] and that's why circles are round. - The Far Side: - "Then the bartender says 'Hey, that's not a duck!'" on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. - Another cartoon had a butter knife doing a stand-up act in front of an audience of flatware. The caption read, "...and the waiter said, 'That's not a soup spoon!' But seriously, forks..." - In Garfield it's used several times with Garfield's fence act: And so the moose says: "That was no chicken, that was my wife!" So the guy says "Hey, I thought that was your face!" So the chicken says, "That was no herring, that was my trout!" So he says, "That was no aardvark, that was my wife!" - Zits has a number of strips that open with the tail end of one of Walt's stories, with the rest of the strip dealing with Jeremy's reaction. One such example was "...and half an hour later, I say "If that's a pigeon, I'd hate to see an ostrich!" - One Bloom County strip started with Opus asking Portnoy if he'd heard the latest news. The strip is then interrupted by an explanation on why Opus' nose has been subjected to Scenery Censor recently; when we get back to the strip, the joke is already in process. Opus: TURNIPS! TURNIPS AND ANTIFREEZE! Portnoy: NOT WITH DONNY OSMOND HE WON'T!! - Chicken Run: "...So the pig turns to the horse and says, 'Hey, buddy. Why the long face?'" - Near the start of Finding Nemo, Marlin tries to tell a joke about a mollusk and a sea cucumber. We get to hear the punchline at the end: "With fronds like these, who needs anemones?" - The DVD has a bunch of bonus alternate orphaned punchlines, including "Hey, this stuff tastes like carp!" - In G.I. Joe: The Movie, Quick Kick is telling Gung Ho a joke that ends with "I says to the guy 'I don't care if it takes all night, we're gonna get there by morning." - According to writer Buzz Dixon, this is the punch line to the dirtiest joke he ever heard. - Ray delivers one in The Princess and the Frog. "Den he say, Dat a ugly fish, yeah." - In Shrek Forever After, Shrek is heard telling the end of a joke to Rumpelstiltskin. "So, the centaur says, 'That's not the half I'm taking about.'" - 2010: The Year We Make Contact: Dr. Floyd tries to keep a panicking Dr. Curnow calm during his spacewalk with a joke about a marathon runner and a chicken. When Curnow presses him for the punchline, Floyd admits he made it up. - In the Rodney Dangerfield film Back to School, a new scene begins with Rodney's character Thornton telling a joke to the college dean: "...And she said, "Let's do it! The room's already paid for!" - Black Sheep (1996): A stoned Chris Farley delivers this gem. "Rectum? Damn near killed 'em!" The setup involves two bulls reminiscing about their days in the arena, and one correcting the other's grammar regarding an amusing horn placement. - In Crackerjack, Jack walks back into his flat to hear Stan finishing an anecdote to Nance and Dave: ...And that's why I'll never get another tattoo in Manila. - In Deadpool (2016), a scene begins as Deadpool finishes explaining to Dopinder about "why the movie Cocoon is pure pornography." - Lloyd's fantasy sequence in Dumb and Dumber features him ending a joke with "So he said, 'Do you love me?' and she said, 'No, but that's a real nice ski mask!'" to uproarious laughter. - In Ernest Goes to Africa, Ernest tells the tribesmen a joke with the punchline "It's a knick-knack, Patty Black, give the frog a loan!" The actual joke is about a frog trying to get a bank loan using a miniature model of the Eiffel Tower as collateral. - The first High School Musical sees Troy telling Chad about something involving pink jelly, apparently an ad libbed line about a dream Zac Efron had had. In the second film, Sharpay's father twice uses "...and then she stepped on the ball!" referencing Trading Places. - An old Laurel and Hardy movie has Ollie leave the room for a bit, telling Stan to keep the women entertained while he's gone. When he comes back, Stan is telling the shocked women, "... so then the farmer walks in, and shoots the traveling salesman." - Mexican film Matando Cabos starts with the protagonist telling his friend a story about his boss Oscar Cabos that starts with an important dinner in a restaurant in which he tells a joke, which ends with the punchline "...he said, yes! But I've never seen one so inside!" Everyone laughs but, as the protagonist points out, it's not because the joke was funny, but because if Oscar Cabos tells a joke, you better laugh. - Men in Black. In the first film, K ends a joke with the line "But honey, this one's eating my popcorn!" The setup is probably some variation of the following: A farmer decides to go into town to see a movie along with his pet rooster. Noticing that no animals are allowed inside the cinema, he smuggles the rooster into the theater in his front overall pocket and unzips it once the lights have dimmed and the movie started so the rooster can see. The woman sitting next to him eventually notices, and nudges her husband. "I think this man is a pervert. He's got his thing out." Her husband replies, "So? It's nothing you haven't seen before." to which she says "But honey, this one's eating my popcorn!" - This same orphaned punchline was originally featured in the movie The Sting. The vaudeville comedian starts his routine but the main character is in the foreground talking over him so we don't here the first part. Once the main character leaves, the scene remains long enough, that we hear that punchline to the joke he just told. - In Miller's Crossing, we hear Caspar deliver the punchline of a fairly well-known joke: "He said 'Fuck him, give him a fiver.' The coffee was my idea." For those who don't know it, a housewife invites the postman in for coffee and sex, before giving him the money, because when she asked her husband what they should give the postman for Chrismas..." - Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "...And that, my liege, is how we know the earth to be banana-shaped." What's funnier, he might be serious - it's certainly in character for him to think the world is shaped like a banana. Stranger still is the fact that it's not that different to Stephen Hawking's theory that the universe is saddle shaped and was written 9 years before Hawking published his own theory. - In The Muppets Take Manhattan, Fozzie tries to bring Kermit out of his amnesia by giving examples of his "humor": Fozzie: "...so, the grizzly bear, he walks out of the room. Well, the panda bear's just sittin' there. And he thinks to himself, 'This is odd!' And then - whaddaya know, the phone rings. You know who it is? It's the polar bear. And the polar bear, he says to the panda bear, 'I didn't know it was a koala bear!' Get it? Koala? Wocka-wocka!" - In Peewees Big Adventure, Pee-wee mingles into a crowd following Milton Berle just as he finishes a joke with the punchline, "So the other fella said, 'What do you think I got down here, a duck?'" Even though he didn't hear the rest of the joke, Pee-wee laughs heartily to fit in. - Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl: "...And then they made me their chief." - In The Prince of Thieves, Friar Tuck starts telling a joke about to two knights and two maidens who want to get married to distract the castle guards while Robin and Allan sneak in. The scene cuts to Robin and Allan breaking in before cutting back to Friar Tuck and the punchline "...so they got married and the mothers-in-law lived happily ever after". - One of the comedians in the movie Punchline has an act which seems to entirely consist of only the punchlines to old jokes. - RoboCop (1987): "I'd buy that for a dollar!" (Although this may be a Catchphrase rather than a punchline. Without context it's hard to tell.) - In Sherlock Holmes (2009), Holmes is imprisoned, and Lestrade hurries to get him free before he has to fight off the entire penitentiary of criminals. As Lestrade arrives in the prison yard, he sees a crowd of unruly thugs gathered around Holmes... who is delivering a punchline for the joke he was telling: 'To which the barman says, "May I push in your stool?"' Having charmed the prisoners with his jokes, Holmes leaves in peace. - In Some Like It Hot, we hear the end of what was (apparently) a very dirty joke about a girl tuba player who was stranded on a desert island with a one-legged jockey: "... so the one-legged jockey says 'Don't worry about me, sweetheart! I ride sidesaddle!'" - In Star Trek: Generations, Data starts laughing, saying he's finally gotten a joke Geordi LaForge told offscreen seven years earlier during the Farpoint mission. He repeats the punchline: "...The clown can stay, but the Ferengi in the gorilla suit has to go!" - Super Troopers: Mac's orphaned final line of an anecdote: "...and that was the second time I got crabs." - Trading Places: Bunny delivers the orphaned punchline "... and she stepped on the ball!" This is a reference to a scene in Auntie Mame in which Gloria Upson tells an unfunny anecdote at a cocktail party with this punchline, causing an awkward silence. The use of it as a hilarious orphaned punchline in Trading Places is itself referenced in a number of other works. - A minor character tracks down the protagonist in Trois Couleurs, Bleu to return her necklace taken from the car crash at the start of the movie. In return he asks her to explain her husband's dying words to him "Essayez de tousser, maintenant" (try to cough now). She explains that it was the punchline to a joke he'd been telling about a woman who goes to see a doctor about a chronic cough and is given a powerful laxative. - The Usual Suspects: To distract Saul and his bodyguards before attacking them, Hockney is telling a story - the line we hear is "so I open the car door, and this chick is totally naked..." Apparently, later in the movie one of the guards on the boat gives the setup to this line in Hungarian. - A small scene towards the end of When Harry Met Sally... opens at the New Year's Eve party before Harry shows up, and Sally has been buttonholed by a stranger who's been trying to tell her a joke. The punchline is "And then the nun says, 'Read the card!'" Sally is not amused. \|\|Given that the joke in question is about a nun pursuing a crush on her gynecologist by inserting a bouquet of flowers into an uncomfortable place, one can scarcely blame her.\|\| - The infamous "toad hit by lightning" line from X-Men is actually one, as the only remnant of Joss Whedon's Running Gag of him spending the film bragging about things toads can do. - The line "as the actress said to the bishop", used in British humour to lampshade Double Entendre, is believed to be one of these. It is said that the joke came to be when a stage actress named Lillie Langtry went on a stroll in the garden with the Bishop of Worchester. During that walk, the bishop accidentally pricked his finger on a rose thorn. Over lunch, Langtry asked the bishop about his injury, saying: "How is your prick?" The bishop then replied: "Throbbing". A butler who overheard this dropped some potatoes he was carrying. - Any inside joke between people is one of these. - It is also statistically bound to happen with Carambars. For those not in the know, it's a caramel candy with jokes inside the paper. But the paper is cut by a machine that doesn't know where jokes end. So you often get jokes missing a punchline, and orphaned punchlines. - An arguable case: once a clay tablet from ancient Sumer has been unearthed, that — apart from several exchanges euphemistically described as riddles — bore a damaged fragment of text ending in "...your mother". Was it the world's oldest Your Mother joke? * : Your mother's so old, jokes were told of her in ancient Sumer! Lacking the setup, we will probably never know. - The punchline "Rectum? Damn near killed him" is almost never given a setup and doesn't really need one. - A similar one is someone saying "[word ending in -er]? I barely know her!," the implication being they think that he is saying [something] her as an Unusual Euphemism for sex - In the young adult book Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst, one of Anastasia's friends complains that her older brother frequently begins to tell jokes at the dinner table, but is always hushed by her father. So she has heard many setups, but no punchlines. Some of the brother's jokes include: "A man goes to the psychiatrist, and says: 'Doctor, you have to help me, because everything I see reminds me of breasts.' " and "How do you make a hormone?" The punchline to the second one? \|\|"Refuse to pay her."\|\| - One of Dave Barry's columns about a summer camp talks about another boy telling a long-form (up to half an hour) joke involving marital infidelity and a closet, the punchline of which is "Ding dong, dammit! Ding DONG!" - Confederation of Valor: The Better Part of Valor opens with Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr telling Captain Rose, "And the moral of the story: never call a two star general a bastard to his face." The joke is a Call-Back to the closing scene of Valor's Choice, where \|\|Torin got pissed off at Major General Morris for trapping her unit in a battle the author based on Rorke's Drift in order to win the Silsviss over to the Confederation.\|\| - In the Discworld novels Feet of Clay and Jingo, Nobby Nobbs tells a series of inappropriate jokes in mixed company. In neither does the reader hear anything other than the punchline "That's funny, it's never done that when I've tried it!" and a reference to "the one about the very small man with the piano". The latter is mentioned in Feet of Clay as well, and is told in its entirety on this page. - That joke also comes up in this xkcd. - Nobby also mentions another joke he told: "And they laughed even though they don't have the same kind of doorbells here!" The joke just might involve a man with multiple broken bones. - Nanny Ogg's "Just twist the first thing you can grab, as the priest said to the vestal virgin." This seems to be used as the Discworld version of That's What She Said's ancestor, "... as the bishop said to the actress." A footnote tells us that, like it's real-world equivalent, a lot of people have heard that line but nobody actually knows the rest of the joke. - In Carpe Jugulum, Magrat mentions to Nanny that now that she's a mother, she gets most of Nanny's favorite jokes, "except for the one about the old woman, the priest, and the rhinoceros," to which Nanny replies "I certainly hope not! I didn't understand that one until I was forty." - Nobody knows the origin of the phrase "pull the other one, it's got bells on," (in real life, it's just a play on "pulling my leg") but it's been theorized in-story to come from a long-lost joke about a particularly torture-happy ruler who tried to outlaw Morris dancing. - Also, the Feegle battlecry "Bang went sixpence!", taken from an old joke about how Scottish are cheapskates: "I wasna there more'n two hours, and bang went sixpence!" Daft Wullie actually gets a line like this in Wintersmith. - An almost certainly crude one appears in The Doomsday Code: "... and the pig says, 'If you seen the things I've seen your wife doin', you're tail'd be curly too!'", as told by a group of soldiers. Liam, accompanying them, doesn't get it. The soldier begins to explain, but an ambush prevents much elaboration. - David Brin, Earth: Teresa: This time, though, Bob didn't whisper in Thunder's left ear. He didn't whisper in the right. This time he held the horse's face, looked him straight in the eye, and said, "Read my lips, dummy. I told you to go get a Posse!" - The beginning of the joke has Bob being captured, but allowed to send his horse with a message. The hearing impaired horse brings back a woman. - Garrett, P.I.: - In Sweet Silver Blues, Morley pretends to be telling Garrett a joke, so he can warn him that their campsite is being watched. Garrett plays along, and fakes a big laugh "like it was the one about the bride who didn't know the bird need to be cleaned before it went in the oven". The actual joke, though evidently hilarious, is never mentioned again. - Garrett tries to tell Gilbey a joke about a troll, ogre, and barbarian walking into a bar in Faded Steel Heat, but Gilbey's heard it before and jumps straight to the punch line ("Mice are never amusing"), leaving the middle of the joke unsaid. - In Han Solo's Revenge, we see one of these ("Well, how do you think my pack-beast got knock-kneed?") when Han tells Chewbacca a joke, right when Chewie is drinking some foamy beer, so the laughing Wookiee sends suds flying everywhere. When Chewie gets irritated at this, Han points out that's how the joke was told to him, too. - A semi-example of this type of thing is when we hear the middle of Vernon Dursley's "Japanese golfer" joke in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which apparently some people have recognized as not the kind of joke you tell in civilized company. (Well, the punchline is "What do you mean, 'wrong hole'?", if that tells you anything...) - Let's just say it's not the kind of joke you'd tell in front of your wife, your twelve-year-old son, a prospective customer, and his wife, and leave it at that. \|\|It involves a Japanese prostitute and implied anal sex...\|\| - The same phrase shows up in Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar books, referred to as "the punch line to a joke making the rounds." "Acres and acres and it's all mine!" - I heard a joke with similar punchline. It was about a dwarf who married a giantess, and then gleefully jumped up and down on her, shouting this. - In the Judge Dee book The Chinese Lake Murders, while the Judge has been occupied, his Lovable Sex Maniac assistant Ma Joong has been talking with other servants. When the Judge finds him again, he is at the end of a joke (or autobiographical anecdote) which concludes "... and that was when the bed broke." - In Jurassic Park, we get to hear the punchline of a joke Malcolm tells Dr. Harding. Gennaro walks in just in time to catch the punchline: "So the other man says, 'I'll tell you frankly, I didn't like it, Bill. I went back to toilet paper!'" - The The Lost Years of Merlin book series has something like this. Bumblewy, the mournful jester, always asks if he can tell his Bell Riddle, but because of his reputation as a failed jester, everyone interrupts him before he can tell it. \|\|At the end of the story, when Merlin tells him to just tell it already, he realizes that he's forgotten the riddle, and that he just kept trying to tell it expecting people to interrupt him before he could\|\|. - A flurry of these mark the climax of Chris Crutcher's short story "The Pin". - Stephen King, under his pen name Richard Bachman, quoted a couple in The Regulators. Namely, "Hey, mister, your sign fell down," and "I don't know about the other two, but the one in the middle looks like Willie Nelson." - Robert Anton Wilson's Schroedinger's Cat trilogy has one that shows up at least once in every book, serving as a common element between the various Alternate Universes between which the narrative (insomuch as one actually exists) jumps more or less at random. And we never do find out what "No Wife, No Horse, No Mustache" is all about. - And like all Wilson's aphorisms, it may also have a spiritual/mystical meaning; the seeker after truth should have no earthly encumbrances or family ties (no wife), should present only his own un-masked face to the world (no mustache) and trust only his own strength and resources (no horse - he walks). - The Scream : Hempstead's joke "...and the next day's headline read ARTIE CHOKES THREE FOR A DOLLAR AT SAFEWAY!" - This is a real joke, a rather punny one about an assassin named Artie who gets paid a dollar to kill a man's wife, strangles her in a grocery store, then has to kill others who saw the crime. The number of people killed and the name of the grocery store can vary. - Two (possibly more) of the Star Trek novels had someone walk in a room in time to hear; "I don't know where you've been lad, but I see you won first prize." Which is the last line (more or less, as it varies depending on who's singing it) from The Scotsman Song. - In Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, the viewpoint character is told that "laughing because it hurts too much to cry" is the basis of all comedy, and she's shown to consider this by mentally listing the punchlines of all the jokes she knows:"-her entire bridge club"..."Should I bow?"..."Neither one, you idiot — instead!"..."-the Chinaman objects"..."-broke her leg"..."-make trouble for me!"..."-but it'll spoil the ride for me"..."-and his mother-in-law fainted"..."Stop you? Why, I bet three to one you could do it!"..."-something has happened to Ole"..."-and so are you, you clumsy ox!" - Used at several points including in the Thursday Next novels, including unidentified jokes being mentioned and characters attempting to understand the jokes in question. Most jokes are identifiable, if obscure. - In The Time Of The Transference, Mudge saves the group from a hungry dragon by sending it into uncontrollable laughing fits with a hilarious story. Details aren't given, but after their escape, the others recount which parts — the Baker's College, the traveling ladies' choir, the elephant, the six chimps — they found funniest. - Kurt Vonnegut was fond of mentioning the punch line of his favorite dirty joke: "Keep your hat on. We may wind up miles from here." We never did find out the rest. - An anecdote book has this trope crossing over with some auto-Bowdlerise. The guy in question was famous for telling steamy stories. Once he was asked again, but he refused due to ladies being in the room. The ladies wanted to hear things too, and suggested he might leave out the too raunchy details. "In this case one story might be told, but not much remains than: HA! A boot!" In General: - The use of "... and she stepped on the ball!" as an orphaned punchline is a reference to its use in Trading Places, which was in turn a reference to a scene in Auntie Mame. It's usually delivered by a high-class character to match the references. - Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: One of Xanthippe's preppy female friends delivers the punchline: "...and she stepped on the ball!" causing all the other preppy kids to laugh. - Billions: Chuck Rhoades' father tells it as "... and she stepped on the billiard ball!" at his gentleman's club, causing all the men in his company to laugh. It was actually a ping-pong ball in the original Auntie Mame. By Creator: - The line "...I said Ping Pong Balls, not King Kong's balls" has cropped up in a few of Peter Kay's TV shows, including Phoenix Nights and its spin-off Max & Paddy's Road to Nowhere. By Series: - In The Big Bang Theory, we hear the end of a joke Howard tells Bernadette: "So, two years later there's another knock on the door, the guy opens it, and there on his porch is the snail, who says: What the heck was all that about?" That's not a dirty joke, though. - This joke appears in its entirety in the movie Training Day. - "Hey Leonard, your momma's research methodology is so flawed..." - One of the vox pops from A Bit of Fry and Laurie: "...so I said to him, if God loves me he's got a funny way of showing it, hasn't he? And that shut him up, pope or no pope." - Blackadder: "...and so the bishop said, 'I'm sorry Officer, I didn't realize you meant organist!'" - Lloyd's "tasty joke" from the Breakout Kings episode "There Are Rules": The kid's crying, the mom is naked, and then the party clown says, "Now that is what I call a 'balloon knot'!" - In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Restless", Anya is on stage telling a joke. We hear the very beginning, where she fumbles, and the end, when she says, "And then the duck says, 'There's a man attached to my ass,'" to much hearty applause and laughter. - Cheers featured more than one occasion in which Diane told a joke with a French punchline: "So I said, 'Si vous parlez lentement, je ne peux pas comprendre!'", which translates to "If you speak slowly, I can't understand!" - In an episode of Chicago Hope, an elevator door opens and two characters have the following conversation: Dr. Aaron Shutt (Adam Arkin): There is no getting through to you! It's like that joke about the Pope, the penguin and the agnostic! (steps out of the elevator) Tom Wilmette (Ron Silver): Um, I'm not familiar. Dr. Shutt: (looks at his watch, then gets back on the elevator) I'll tell it fast. Phone rings at the Vatican, pope picks it up... (elevator doors close) - Several episodes of CNNNN open on the end of a particularly weird report from Simon Target. Simon : But the vital knowledge we have gained from the affair is that John Major 's buttocks are smoother than apricots. I'm Simon Target in London. - In the French Canadian show Le cur a ses raisons, Brittany explains how she survived during what seems like several hours, and we only hear: "And then I gave birth in a submarine! And my four fingers grew back." - The trope was lampshaded by Community, as the show often does with comedy tropes. The penultimate scene in the episode "Modern Espionage" opens with Abed delivering the punchline "and the giraffe says "Hello? I'm in the room!" and then apologizing for not knowing the rest of the joke. - In the Corner Gas episode "Safety First", one scene begins with the punchline, and then the next scene includes a flashback that explains the joke. - In the first scene of a 1990 episode of The Cosby Show, Olivia calls a dial-a-joke phone service twice and hears a different joke each time. She tries to tell the first joke to Cliff but doesn't say the punchline. She gives the set-up for the second ("Two men are playing golf"), doesn't say the middle, and goes straight to the punchline ("It doesn't work unless you know how to putt!"), to Cliff's confusion. - Used on Dexter, though the writers don't try to hide how dirty the joke is. Dexter walks into the bar just as Lila is telling Angel and Masuka the punchline, which is "But you fuck one little goat..." - Right after that Masuka starts telling a joke but is immediately stopped by Angel, fearing it might be inappropiate. - The setup involves a man showing a newcomer around town and pointing out all his accomplishments, none of which earned him a nickname. - Doctor Who: In "The Green Death", the Doctor tells a joke that ends with the line "Never trust a Venusian shanghorn with your perigosto stick." - The very first line of the very first episode of The Drew Carey Show: Lewis: ... and that's why the French don't wash. - Ryan Stiles originally used this line in a similar fashion on Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Reportedly, Drew Carey saw the episode in question, and when Stiles was cast in The Drew Carey Show, Carey encouraged Stiles to use the joke again. - In episode 3 of season 5 of the series The Expanse, Admiral Delgado tells Avasarala the setup to a joke involving a Martian, Earther and Belter going into a bar. The Martian and the Belter get the drink of their worst enemies. When he was about to tell what the Earther would order, he was cut off by the person they were supposed to meet, who then promptly asks for a bourbon (presumably of Earther origin). It's possible to read this interruption as the subtle completion of the joke, namely that while Mars and the Belt have external enemies, Earth's worst enemy is itself. - Farscape: - In "Through the Looking Glass" Rygel has been telling John a joke in YellowMoya, which ends with "...And then the Trawlian priest turns to the Calanese cleric and says, "Doesn't bother me. You should have seen her mother!" - And in "We're So Screwed Part 2", two hooka-smoking Charrid officers in a Bad-Guy Bar are heard saying "Cause the Kalish had no idea, 'cause he's a frelling harpooda!" - The Fast Show had a recurring character named Rowley Birkin, who would sit in his chair telling a long rambling story, and his speech was so garbled that the audience could only make out bits and pieces of it. The finisher was always "...I was very, very drunk." - In an episode of Firefly, Wash (and the audience) come in just as Shepherd Book finishes telling an anecdote that has the rest of the crew in hysterics: "No! There wasn't one among the brethren had the heart to say anything. He was so proud of it!" - Another had Mal finishing a joke with, "So the Companion says to the Shepherd, 'Well, a good goat'll do that.'" - An episode of Freaks and Geeks revolves around Sam not understanding a risqué joke that others keep telling. For most of the episode we only hear the punchline ("How do you think I rang the doorbell?") until the very end of the episode when Sam begins to tell it to his gym teacher and everything finally makes sense. \|\|"So there's this man with no arms and no legs..."\|\| - Friends: - In the episode "The One with the Apothecary Table", a scene starts with Chandler finishing a joke: "And then the farmer says, 'That's not a cow, and you're not milking!'" - In "The One with the Joke", we don't even get told the punchline; we just get Chandler and Ross trying to explain it to Joey: "You see, the doctor's a monkey. And monkeys can't write prescriptions!" We also discover, courtesy of Monica, that it is offensive to women, doctors, and monkeys. - In "The One with the Male Nanny", Monica mentions a joke Chandler told to her about "Jerry Lewis and the girl with the lazy eye." - In "The One with Chandler's Work Laugh", Monica walks over to a group of people listening to a joke being told by Chandler's boss. The joke ends with "thirty dollars father, same as in town." Which is the ending of a joke involving a priest being propositioned by several prostitutes in town. - One episode features a song example: we cut to Phoebe finishing with "and a crusty old man said 'I'll do what I can' and the rest of the rats played maracas!" - There's a Full Frontal sketch that opens with a man delivering the punchline "that's not my wife, that's my Latvian dental hygienist!" and then laughing uproariously. The people to whom he was telling the joke have heard the whole thing, but they don't find it remotely funny. The man ends up literally laughing himself to death, after which one of the others says "I guess you had to be there" and walks away. - The Golden Girls episode "Comedy of Errors" had Dorothy doing stand-up at a comedy club. While she's debating whether she really wants to go through with it, you can faintly hear the comedian talking on stage, but not his actual words. Then it cuts to his punchline: "So, the guy says, 'My Saint Bernard?...I thought it was your Saint Bernard!'" (Laughter) "I gotta go wash my mouth out with soap. Good night, everybody!" - The "To Serb with Love" episode of Happy Endings has Jane creating a joke tailored to her otherwise humorless father's specific interests of World War II, Chicago Bears, bass fishing, Chevy Chase and old-timey slide projectors. The joke is told twice, but the audience only gets the punchline each time: "... so, Mike Ditka, former Bears coach, is in a Sherman tank, and he is holding a fish, a bass, and then he says 'next slide, please.'" Her father finds it hilarious. - In the closing sequence of the Hawaii Five-0 episode "Kuka'awale" ("Stakeout"), an old lady finishes a joke: "She says 'what's she got that I haven't got?' and he says 'Parkinson's'." It gets a laugh from the Five-0 crew and Chin Ho calls her a dirty old lady. He's right, as that's an actual joke, and a dirty one at that. The lady with Parkinson's gives better hand jobs on account of her condition. - This happens twice in the TV version of Hello Cheeky. The first time occurs when Barry explains that transmission of the show cut out in some areas, and that they've therefore compiled some highlights of part one, resulting in a stream of orphaned punchlines and setups, at least three of which weren't actually included in part one. The second time... Barry: And now, in the interest of economy, the three of us will tell a joke all at once. All: (overlapping speech) John: ...which just goes to show he could have painted it blue and joined the police! - Herman's Head: As Herman discusses the Zany Scheme of an episode with Louise, she suddenly responds to his question if it's crazy by dramatically saying that it was Crazy Enough to Work, explaining to his puzzlement that there are two lines she had been dying to try, and that was one of them. The other? - " Captain - it is I, Ensign Pulver, and I just threw your stinkin' palm tree overboard! That one's gonna be a little harder to work into conversation." Later in the episode Louise's voice is heard triumphantly piping up with that phrase over the din of conversation and the audience is left wondering what gave her the necessary opening. - Heroes: Nathan Petrelli tells his campaign staff the joke that ends with "... holy cow, a talking dog!" - Homicide: Life on the Street had Meldrick Lewis frequently tell the same filthy joke, of which the audience only ever got to hear the punch line: "You're not here to hunt, are you?" In one episode, his partner Kellerman only says that line, to which Lewis replies that the build-up to the punchline is the whole point. - In House, Chase tells Foreman a joke that ends with "... and the bear wipes himself with the rabbit!" - This one is actually told (crudely) in its entirety at the end of Eddie Murphy's 'Delirious' comedy show. - On How I Met Your Mother, a montage of how Ted is like a dad starts with the ending to a lame joke ("Shredded tweet") and ends with the set-up ("What do you get when a bird meets a lawnmower?"). - To explain away Alyson Hannigan's maternity leave, the show has Barney tell Lily a "hilarious boy joke", i.e. a dirty joke, that causes her to shun Barney for several weeks. The setup is \|\|"What's the difference between peanut butter and jam."\|\| While it's a real joke, and dirty, it's not as funny as they make it out to be. So, in this case Orphaned Setup. - In the final season, Barney has gotten so drunk that the alcohol acts as a Truth Serum. Ted and Robin use the opportunity to ask him a number of questions that they (and the audience) have been wondering about for most of the series. For a number of them we only hear Barney's answers and without knowing the context they end up as NoodleIncidents. The natural assumption is that they relate to some sexual depravity Barney committed but one incident that is actually explained in more detail was actually referring to Barney sharing a cab. It is left to the viewer's imagination what kind of question could have prompted an answer of "not while she was the Secretary of State" and whether "now while she was the Secretary of State'' referred to the same thing or something completely different. - In a flashback of Barney's sexual conquests, there's a brief shot of Madeline Albright, Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, and in another episode Barney begins an anecdote with the phrase, "So I say to her, Madeline". As far as the other "she"... well Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton were also Secretary of State. Take your pick. - From The Kids in the Hall: We come in at the punchline of a joke told by a man committing one faux pas after another at a party: ...Well, if thats your canary, whos your wife? When, even after repeating the punchline, the other man reacts with a blank stare, the man proceeds to sarcastically ask if the other man is deaf—which it turns out he is. - This clip from a 1985 episode of Late Night with David Letterman finds guest Johnny Carson delivering the punchline to a joke that he'd started on his own Tonight Show earlier that same day: "And the man says to Mrs. O'Hara, 'I'm not so sure about that, he got out three times to go to the bathroom.'" - Letterman has had such top ten lists as "top ten punchlines to dirty Scottish jokes" ( "It took me a fortnight to get out the thistles!") - He also has used this trope when flashbacking the answers to Viewer Mail Questions. A viewer wrote in to ask him what the deal was with his pants on such and such a date. Cue flashback. Dave is just finishing his monologue with "Cloak of invisibility my foot, there were squirrels all over the place!" - Once Dave and Paul Schaffer were talking about "Ventriloquism Week," and Dave threw in, "Wednesday, we'll have Dick Cheney and George W. Bush!" - Leverage: In "The Broken Wing Job", all we hear of the joke Hardison is telling the monkey is the punchline. - In The Love Boat episode "Mind My Wife," Doc tells a joke that ends with "And the planet says, 'If I could do that, I'd be a star!'" - In Mad About You, Paul overhears the end of an anecdote at a party. "You can't do that! This is Pennsylvania!" Those who were in on the joke found it hilarious. - MASH: - An episode opens with Col. Potter and Father Mulcahy together in the mess tent: Mulcahy:* So the priest says, "Oh, my gosh, I thought it was an altar boy!" ( after Potter fails to laugh) Uh...did I mention that he had a pet collie? Potter: No, you didn't. Mulcahy: Oh, dear. It's much funnier if you know that. Potter: Maybe. - The episode "Where There's a Will" featured Hawkeye having a flashback to the surgeons getting wasted at the officers' club, with Winchester completely passed out in his chair while Potter stammers "So the third cowboy — looks at the orangutan — and says to the bartender, "'I'll have what he's having.'" - At the end of "Captains Outrageous" the crew celebrate Mulcahy's long overdue promotion to captain: - Another episode has an orphaned punchline compounded by the fact that it's also altered. Potter is about to drop the punchline of a dirty joke (which the audience hasn't heard) when he sees Mulcahy standing there and quickly sanitizes said punchline. So not only is the setup of the joke missing, the audience doesn't even hear the proper punchline. - During the first couple of CBS years, Match Game would break for a commercial, then when they returned, the audience would be in the midst of gales of laughter. Gene Rayburn would turn to us and say puckishly "We were just listening to a passage from Beethoven's Ninth symphony..." (He would eventually entreat viewers to write for tickets and see a taping to get the full brunt of what goes on during commercial breaks.) - One episode of The Mighty Boosh has Bob Fossil finish an anecdote with "...and that's why you should never bring a Cricket Bat to Greece!" - Monty Python's Flying Circus. "Putting your head on the camel, paste down the edge of the sailor's uniform, until the word 'Maudling' is almost totally obscured." - Another sketch inverts it by having the participants of the sketch realize that neither knows the punchline. They go to ask the BBC executive what it was, who reads the script in his hand, laughs to himself while remarking "we could make a whole series out of that" and then tells everyone that the sketch has run too long and they need to cut to the next one. - The pre-Monty Python John Cleese special, How To Irritate People, Mr. Cleese sets up a sketch about asshole airline pilots with the joke about the two beautiful blondes who were on their first trip to a nudist camp. As he starts to tell the joke, the audio cuts out, and it returns in time for the punchline: "Well, I didn't know he played the violin." - Used in Another Monty Python Record, though not as the punchline to a joke per se. Phone Caller: Hello; I was just listening to this record with my wife and our au-pair, and I'd like to say how shocked we are that a pleasant collection of Norwegian folk songs should be turned into an excuse for Communist propaganda of the shoddiest kind! What's gone wrong with the world? I can't even take a bath without six or seven communists jumping in with me! They're in my shirt cupboard and Breshnev and Kosygen are in the kitchen now eating my wife's jam! Oh, they're climbing up my legs! I can see them peeping out of my wife's blouse! Why doesn't Mr. Maudling do something about it before it is too late?! Ohhh, God - [Phone is hung up] John Cleese: And several butcher's aprons. - Variation in an episode of The Muppet Show: the Swedish Chef tells a joke which elicits uproarious laughter from a group of other Funny Foreigner muppets. While most of it is in Scandinavian gibberish, the last word can be recognized as "linoleum". - On another episode, Fozzie tells a supposedly hilarious joke about an electrician and a polar bear that is drowned out by a passing train and all the audience hears is "... but the wallpaper is delicious!" - Also, "The Banana Sketch". - Murder, She Wrote featured a cut to a party scene in which a Jerkass guest character was giving the line, "No, it says 'Welcome to Jamaica, mon, have a nice day!'" - "It" in this case is the tattoo on the speaker's Gag Penis. - In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Beatniks", Crow simply creates his own orphaned punchline. Guy: Wouldja get off my back? Crow: Hey, that's the punchline to a dirty joke! - Never Mind the Buzzcocks "And now, some punchlines we didn't have time to use this week." - Some Series 9 episodes have a punchline announced before the cast intros and told in full later during the show. - New Girl: This trope is referenced and poked fun at in the season 4 episode "Par 5" (episode 20). At the beginning of a scene Nick, laughing, says "So I say to her, 'Water? I barely even know you." and Coach replies "Stop talking to me like we're in the middle of a conversation. We just sat down. I hate when you do that." - Night Court had, as a Running Gag, this punchline: "Twenty dollars, same as in town!" There were occasional variations like "So Anna Karenina says, 'Twenty rubles, same as in St. Petersburg.'" This one's originally about a nun. - Orange Is the New Black has the repeated abandoned punchline, "So the penguin says, 'He's not an eggplant; he's retarded!'" - It's a Running Gag on Pardon the Interruption, with Tony Kornheiser saying something that usually disturbs Michael Wilbon. - The Pee Wee Herman Show Pee-wee and Mailman Mike quote the punchline of famous old joke without telling the actual joke. In conversation, Pee-wee asks, "Would I? Would I?" He and Mike pause and smirk at each other before both saying, "Harelip! Harelip!" note : A man who is self-conscious of his artificial wooden eyeball goes to a party. He's too shy to talk to any of the ladies until he sees a woman with a harelip (a cleft lip) standing by herself. He walks up and asks if she would like to dance. Overjoyed, she exclaims, "Would I? Would I?" The man turns beet red and shouts in her face, "Harelip! Harelip!" - Person of Interest: Mafia don Carl Elias is driven out to the middle of nowhere by two Dirty Cops, and pulled from the car with a bag over his head. The minute the bag is removed, he dryly remarks, "Oh, that kind of 'prisoner transfer'." - On the final episode of Police Squad!, Frank Drebin (undercover as "Tony Da Wonderful") is performing on stage at a nightclub. We hear only the punchline of a very filthy joke: "So anyway, the guy looked up at her and he said, 'Lady, I don't think I can take sixty-seven more of those!'" The audience roars. - That one is about an inexperienced man attempting the 69 position with a partner who is suffering from flatulence. - The "Jingle Bells" episode of QI had the guests try to find setups for the orphaned punchlines in their Christmas crackers, including this one: \|\|A puppy isn't just for Christmas.\|\| "It's very good cold on Boxing Day, too." - From Quantum Leap: "...and she said, 'Of course you can: that's where lawyers come from!'" This is a real joke, setup NSFW: \|\|A girl asks her mother, "Mom, can you get pregnant from anal intercourse?"\|\| - The Sandman, "The Sound of Her Wings": In a flashback to Morpheus' first meeting with Hob, in a tavern in 1389, a man in the background tells a joke that ends with the punchline, "Hunting for rabbits again, friar?" A man in the pub in 1989 tells what sounds like the same joke only with a vicar. In both cases most of the set-up is not heard. - Saturday Night Live: - In the early years, when they did the Saturday Night Report, Chevy Chase would always start by being caught on the telephone when the News started. You heard the end of the phone conversation. "No, it's just CALLED blow, you really suck ....... Oh, gotta go." - A famous Steve Martin monologue: "Oh, did I assassinate your penguin?" - Seinfeld's "The Yada Yada" features a joke about rabbi and the farmer's daughter, where the punchline is "Those aren't mahtzah balls." and an another one about the Pope and Raquel Welch in a lifeboat, where the punchline is either "I said, pass the buoys" or "Those aren't buoys." Interestingly, Jerry tells only the beginning and end of the joke to a priest (passing over the middle with the titular conversation fudger) and the priest gets a kick out of it anyway. (Elaine's reaction to the joke earlier suggests that "buoys" is enough of an Inherently Funny Word to carry the joke by itself.) - Invoked by Jerry in "The Little Kicks". Jerry asks Kramer to pretend they're talking about something interesting, so Kramer says "So I killed the guy, and they're still looking for me." - During Oliver's funeral on Slings & Arrows, a story gets told about him that ends "Well, if it's not my car, I'm certainly not going to clean the upholstery!" - Stargate SG-1: Not really a joke, but in "Window of Opportunity", the "Groundhog Day" Loop episode, every time O'Neill is sent back in time, O'Neill is back at his bowl of cereal with Daniel Jackson saying to him "Anyways, I'm sorry, but that's the way I feel about it. What do you think?" It's also the first hint to O'Neill that something was very unusual about the situation. Exactly what Dr. Jackson was talking about was never elaborated on. Notable in that this was also an in-universe example: not only does the audience have no idea what Jackson is talking about, neither does O'Neill. O'Neill wasn't paying attention the first time, he isn't given the option in any of the subsequent loops, and he mentions that one of the irritating things about being sent back in time is constantly hearing the orphaned line. - Two from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, both told by Quark to Morn: "And the Andorian says, 'Your brother?! I thought that was your wife!'" And the other one is, "And then the Andorian says, 'That's not my antenna.'" The first one took Morn a little while to get, but then he busted out laughing; the other one was met with stony silence. It's quite likely that the first joke was the writers being extra clever; Andorians have 4 sexes, two of which look roughly male and two of which look roughly female, so if an Andorian sees two males acting like they're family it's perfectly natural, from their perspective, to assume they're married. The pilot of Deep Space Nine establishes Morn himself as quite a storyteller; we first see him just after he's told the funniest joke in the universe and everyone is laughing. Morn is quite a talker, we just never see it. - Star Trek: The Next Generation - In the episode "The Naked Now", Data reports a limerick he had heard from somebody who had been "intoxicated" by a polywater compound: "There was a young lady from Venus / Whose body was shaped like a—" He is then interrupted by Picard. - In the teaser for "Conspiracy", cue Geordi ending a joke he's telling Data...who then more-or-less recaps the content. - In "The Outrageous Okona" episode Data starts a joke "A monk, a clone, and a Ferengi decide to go bowling together..."; it's possible that "The clown can stay..." was the punchline, which would make this an unusual case where we hear the beginning and the end of a joke, but still have no idea why it would be funny. - "Descent: Part I" opens with Data playing poker with the holographic recreations of Stephen Hawking (played by Hawking himself), Albert Einstein, and Sir Isaac Newton, and Hawking delivers this punchline: - In an episode of Still Standing, Bill is shown laughing at a joke told by his mother-in-law, marveling that "that joke has everything: a gorilla, a whorehouse, and beans!" Later, after sister-in-law Linda tags along, Bill is shown laughing again, while Linda complains, "What would a gorilla even be doing in a whorehouse?" - In the episode "The Spy Who Shoved Me" of The Suite Life on Deck, Moseby and London, on separate occasions, tell a joke (or perhaps two different jokes with the same punchline) whose punchline is "Nougat!" Apparently, the guests find it hilarious, leaving the audience to wonder what was so funny. - One sketch on That Mitchell and Webb Look opens with a newscaster announcing Jimmy Savile has received three life sentences. "You think you know a guy, and then he goes and does something like that." This was years before the cover-up scandal exploded. - A couple of Dave Barry columns alluded to dirty jokes by only quoting their punchlines: - "Ding dong, dammit! Ding DONG!" (Joke involving marital infidelity and a closet.) - "But first, roo roo." - In one Dragon magazine cartoon, one D&D character is telling another a joke about a paladin. He gets as far as that before the second character interupts to ask if the punchline is "something about his 'special mount'". He's told it isn't, it's the one where the paladin says "Oh, you meant lay on hands". - Leslie Nielsen said in an interview with Empire magazine that he doesn't remember the setup of his favorite joke, but the punchline is "It's not a bagpipe, lassie, but keep blowin'!" - MAD ran these fairly consistently, as "Punchlines in search of a joke". - They also did the opposite: "Jokes That Don't Need Punchlines". - In The Onion, Orphaned Punchlines appear as banner quotes within fake articles which endlessly repeat the sentence, "Passersby were amazed by the unusually large amounts of blood." - From the 2003 WWE Divas: Desert Heat DVD: In of the montage sequences featuring out-of-context clips of the various Divas, there's a scene of Ivory saying, "I keep messing with my panties!" The line did not appear in any of her sequences previously on the DVD, nor did whatever would have led up to it. - Recent Ad Bumpers for a radio station in Nashville, 102.9 The Buzz, have the listener come back from a commercial break just in time to hear the punchline of some dirty joke or the climax of a dirty story as told by the usual ad bumper voice to his coworkers as if he didn't know the break was over yet. - Occasionally used by The Burkiss Way. "...bouncing bombs, and that was the end of the Irish air force." - The Goons would often use the punchlines of filthy jokes learned during their Army service. This allowed fairly nasty gags to get past the stoic BBC censors. - A round in the radio Panel Game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue requires the panelists to recite the punchlines to old jokes, without any setup. They are eliminated (at least, in theory) if the Studio Audience laughs. - Another game on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue involves two competing players telling a story in turn and directing its course towards a punchline that each of them were given at the start. The punchlines are of this unlikely Noodle Implements type so as to be amusing (and it to be fun seeing how the players get there). For example "he grabbed it at each end, cut it in half and declared the supermarket open". - An example from Paul Merton during a round of Just a Minute: Paul: The microphones weren't working particularly well when we did the soundcheck for this programme, but now they're... (Goes silent for several seconds)... and there was half a pound of mince left at the end of the evening! - Often done on Opie & Anthony, where only the punchlines of offensive racial jokes were told. For example: "Put Velcro on the ceiling!" - One episode of The Stan Freberg Show featured a "real-life" couple who would occasionally turn off the radio during the episode to discuss what they'd just heard. At one point, the husband tunes back in just in time to hear this apparently hilarious punchline: Stan: ... alligator? I thought you said bagpipes! - Some of the comics in the Exalted books have an Orphaned Punchline ( Manual of Exalted Power: Sidereals and one of the Compass books). The punchline was: "So the first man says 'A lantern? If I had a lantern I'd have found my horse and ridden out of here already!'" A medieval version of an old joke involving a guy falling into a too-loose vagoo and running into someone else and commenting that it was too dark to see, but if he could find his flashlight... "A flashlight? If I had a flashlight, I could find my car keys and drive back out." - Vampire: The Masquerade had a segment in the Malkavian clanbook discussing the mysterious true purpose of the being known as the Word Eater—except that the text was being dissolved by an illustration of said being, continuing on the next page with "and other butcher's aprons." - Enemy Chatter in City of Heroes: "...and he says 'Aren't you a little old to be believing in leprechauns?' Then I threw him out the window! Hah! I love that one." - Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 has one in the Allied mission in Cannes. Conscript: ...And Premier says, "If that is bear, then where is beloved mother?" - In Day of the Tentacle, in a Bad Future where walking, animate tentacles rule the world, you can overhear a tentacle judge ending some anecdote with "...And Then I Said to her, 'That's not my suction cup'!" - Destiny: You hear a lot of these in the form of ambient dialogue in the Tower, but the best is probably Lord Shaxx saying, apropos of absolutely nothing, "Yeah, well screw him." - In Dragon Age II, Aveline's last Act 3 quest starts when Hawke walks in on her sharing a bottle with either Varric or Isabela, who has just finished telling her about some Noodle Incident. Isabela: ...and he says — he says — "I swear I had two when I came in here!" Mmm. You know, those stains never came out. Varric: And so I said, "It's a kingdom, and that makes him king. But it's also a country ." Heh-heh-heh. I find interrogations are better as a two-way affair. - Dwarf Fortress: If you have your adventurer tell a joke to an NPC, the game randomly provides either an incomplete setup or an incomplete punchline. ... and the elf said, "Are you going to eat that?" ... and the dwarf saw the sun and vomited on the spot! - In Guild Wars: Eye of the North, one of Gwen's battle quotes is "...and I'm all out of mossgum!" - Half-Life contains one of these, which was lampshaded by Freeman's Mind. As Freeman is heading to the Resonance Chamber, a security guard says to him "Looks like you're in the barrel today." - Whenever the C.A.W. agents in A Hat in Time gather, you can only hear little bits and pieces of their conversations, which mostly sound like the punchlines of jokes or Noodle Incidents, after which all the agents will laugh loudly. Because, he was missing one his feathers! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA! Right as he was about to sneeze! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA! - In one of the early missions in Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, the opening cutscene has Jaden and Kyle piloting their ship, with Kyle relaying a a story of his previous adventures to his student before they're interrupted by a distress signal: Kyle: Then Jan punches the Weequay right in the... - In three of the Leisure Suit Larry games ( Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards, Leisure Suit Larry 2: Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places), Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out!), a Ken Williams expy says nothing but random punchlines to Larry whenever they try to talk to each other. They are always of dirty jokes, and always impossible to understand if you haven't heard the joke. - Life Is Strange: True Colors: At \|\|Gabe's\|\| wake, Duckie shares a memory of the deceased which ends in "and then [they] said, I know, that's why the 'k' is silent!" - Persona 4: One of the lessons at schools begins with, "..And it turned out that she was actually a robot! That's important! I recommend that you memorize the context." - Psychonauts: - In Quest for Glory I when you have to say the rhyme to enter Baba Yaga's hut, one of the choices given is a poem about an alien from Venus, "whose body was shaped like a..." - Overheard in a cutscene in The Simpsons: Hit & Run while Homer watches the news: Kent Brockman ...leaving the famous bearded cartoon creator incarcerated in a Peruvian jail. - In a cutscene from the Terran campaign of the game StarCraft, a formation of Wraiths is attacking space platforms over Tarsonis. It starts out with an orphaned punchline. Wraith pilot 1: ...so I says, "Answer that and stay fashionable!" Wraith pilot 2: That's not funny anymore, Harley. - The "Meet the Medic" video released as a supplement to Team Fortress 2 has this crossed with Noodle Incident: Medic: Vait! It gets better! Vhen ze patient woke up, his skeleton was missing, and ze doktor was never heard from again! [laughs before the Heavy starts to laugh] ...Anyway, zat's how I lost my medical license. Heh. - Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception: After a hectic shootout, Sully says, when back in their headquarters, "... so then guy says: Well, you better tickle mine too, 'cause now I gotta catch the goddamn thing." - World of Warcraft: Caretaker Alen in the Eastern Plaguelands occasionally blurts out "...And then the tauren said, "13 INCHES!"". The set-up may be known, but we can probably assume the punchline is referring to a 13-inch-long penis, possibly the Tauren's considering it's the largest playable race in the game.* - Kathy Rain, the titular character befriends a local woman she needs to interview by offering her one of her cigarettes. The woman accepts her offer, and it then cuts to the two of them in the middle of sharing a funny story as they smoke. Kathy: ...And then he realized, it wasn't his bong! - An Akatsuki's Life Itachi lost his ears under uncertain circumstances, and can't hear his colleagues talking. He panics, prompting the others to look at him, then after a short beat Kisame \|\|actually Greed\|\| says "Well the Zerg still suck". - Homestar Runner likes this one a lot. Homestar: ... But it turned out I didn't die. Strong Bad: ... And that's when I realized I didn't even need Lamaze classes. TV Announcer: And that's why come William Shakespeare was so awesome. - They even decided to play with this, by having several episodes of Strong Bad Email feature references to "DNA Evidence" until eventually releasing a cartoon explaining the whole story behind it. - It's gotten to the point where they Subverted it in "Where U Goin' 2?": - In "Road Trip", Strong Bad mentions that all road trips need to end up developing an in-joke for everyone involved, so he decides to try and make that joke BEFORE the trip even starts (the attempt he shows is "jumbo/LARGE"), effectively turning it into this. - Happens in Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Abridged. As Jotaro is about to explain how D'Arby managed to cheat against Joseph (it involved letting the sun melt a piece of chocolate), the screen cuts to a still of Rule 63 Jotaro and Dio. When we get back to Jotaro, he finishes with "...Intercourse". - The Most Popular Girls in School: In Episode 33; we should note that both of the following women are high on Vicodin: Jayna: (to Mackenzie's mother) So, then I tell him, "Carlos, trim the hedges, don't murder them!" (Jayna and Mrs. Zales laugh) Mrs. Zales: Oh my god that's so funny! (continues laughing) - In one Neurotically Yours cartoon, Germaine goes into a brief flashback which begins with her saying: "... so I said to the Pope, 'I'll see you in Hell first!'" - Red vs. Blue has three examples: - From episode 58 Tucker: And he says "Did I read it? I already ruined it!" Tex: That's disgusting. Caboose: I don't get it. - From episode 70 Donut: And that's how I rescued you both, and saved the day. The, End. Any questions? Grif: Donut, that was the longest story I have ever heard. And I don't think I believed a word of it. Sarge: And quite frankly I found the showtune in the middle to be a little over the top. - Season 10, episode 8 \|\| York:\|\| Wrecked 'im? Damn near killed him! - In RWBY Chibi, it's not uncommon for the "Now that's a katana" line to be used as this. - In issue 6, Yang gets hit with this when she says "Bumblebee? More like—" before Team JNPR walks in. - In ASDF Movie, there's "the funniest thing you've ever seen... from really far away". You can never hear what the first guy says before he explodes and the other guy yells out "Apples!" - Ultra Fast Pony, the episode "The David Bowie Drinking Game": Rarity: ...and that's where the term "gold digger" came from. Spike: I don't understand that, either. - Played with in a grand fashion in the Waterman internet cartoon series. One episode has a running gag that involves the titular character mistelling the same joke repeatedly, but all we hear is the mangled punchline: "Rectum? Damn near herpes!... Wait, that can't be right." - In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, Tristan says, "The talent agent said, 'What do you call that routine?' and the father said, 'The Aristocrats'." - Zero Punctuation, right after admonishing the creators S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky for having the audacity to release a game that was clearly still unfinished and riddled with bugs: Yahtzee: But I'll tell you the worst part worst part ab- worst part ab- worst part ab- worst part ab- Windows dialogue box: This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. Angry policemen are en route and resistance will only make them angrier. [test card] [static] Yahtzee: And whistled for a baboon! - 8-Bit Theater: The "8-Bit Chronicles" gave us three of these in the form of a sentence continued from a page not shown: - Subverted in The Adventures of Dr. McNinja when the Alt Text tells the whole joke, though you could probably get the gist of it just by reading. - Concession combines this with a Fourth Wall breakage: "... and that's how I saved Christmas." "What an interesting and well-told story! Sure am glad I didn't miss it thanks to a scene transition!" - Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures - Azlan saying "... And that was the last time I took Neni to <Place>" is a running joke. - Also, in the filler on how to make a webcomic, "...And that is why there will never be another wombat in Lost Lake." - In El Goonish Shive Tedd recounting how he saved Christmas is presented this way. - Emergency Exit: "And that's how I found out I'm bulletproof!" - Several of Maytag's jokes in Book 0 of Flipside. The author mentions he just made up the punchlines, and the setups never existed. - In Goats, a plotline deals with people defeating humourless cyborg chickens with old parlour jokes. We only ever hear the punchlines of the jokes, but the punchlines are from real jokes which you may be able to identify if you know the joke. - Killroy And Tina had an interesting variation: Brandon's telling Qwerty a joke, and the reader sees just enough of the punchline to figure it out, and upon doing so, gets a headache. (Brandon being Brandon, it's also entirely possible that this is all of the joke he told Qwerty, too). Brandon: The bartender says, "oh, everybody does that." So the guy says "You don't understand — 'Chunks' is my dog!" - In Least I Could Do, Rayne has made something of a Catchphrase of "...and that's when I bought the horse a prostitute," as part of an account of his first date with Cyndi. Depending on the audience - and he'll say it to anybody - it can have very mixed results. - Almost always, though, it is immediately followed by the phrase "I love this guy!" - Recently inverted with the horse telling his side of the story. - Lately, it's been showing up as an Orphaned Punchline in everything from webcomics to fanfiction. - The line "Rectum? Damn near kill 'im!" is the end to a quite well-known joke. It's also the story of how Hinjo in The Order of the Stick became a paladin. (Apparently it involves a class feature.) - This Penny Arcade consists of three orphaned punchlines. If you listen to the podcasts, they've been trying to fit at least the first two into a strip for months. - The first panel of this Questionable Content strip modifies the traditional punchline slightly. - In Rain, the first time we see Maria, she's finishing a joke with the line, "...and I said that's NOT a duck!" In another comic by the same author, another character is shown saying the same line. This comic featured Rain herself before she got her own series. - Reversed in SomethingPositive; Aubrey reminisces about her childhood favourite TV show host, the Marquis DeRod. On his last show, he started to tell a joke involving a werewolf, a mummy, and an IRS agent walking into a bar, and then suffered a heart attack and died on live TV. Aubrey's only thoughts on the matter are that she's spent twenty-five years wondering where that joke was going. - Think Before You Think, on this page. Becky:* ...so then I thought, what am I going to do with all this spaghetti? - In Uniju Holiday Theater, we get this line in The Argentinean Beef Ribs Day Disaster◊: Anton: And that's how my Pikachu lost its Occipital lobe. - Venus Envy has this happen with the end of an anecdote: "... so I stabbed him in the eye with a fork!" "Why do all your stories end that way?" "I don't know. Lack of other options?" - The sixth episode of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared has Red Guy tuning into a conversation three other Red Guys are having at a nearby table. Red Guy: —but I was like, "Yeah, that's not even the same bucket!" (laughing) - One entry in Marble Hornets opens with one. Tim: (...) had to do that about five times. Jay: That's a good story. - raocow sometimes does this with his video editing, as he tries to cut out boring parts for the sake of his audience. However, since he rambles near constantly, when the video resumes it often does so on a Non Sequitur. Granted, raocow's rambling often results in non-sequiturs regardless. raocow: [break in video]—and I am not a time-ologist, unfortunately. - The 2 Stupid Dogs episode "Inside Out" begins with Little Dog telling Big Dog the punchline of a joke out of context. Little Dog: So, this guy comes out of the doctor's office and says "Hey! That's not my pontoon boat!" - An episode of Animaniacs featured a Batman parody using Chicken-Boo. The villain was a guy called Punchline (obviously an amalgamation of Joker and Riddler), and his whole shtick was this trope. The one he used that stands out is "... Forget the subpoena, MY monkey doesn't DRIVE a Lexus!" - Slappy Squirrel once tells that famous old chestnut to someone on the phone: "Wrecked 'em? I freaking killed 'em!" - Another one when Slappy is hanging out with Vina Walleen, the actress who played "Bumbie's" mom: Vina Walleen: So then Pebbles says, "Hey! Get your own Bam-Bam, lady!" - After a string of terrible mummy jokes on Aqua Teen Hunger Force Meatwad starts to tell a joke about "a prostitute and a person of the Polish persuasion" but is cut off before he can continue. Shake: And the gorilla says 'you mean the one that [BURP ]'ed you up the ass?' And the lion said 'Why, did it already make the papers?' - That one's real. \|\|A gorilla rapes a lion while he's sleeping, but when the lion wakes up, the gorilla runs for his life, hiding his face behind a newspaper. The lion asks if he's seen a gorilla...\|\| - Avatar: The Last Airbender has Zuko once trying to say a joke abou tea Iroh told him, but he can only remember the punchline (" Leaf me alone, I'm bushed."). - Which he says in an Iroh accent so terrible it immediately makes any real-life fan who has attempted that feel better about themselves. - Used as a Shout-Out/Parental Bonus in the first episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold; as Jaime's flipping through channels, on one of them is a stand-up comic saying "...it's called The Aristocrats!" - Only on the Canadian broadcast — the US version had the TV announce "... to get to the other side." - Beavis and Butt-Head BUTT-HEAD: "So the guy's like, excuse me sir, I told you to put the flower in your buttonhole." - Camp Lazlo would often feature the central trio walking in at the tail-end of one of Edward's stories to the rest of the scouts; e.g. "...so that's why I don't play croquet any more." - Code Lyoko's prequel "XANA Awakens" has the tail end of this joke from Odd: "And then the waiter says, 'I don't have frog's legs, that's just the way I walk!'" - Most of Odd's jokes are shown this way, like at the beginning of Season 4 episode "Double Take". His friends agree that said jokes usually aren't funny anyway. - Detentionaire has had a few, such as Cam's And I was all: 'No way, hombre! That piñata is a toilet!' and Brad's ...And that's why I always stretch before I eat yoghurt. - Erky Perky: "... so I said 'If you're doing that with my teeth, we should get married.'" - Turns up in an early episode of Exo Squad. We only hear the punchline: "Gulp... that's my wife!" and the entire squad laughing heartily, except for Marsala. " This is what you humans call... a joke?" " Not a very good one." - One episode of The Fairly Oddparents had Mark Chang telling a joke where all you heard was '... And Then I Said, The Aristocrats!' If you know anything about the setup for that joke, you can appreciate just how much was implied there. - Given that Mark Chang enjoys eating diapers, the above could also count as an Incredibly Lame Pun, and would wind up being an enjoyable joke on Mark's home planet. - When Timmy throws a party, he is shown telling a joke to a group of Vikings: "...and he said is that a Chevie? And I said no, it's a fjord!" - From Family Guy: - In "Hot-Pocket Dial", they deconstruct this joke, with Lois sitting at a table with friends and saying "... And so I said something that suggests an entire hilarious backstory." Everybody laughs in response. - In one episode we enter a scene wherein people at a dinner party are telling jokes. The orphaned punchline is "... and then the French guy says 'Deodorant? What's that?'" - In the episode "E. Peterbus Unum", the US army launches a missile intended to hit the Griffin house, but it misfires and hits Quagmire's house next door. Fortunately, it doesn't explode and instead merely juts through the roof without hitting Quagmire or the random fling he's having a drink with. The only words we see exchanged: - The joke that makes Peter keep crapping his pants ends with the punchline, "...P.S.: Your vagina's in the sink!" This is a classic dirty joke about a girl who crams liver into her vagina before sex so she'll feel like a virgin. - Quagmire uses a variation in the episode where Stewie warms up to Peter. While at the bar, Quagmire is about to start a story of one of his sexy exploits but Peter covers Stewie's ears before he begins. We see Quagmire telling his anecdote and acting out the scenario and at the end, Stewie gets to hear "...and this is the hand that started all the trouble!" He then grabs Stewie's nose with the same hand and gets a very terrified reaction from Stewie. - Parodied in the episode "La Famiglia Guy" when you see Peter saying to the Dons: "And the guy says, 'Oh, I thought you were complaining about your angina.'", only for one of the dons to say "You never told us a beginning to that joke!" - A variation from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, "Sweet Stench of Success": Bloo is trying to communicate to the audience of his TV show that the producer is evil. In one skit, he and an actor go through a series of "Doctor, doctor!" jokes, but Bloo replaces one of the setup lines with "Doctor, doctor, Kip the producer is keeping me locked in a cage!" The other actor responds with the punchline of the original joke ("I guess you're two tents!"), which has become a complete non sequitur. - Used a lot in Futurama: - "And that's why they call me Honest Bender." - In the commentary, the writer explains this joke to be from a 1934 W. C. Fields gag, where the second half of the story is given as the main character having found a glass eye on a pool table, returning it to the owner, and being given the nickname "Honest John". - "The moral is, if you want it to stay sunk, tie a weight to it!" - Super Collider? I just met her! - And then we built a super collider. - A Garfield Christmas Special has this in the scene where the Arbuckles finish decorating their Christmas tree and have to put the star on. Dad asks why they can't just put the star on the tree first and then put the tree up, to which Mom replies by saying that "it just wouldn't be Christmas" if they did that. In the special itself, no response is given to that line, but in the Comic-Book Adaptation, Dad replies ""One more remark like that, and you'll see stars, woman." - Generator Rex: Rex wakes up from being drugged to hear Dos saying "And then I said to the General, 'your surrender I can accept, but there is no excuse for that haircut'." As he laughs, Five complains that Dos had told the joke before. - Hey Arnold!: - It was a running gag to hear Stinky telling the end of a story about his favorite flavor of pudding at the beginning of a scene. All the audience would ever hear is "...and that's why lemon pudding is my favorite pudding." We never got to hear why. - This was a running gag of scenes cutting into Lila telling a farm related joke and one instance where Helga was imitating Lila. So then the farmer said: "Butter? I thought you said 'udder'!" So then the farmer said: "Whatever you do, don't touch that cow!" So then the farmer said: "That's no kid, that's a baby goat!" So then Miriam said: "New beeper? I thought you said 'zookeeper'! " - Hotel Transylvania: The Series: "For Whom the Smell Tolls" has Uncle Gene telling an out-of-context punchline to Aunt Lydia. Uncle Gene: So then the werewolf says "I thought that was an umbrella". - Jane and the Dragon has Jester reading a joke that Dragon wrote for him that finishes "That isn't a cow. That's just my cave chicken". Crosses over into Cannot Tell a Joke territory to judge from Jane and Jester's reaction. - This is used often on Jimmy Two-Shoes, to the point of a Running Gag. They tend to be of the visual variety. It's not uncommon for the show to open a scene or introduce something to the plot via Heloise conducting some kind of sadistic experiment on some unfortunate demon (usually Beezy). - The Johnny Bravo episode "Johnny on Ice" has the research granter visiting Dr. Richard Leaking tell the end part of a joke while Leaking's daughter is examining Johnny (who was mistaken for a frozen caveman). Research Granter: So Farnsworth says to me "If I could walk that way, I wouldn't need an aesthetical tarsal bone!" - One episode of Lil' Bush opens with the kids eating lunch and Lil' Rummy saying "So then I said, how about I show you the places he didn't touch me?" - Looney Tunes: - In the Daffy Duck cartoon "A Pest in the House", Daffy is a bellhop working in a hotel. He awakens a sleepy guest solely to tell him an apparently hilarious joke about a traveling salesman. We hear some of the beginning, and then the guest walks downstairs to complain to the manager, Elmer Fudd. By the time he gets back to his room, Daffy is almost done the joke, but can't remember the punchline. "And the salesman says... Ha ha!... the salesman says... hey, what do you know, I forgot what the salesman did say. But... Ha ha!... It was a riot!" - "Norman Normal" features a drunk at a cocktail party trying to tell Norman a joke about "a travelling salesman and an Eskimo". Norman doesn't approve of jokes about "racial minorities", so he tunes the guy out, and we only hear a bit of the beginning, a few vague snippets, and the very end: "Just before the icicle breaks, he screams out 'That was no walrus, that was your wife!'" - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: - "The Ticket Master" sees Pinkie Pie blurting out "And Then I Said, 'Oatmeal? Are you crazy?'" after Twilight Sparkle interrupts an argument between her friends. The original subject was who should get to go as Twilight's guest to the Grand Galloping Gala, so it's safe to say Pinkie got a little off-topic... - One scene in "Sweet and Elite" has Rarity amusing some upper-class ponies with an anecdote that ends with "That's not a hat; that's a natural disaster that somehow landed atop your head!" - In "Read It And Weep", Rainbow Dash is trying to find ways to pass the time during a stay in the hospital, and at one point is seen telling jokes to her room-mate (an unfortunate pony in a full-body cast). We only hear the punchline of one: "To get to the other side!" - Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero: "Larry Manor" has Larry saying what seems to be the punchline of a joke, only for Rippen to reveal that there was no setup to begin with. Rippen: You can't just yell random punchlines and expect people to figure out the setup! - Done often in Phineas and Ferb, like in 'The Lake Nose Monster'. Lawrence Fletcher attempts to tell the boys about his capture of a giant fish named Big Mouth Ramon, but the boys leave. Through the episode, we hear snippets of this tale. "A chilly April morning, 1980, disco was on the way out, and it was just beginning to dawn on everyone how ridiculous they looked in their...so it was either go up the fire escape or lose the pants altogether, when suddenly it hit me...I said, John , it's great, I love the tune, but the words! 'All you need is a Philips-Head screwdriver '? It just doesn't really ring true, now does it?...It seemed there was no way we could get through the entire petting zoo...and well, ha, ha, and he was...and that was when I saw the way down, I saw Ted standing on the handles of the swing...so anyways there I was, four hours from the nearest dental supplies store, oh, there you are, Perry, and what a burglar I gasped so I learned that it was too late, we were already headed off for Southampton, and that is the story of how I caught the Big Mouth Ramón." - "Leave the Busting to Us": Candace: And then Ferb says ... Ferb: And that is why I will never wear suspenders in public. - In "Agent Doof", Doofenshmirtz becomes an agent of O.W.C.A. (he gets away with it despite being human because he was raised by ocelots), and in one scene is telling a joke that ends with "And the duck says 'got any grapes?'" This is a Shout-Out to The Duck Song. - Lampshaded in "What'd I Miss?" Buford: So then the seamstress walks back into the stateroom and says, " 'Titanium'? I thought she said 'cranium'!" Hahaha, yeah. Pretty good punch line, huh? Baljeet: Yes. All you need now is the first part, and then you will have a whole joke. - ReBoot has one that you need to do a little work to notice. In an audition for Enzo's birthday party, a comedian binome tells a joke. The joke is said in binary, so the viewer has no idea what he's saying but the characters all laugh at the end. Apparently if you translate the numbers into decimals, and then into letters, you get "Take my wife, please!" - The punchline "... that's no kindergartner, that's my wife!" was a running gag on Recess; we even got some interesting characterization out of it in one episode. The episode had two separate shorts. The first ended with Principal Prickly delivering the punchline to great reception among his peers. The second short opens with his opposite number, TJ, delivering the same punchline to his own peers and getting a similar reception. - Robot Chicken references the Yoda vs. Palpatine battle from the end of Revenge of the Sith in this way in one sketch, which starts off with the Emperor telling two laughing guests, "So I threw the Senate at him. The whole Senate!" - An episode of Rugrats had a TV commercial director give one as he walked into the studio: "So whatever you do, don't sell that poodle!" resulting in uproarious laughter from the crew coming in with him. - Numerous examples in The Simpsons: - Chief Wiggum, reading from a book of "Truly Tasteless Jokes" (a real book by the way), concludes "And the third travelling salesman says, 'Don't look at me, I just ate all the hot buttered corn!'" This is referencing a real joke and it is unbelievably filthy. Suffice it to say it involves a bodily orifice. - "So I says to Mabel, I says...." - Helicopter flying instructor: "... so he's so busy worrying about the front rotor, he walks right into the back one. Only in this business..." - "...and that's how I got the vending machine contract for the Kremlin." - "...and then Lenny says 'As if! Don't even go there, sister!'" - A scene in one episode starts with a Sunday school teacher saying, "...and that's why God causes train wrecks." - The Simpsons Hit & Run: "...leaving the famous bearded cartoon creator incarcerated in a Peruvian jail." - Almost all Kent Brockman segments begin this way, leaving us to wonder what the start of the newsline was. Kent Brockman: ...which if true, means death to us all. Mr. Burns: ...and that's how you win an opium war! Homer: And the life lesson is? Mr. Burns: The Yangtze River swallows all secrets. - Several times on South Park: - The coroner in the episode "Pinkeye": "And then the necrophiliac said, 'If this ain't a cadaver...'" They are interrupted by the zombie Kenny. - One episode featured a democratic presidential debate between Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton being interrupted by a news report showing Britney Spears peeing on a ladybug. It cuts back just in time for Clinton to finish her remark with the words "...and spearchuckers." - "What did the breast cancer say to the Polish monkey?" - In "The Last of the Meheecans", Stan gave us: "... so then the Pope says, maybe you should go check the toilet!" Later on, Butters follows this up with: "...and then the fireman says, that won't even fit in my scrotum!" - Steven Universe has one in the episode "Future Boy Zoltron": Steven, disguised as a fortune-telling machine, has been delivering advice and fortunes to people all day. We eventually cut back to him speaking to Suitcase Sam, saying that whatever he just asked "is a question for your doctor." - The Tales from the Goose Lady short "The Tortoise and the Hairpiece" has a scene where the toupee tells a joke to his co-workers, but we only hear the punchline. Toupee: So then the elephant says "That's alright, that's not my trunk!" - Teen Titans (2003) did this a few times through Starfire. In "Final Exam", Starfire enters the show by ending a discussion with Robin about how to achieve faster-than-light travel. Technically, this was the series' first episode (not the first episode produced, but the first episode broadcast), making it her first line on the show overall. Then in the beginning of the New Teen Titans short "Burp", she has the opening line, "...and that is what happened right before the Big Bang." It seems Starfire knows quite a lot about the secrets of the universe, but the show just won't let us hear them! - Wander over Yonder: Dominator delivers one in "The Night Out," and Sylvia repeats it in "The Sick Day" (worth noting: writer ND Stevenson apparently wasn't allowed to use the slightly racier punchline "Blaster? I hardly know her!"): And then the ballet dancer says, "Annihilation? I thought her name was Susan!" - "The Date": "And the butcher says, 'Not on my dime!'" - We Bare Bears: - In "Fashion Bears", we hear the punchline of a joke Grizzly is telling a busload of businessmen: "And then I said 'Desert? I thought you meant dessert!'" - In "Coffee Cave", we catch the very end of a joke one of the Bears' customers is telling: "And then I realized, I was wearing his shoes!" ...And he says, "I call it 'The Aristocrats!'" But seriously, folks...	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanedPunchline
Other Stock Phrases - TV Tropes This page is not for phrases that have their own page and spot on the Stock Phrases index. If it doesn't already have a page, then you stick it here. If it does, then you don't. - "Abort (mission)! Abort!" - "According to my calculations..." - "After them!" - "Ah, <name>! At last, we meet face-to-face!" The hero and his distant nemesis encounter each other in person for the first time; usually said by the villain. - "Ahh! [animal species]!" — Said when encountering a dangerous animal like a lion. - Parodied in The Cleveland Show where Tim The Bear says to Cleveland "Ahhh! A black man! Doesn't feel so good now, does it?" - "Alert! Alert!" - "Alright... but I/we do it my way!": The hero is put in charge to solve a serious problem, but the one condition the hero demands is that s/he has a free hand to address it with the methods of their choice. - "Alright, fine!" — Used to mean, "I don't care about your opinion anymore". - "All in a day's work!" - "All in good time, my dear. All in good time." - "All's well that ends well.": The title line of a William Shakespeare play. Used either: - Honestly, to show that, despite all the troubles they went through, the protagonists finally have what they want, and life is good, or: - Satirically, to show that, even though the main plot has been wrapped up, there's a dangling thread the protagonists never took care of. (They don't usually care.) - Was the last line ever said on Another World, and was the last line of an ep of Detention. - Worst time to say this line is when "The city's been fucking destroyed!!" - "All the cool kids are doing it!" - It's pretty much impossible to use this one straight anymore, due to its use in anti-drug and peer-pressure resistance education back in The '80s. - "America's sweetheart": Used to describe a fresh-faced celebrity with a family-friendly image evoking the Girl Next Door. First used to describe silent film actress Mary Pickford, and a moniker inherited by the biggest stars of the 20th century, including Shirley Temple, Doris Day, and Meg Ryan. - "And as for you..." - "And don't come back!" Usually said after throwing someone out the door. - "And if I refuse?" Response to being asked to cooperate or come quietly. Can be answered by something sufficiently threatening to make the first person quickly go, "Okay, okay..." with the internal rationalization,"Sounded reasonable to me!" - "And stay out" — Said after kicking someone out. - "Any more bright ideas?" - "Anyone get the [license] number of that truck?" The most common form of Non Sequitur, Thud. Said after taking a walloping of some kind, usually one that knocked the recipient unconscious. In a low-tech/fantasy world, "truck" can be replaced with "Donkey Cart," "Chariot," "Elephant," "Dragon," etc. - "A real X wouldn't Y." - "Are you a man, or a mouse?": A form of Dare to Be Badass. Munchkin may be used instead of mouse. - "Are you all right?" "I will be." Used when a character has undergone a traumatic experience, to illustrate that a character is getting over their experience without cheapening the meaning of the Aesop by shortening the adjustment process. - "Are you calling me an X?" Typically used to call out somebody making more-or-less veiled accusations of just that. Since 'X' is usually something bluntly unflattering such as "coward" or "liar", this also plays on the common social impulse to be tactful first and honest second in order to get the accuser to temporarily shut up or at least backpedal while flustered. - "Are you happy now?" (or, alternatively, "I hope you're happy." or "I hope you're proud of yourself." or "I hope you're satisfied.") - Often a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero situation. - Multiple repetitions of this line or variations thereof make up much of the entire first half of the showstopper "Defying Gravity" from the musical Wicked. - xkcd gives us this example of "I hope you're happy". - "Are you OK? Did the mean/nasty/bad one hurt you?" — Said usually to pets, when another character hurts or insults the pet. "Hurt" can sometimes be replaced by "scare". - "Are you OK in there?" — Said when one character is doing something zany and secret (inventing something, keeping a secret pet, etc) in a closed room (usually their bedroom or the bathroom) and another character (usually their parent) hears sounds. Usually responded with, "Yes, fine, just... [doing something mundane]". - "Are you sure about that?" - "As an X ... you make an excellent Y." - "...As you do." Usually used to hang a lampshade on the fact that an activity or event that's just been described is extremely strange and/or uncommon. - "As I said to [name], '[name]', I said, '[phrase]'.", usually said by a chatty person. - "As they say in [country], '[phrase from a different country].'" - "...Assuming that IS your real name." Said by characters finding out about their friend's dark secrets, making them question how well they really know them. - Authorized Personnel Only. - "Aww!" — The stock noise characters (and real people who don't make high-pitched noises instead) say when something's cute. - "Bad dog/boy/girl!" — Used to scold a dog, usually for barking or for chasing someone. - "Back! Back!" or "Back, you [insult]!" — Said to tell someone to back away. - "Back in my day, we didn't have fancy _____. All we had was _____, and we liked it!" The standard Grumpy Old Man rant on technological progress. - "Well, back to the drawing board" — An invention has proven a total bust and the inventor must start over at the concept stage. - "Be afraid. Be very afraid" — originally from The Fly (1986), but now mostly used for comedy purposes. - beat "...Sir." Either a sarcastic honorific given after a putdown, or spoken after one realizes one has said too much. - "Beginner's luck." Usually used to rationalise why a beginner is more skilled than the speaker. - "Behold, my true form" or "It's time to show you my true form" — The mating cry of the One-Winged Angel. - "exasperated sigh Boys!" — or — "exasperated sigh Girls!" - "Bob's your uncle" — Cockney way of saying "quickly". - "Brains!!" — Stereotypically associated with zombies. - "Business or Pleasure?" — A question typically posed by customs, hotel personnel, and travel agents to the traveling character- the answer is usually given after a moment of thought, and tells the audience about the character's state of mind. - "But I don't want [him/her/you] in my [thoughts/mind/heart], I want [him/her/you] here!" — Said about a dead or dying person or animal. - "But I don't want a new X, I want Y!" — Someone doesn't want their item/pet/friend etc replaced. - "But I'm not [sleepy/tired]!" — Said by kids who want to stay up past bedtime. Either a lie or a Cassandra Truth. - "But it looks good on you!" — Said after a character describes a certain outfit as being ugly, only to realize that the person they're talking to is wearing the same outfit. - "But these creatures have been extinct for millions of years!" (They're Not So Extinct.) - "BUT YOU NEVER KEEP YOUR PROMISES!" — This is a stock line in countless family films. The dialogue will always be as follows: Mum or dad promises something to their son or daughter, but has proven in the past to be always late on their children's baseball game, music recital, school play, scouts meeting or whatever. Therefore the crying child belts this phrase out. - "But why am I telling you all this? And you, a total stranger." - "Brace yourself/yourselves" — Either it's someone's warning that they're about to say something emotionally scarring, or an impact preparation phrase. - "Can I do anything?" "You've done enough!" The exchange between a contrite character whose fault everything is, and anyone trying to sort it out. - "Can't think why", used insincerely in older works, chiefly in the UK. - "Can't this thing go any faster?" Common in vehicle Chase Scenes. - "Can we keep him/her/it?" See Pet Baby Wild Animal. Occasionally prefaced with "He/she/it followed me home". Sometimes, it starts with "Can I" instead of "we". - This is the title of a George Shrinks episode where George finds an injured mouse and decides to take care of it. - Said in the ending of Commander Keen Episode I, when Keen's mom discovers a Yorp he brought back with him from Mars. - "Can't you see I'm busy?" Said while doing something relatively mundane while someone is trying to inform you about the apocalypse or a masked gunman aiming at you. - Occasionally "can't you see we're busy?" is used. - "Catch!" Said while throwing something sharp, heavy and/or explosive at an opponent. - "The cat's out of the bag." A secret has been revealed and can no longer be hidden. - "X had changed over the summer": stock phrase associated with a Fanservice Pack. Originated in Harry Potter Fan Fic, and usually used satirically nowadays not necessarily in that context. Often paired with Curves in All the Right Places. Lindsay Lohan and the cast of Saturday Night Live [[demonstrating how to do it. - "Clean up on aisle five." Usually done these days as a form of understatement; the mess to be cleaned up being of comically horrific proportions: usually the result of some action sequence taking place within the supermarket. Alternately, used in a non-store context to indicate that something has just caused a huge mess. "Five" can be replaced with any random number. - "Clever girl." — Usually said to a human woman, but in Jurassic Park, which popularized the phrase, it's used to comment on a conniving female dinosaur. - "Come back! Come back!" — Said by a character who's running away or dying. - "Come back here, you cowards!" Said to either (a) your comrades who have just deserted you in combat or (b) the enemy, who are running away so you can't kill them as they deserve. An (a) example occurs in ¡Three Amigos! Another (a) example occurs in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. - "Come on, just live a little!" - "The condemned man ate a hearty meal." Common quip metaphorically alluding to the Prisoner's Last Meal regarding someone marked for death being strung along with small favors or Schmuck Bait. - "Congratulations, you're pregnant!" or "Congratulations, you've just given birth to a healthy baby boy/girl." - "Consider it a parting gift." - "Consider it done." Usually said by The Dragon or the Mook Lieutenant when Big Bad (or Big Good in some cases) gave them a mission. - "Consider yourself lucky." — Said to someone who was unlucky, but lucky at the same time because it could have been worse. - "Couldn't have happened to a nicer person" Usually used completely sarcastically though occasionally used in earnest. - "Curses! Foiled again!" - "Curse you!" - "Damn, I'm good." - "... Dead to me." This phrase usually has "you're" or some sort of noun and "is" before it. - "Define X." Said whenever the speaker is told information with vague or unclear wording. Usually the unclear words are spoken as a euphemism. - "Destroy them!" Said by cheesy Saturday Morning Cartoon villains. - "Did <name> send you?" "<name> doesn't know I'm here." Usually spoken when the second speaker comes to the first (usually the villain) to make a deal on behalf of their love interest/best friend/etc. - Subverted in the Conan the Barbarian story "The Scarlet Citadel," where the guy making the deal turns out to be a former tribesman out for vengeance for a brother killed during Conan's pirate days, where he was known as "Amra." He meets his end at the fangs of Tsotha's snake Satha before he can kill Conan. - "Did I say [insert unintentional insult]? I meant [insert supposed compliment]." Usually said when someone unintentionally insults another person who is right next to them. - "Did your mommy/daddy/whatever buy/make that [garment] for you?" — Used to call a garment someone's wearing childish. - "Die! Die! Die!" or "Die, [name], die!" - "Dive! Dive!" — Said in submarines. - "Does your mother know you're out?" Asked when someone isn't deemed tough enough—or old enough—for the context. (Averted and Lampshaded in Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe (1882) when Phyllis asks Strephon if his immortal fairy mother is aware of their engagement.) - "Do I hear a 'but' coming?": Said when a character said something positive, but the second character thinks they're about to add something negative. The other character may respond with a butt joke. - "Do you expect me to believe that?" - "Do you have an appointment?" Response from snooty secretary when a character goes to see their high-ranking friend. - "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?": When someone swears. - "Do you know who I am?" Said by the arrogant famous/powerful villain. Can be comically subverted by answering, "Uh... no." - A great subversion occurs in the Justice League episode, "Maid of Honor". Wonder Woman is accompanying the Princess of Kasnia to a popular night club in Paris. Diana wonders how they are going to get in with the long line leading the Princess to use this line on the bouncer. The bouncer lets them in because she is with Wonder Woman (it is never revealed whether the bouncer recognizes the princess). - Arrogant celebrities may shout, "Don't you know who I am?! I'm [first name] [last name]!" when they feel they deserve better treatment due to their status. Occasionally they might suffix it with, " [occupation] or [doer of specific awesome thing]". - "Do you like what you see?" Usually spoken by a lingerie-clad (or nude) Femme Fatale as she prepares to seduce (or outright rape) the hero, perhaps after her Dress Hits Floor. - "Do you think he/she/they bought it?" Quick way of letting the audience know that whatever they just did was staged for another character's benefit. - "Do you wanna drive?!" The Drives Like Crazy equivalent of Let's See YOU Do Better! - "Do you hear what you're saying?" — Said when someone says something so blasphemous or dumb, that another character simply requests that they reflect on what they just said. - "Does this answer your question?" When one character is wondering what happened to another, who just happens to show up to show the results. - "Don't call me, I'll call you." — The classic, all-purpose brush-off. - "Don't call me 'Mr. <name>' — I look around for my father whenever I hear 'Mr. <name>'." (See They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!) - "Don't come crawling/running back to me when X." — Usually said by someone, sometimes an antihero or an antagonist, when they're trying to protect the character from something for what they think is their own good. A variation is "don't come crying to me". - "Don't cry" or "Don't be [emotion]" — Said by someone trying, usually unsuccessfully, to reassure someone else, usually a child. - "Don't even think about it." — Said when someone feels the urge to do something (usually something crazy or bad), only to be reprimanded by another person. - "Don't forget the X" — Said when someone is shopping for someone else. - "Don't forget to X before/after you Y" — Usually said by a parent or babysitter to a child. - "Don't just stand there, do something!" - Occasionally inverted to "Don't just do something, stand there!" for comedy purposes. - "Don't leave (me)/die!" — Said to a dying person. - "Don't look now, but..." Usually a sign of things getting worse. - "Don't mess with Mother Nature." — Any "nature runs amuck" movie trailer. Or margarine commercials from the 1970s. - "Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining." Popularized, but not coined, by Judge Judy. - The inevitable The Simpsons parody: "Don't spit on my cupcake and tell me it's frosting." — Judge Constance Harm - "Don't tell me [unpleasant or unwelcome fact]". "Okay, I won't tell you." - Alternately, "ugh, don't remind me." - Sometimes the second person tells the first person said unwelcome fact followed by "I told you not to tell me that." - A specific form of this is: "Don't tell me that [character] is/will [action]". Often followed by either: - A Gilligan Cut to [character] doing [action]. - Bob saying "Okay, [character] is/will not [action]." Which in turn can be followed by the Gilligan Cut and Alice complaining, "You lied." - "Don't worry about me." Usually said by a hero stuck in an unpleasant situation encouraging his team to focus on their mission. May be followed by "You go on without me." A minor form of Heroic Sacrifice. - "Don't worry, I'll/we'll be right behind you!" Usually said by the Lovable Coward to The Hero when faced with threatening situations, usually followed by the speakers running and taking cover behind something, or hiding behind the hero. - "Don't worry! I know this [country\|city\|land\|terrain] like the back of my hand." Sometimes subverted or spoofed by having a character say this, then examine the back of their hand and say "Wow! I never noticed that before!" - In another common spoof, the other person says, "That's the front of your hand (you're looking at)." - And yet another spoof features them running headfirst into something immediately afterward. - "Do you have any better ideas?" — Used when someone comes up with an idea, another character rejects it for being too strange, dangerous, unlikely to work, etc, but the first one acknowledges that it's the best chance they have. - "Eat lead!" — The classic Pre-Mortem One-Liner, often used by gun-toting gangsters. - "Eat your X!" to a Picky Eater, often followed by "It's good for you!", "...Or you won't get any dessert!", or "There are are starving children in [place]!". - All of these are refernced in "Eat It" by Weird Al. - "English, please?" — When asking for a sentence or statement to be spoken in Layman's Terms. - "Everybody else's mother lets them!" The usual response is "I'm not everybody else's mother." - "Everybody needs a hobby." Usually said in response to hearing about someone's unusual / weird habits or pastimes. - "Everyone has a price." - " [Exclamation]!" .... "Double [exclamation]!": Something worth exclaiming about (shocking, frustrating, amazing, etc) has happened, and then something else happened that's also worth exclaiming about. - "Extra, extra, read all about it!" — To advertise newspapers. - "Faster than you can say (short phrase related to topic)." — A fun way to say "almost immediately," the original idiom is "faster than you can say Jack Robinson." - "A few X's short of a Y." Not particularly bright; as in "a few teaspoons short of a cup." - "Figures!" - "First time for everything." — Especially in (smug) response to "Nobody has ever succeeded in this task!", "I have never been defeated!", etc. - "...for a small fee, of course." - "For crying out loud!" — Used to express annoyance. - "For the love of X!" — Exclamation used to express annoyance or, less commonly, surprise. "X" is usually God, another deity the speaker worships, or a celebrity/historical figure the speaker admires. - "Flattery will get you nowhere." - "From up here, they all look like ants!" — Said from atop a skyscraper or airplane. Cue the giant ants. - "Fuck you." - "Freeze!" (by cops or a hero) - Rarely, the one fighting them would say, "You first!" and attack them, maybe more fittingly with an ice-related attack or even encasing them in ice. - From the creators of X (and Y). (Promoting a new movie by mentioning that the makers of that film also made a previous movie that was very popular.) - A face that only a mother could love. — Because it's usually too ugly for everyone else. - "Gee, you think?" Used sarcastically in response to a statement by the designated Captain Obvious. - Or for a bolder statement: "No shit, Sherlock!" - Another rude, though non-profane, version, is "What else is new?", which actually means something like "That wasn't new. Tell me something that is." - "Get a room!" — Telling people to stop kissing in public. - "Get off my lawn!" Battle cry of bitter and cantankerous old men and women. Increasingly used ironically by characters and people realizing they're older than they thought. Often preceded or followed by "You damn/darn/dog-gone kids!" - "Get out of my head!" Uttered by those trying to resist a telepath or an attempt at mind control. - "Get out of my life!" — Said when someone is really mad at someone else. - "Get the hell out of there!" The nuke's about to go off, what are you doing standing around?! Get the hell out of there! - "Gimme that!" Yank something out of another character's hand. - "Gives a whole new meaning to X." A flag that some formerly innocent expression has now become a Double Entendre thanks to someone's actions. Sometimes also used for Literal Metaphors. - "God, I missed you." - "God save/bless the King/Queen/Nation/State/Constitution/Flag/Revolution/Military". A ubiquitous, versatile, internationally recognised, and generic (as well as slightly hollow) patriotic phrase passionately wishing health and wellbeing on a particular subject. Practically the Trope Codifier of the One-Tract Mind. The agnostic variation of this phrase would be "Long live x". If used inappropriately, it can veer into the satirical sphere quite quickly. - "Good boy/girl/dog/doggie" — Used to praise a dog. - "Good luck... you'll need it." - "Good thing I landed on my head..." - "Goodbye, cruel world!" Pre-suicide stock phrase. Usually satiric. Sometimes used when a character thinks they're dying, but not by their own hand. - Veronica Mars has a faked "sucide" using this phrase, where Veronica had previously discussed the idea that using this phrase would be a good way to commit a perfect murder in a criminology paper. - Also parodied in Futurama where the Professor is preparing to be put in stasis for the rest of his life and says, "Goodbye, cruel world!", then begins saying goodbye to random items like the lamp and the curtains which he also dubs "cruel". - "Go on..." — A line delivered by a hero character who appeals to someone of authority to hear their story or reasoning behind how they ended up in their audience. Perhaps a villain or first threshold guardian. - "Grab onto my hand/[object]" — Used when saving someone's life. - "Great, JUST, great." said by the more pessimistic character after a disaster/failure, followed by the level headed leader telling them to calm down and formulating a new plan. Occasionally parodied by it turning out that they did mean something was great. - An emphasized "had" (so as to mean the past tense of "have"): Without saying so many words, a character is disappointed say, that a villain he was chasing somehow got away when he was so confident that, well, he had him (think of Arnold Schwarzenegger complaining to a horse in a scene from True Lies after it refuses to chase a baddie who's just jumped across a street, airborne, on a motorcycle). - An emphasized "was" appears in the original Casino Royale novel — it's virtually the last line of the book and is used by Bond when he's informing his superiors of Vesper Lynd's suicide and the fact she was a double. - "Hands up!" Said by anyone with a gun. The phrase isn't even needed sometimes; if a character sees someone with a gun they'll automatically raise their hands with no prompting. (See also Stick 'em Up, which is a Sub-Trope of this.) - "Hang on!" "To what?!" - "Has anyone ever told you..." - "Have I ever let you down?" Usually spoken with confidence, the speaker is certain he has not let anyone down. Often played for comedy with an answer in the affirmative. - "He won't get far..." The person in question is trying to flee, but the speaker indicates that he knows that person will not be getting away so no long chase is necessary, typically either because the person's ride is sabotaged or he will be dropping dead shortly. - "Head them off at the pass". Standard (but Cliché) instructions for a chase, particularly on horseback. - "Hear me out." Generally used when the speaker is in the middle of describing a Zany Scheme that might be Crazy Enough to Work. - "Hello, father/mother/brother/sister.": Whenever someone confronts an estranged family member, especially when they're on opposite ends of the good/evil scale. Usually delivered in a mocking tone. - "Hello, Nurse!" An exclamation upon seeing an attractive woman. Most associated with soldiers in World War II, and something of a Forgotten Trope now. Popularized by Western Animation/Animaniacs. - "Here!" — Said either as a response to a roll call, or to call a dog. - "Here it comes." Said by someone who's about to be asked for clearance to do something he thinks is a Death Wish. - "Here he / she comes." - "Here come(s) the X!" - "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!" — Said to call a cat, usually when it's on the loose. - "He's mine!" Usually used as a Pre Ass Kicking One Liner. Watch for a Curb-Stomp Battle or No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. - "(He's/She's) beautiful!" Said by a woman after giving birth. - "He/She/They will be back." Said by a Genre Savvy character after someone opts towards Refusal of the Call. - "He's/She's/They're getting away!" Announced by heroes or villains when the other side is escaping. - "(He/she) is better than I am." (pause) "If you ever tell (him/her) I said that, I'll kill you." - "Hey, I think you wanna take a look at this!" "Are you seeing this?" - "Hi, I'm X.": The opposite of "Who are you and what have you done with..", X is making the point that anyone surprised by his/her current actions must never have met him/her. Also sometimes said by a cheerful character introducing themselves. - "Highway robbery!" or "This is highway robbery!" Nine times out of ten this phrase is not said in response to an actual highway robbery, but to a situation wherein one believes they're getting ripped off or charged an unfair amount for a common good or service. Typically said by an older character. - "The horror! THE HORROR!!!" — Used either by scared characters reacting to some kind of disaster, or by Drama Queens overreacting to something. - "How about we make things a little more interesting?" Said whenever a character wants to turn a friendly game into a wagered one. - "How bad could it be?" Hint: It's bad. That's what they get for Tempting Fate. very - "How can we ever repay you?" - "How convenient": Used to point out that something is so convenient that it might actually be too good to be true. A variation is "How convenient for you", which is used in a derogatory way to mean something along the lines of "You're doing this because it conveniences you; I can tell." - "How could I have been so (stupid/blind)?": A character sees the light, so to speak, about whatever he's been doing for the duration of the story. - "How could you?" Common line uttered by the shocked and/or betrayed. The other character might answer by explaining why he could and how he did, as in, for instance, Albert Herring. - "How could you do that?" "Read the manual." A standard response from an ally upon watching a Badass Bookworm (or anyone) doing something really cool with the same equipment they have. - "How dare you!" - "How does that make sense?" A specific flavor of Lampshade Hanging. - "How do I know I can trust you?" "You don't." Common in an Enemy Mine situation. - "How do I know you'll keep your word?" (Alternately, "How do we know he'll keep his word?") The obvious question the hero(es) should be asking (and often do) in a Hostage for MacGuffin or similar situation. The most common response is more or less equivalent to the one Khan gave in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: "Oh, I've given you no word to keep, Admiral. In my judgment, you simply have no alternative." "What choice do we have?", or "You don't" are alternate versions. In dramatic terms, this means that the hero now has karmic permission to use any kind of trickery on the villain necessary to regain the advantage. - "How do you play this game, then?" Part of The Magic Poker Equation. As stated in Witches Abroad "When an obvious innocent sits down with three experienced card sharpers and says 'How do you play this game, then?', someone is about to be shaken down until their teeth fall out." It also works with pool. - "How do you stop this thing?!" The speaker has taken the controls of a vehicle of which he has absolutely no idea of how to pilot. Sure enough, he's started it up and now it is careening out of control and he is screaming this line to get some idea of how to bring it to a halt. - The opposite is "How do you drive this thing?!", for when the person wants the vehicle to move but doesn't know how to make it do so. - "How did/do you know that.../'Y'? I never said/mentioned that.../'Y'." Used in suspenseful moments, especially when the person being asked says a piece of information that makes them seem suspicious (i.e. something only the real killer would know). - "How hard can it be?": Whenever a character comments on the apparent easiness of a task, it almost invariably turns out to be stunningly difficult. Suddenly things as simple as buying milk become epic quests or even life-or-death experiences. See all of the tropes in Tempting Fate, such as Retirony. - Sometimes used satirically after listing a series of incredibly difficult and/or obviously fatal tasks. "We just have to sneak into a guarded fortress at noon, find the one person we're looking for, and convince them to betray the love of their life. How hard can it be?" Occasionally this is not intended satirically, to illustrate that the speaker is either clueless, arrogant to the point of insanity, or Just That Good. - Often the Deadpan Snarker or the Literal-Minded character will answer the question, and recount the things that could possibly go wrong. The other character will angrily remind them that it was a rhetorical question. (However, using this joke will provide some safety from this particular Chekhov's Gun actually going off.) - "How long have you been standing there?" "Long enough." Usually in a Right Behind Me situation. - "How many times do I have to X?!" — Said by a frustrated character. "X" is often "tell you" or "say this". - "How you holding up?": After some disaster or other bad thing has befallen a character. Done to death in Smallville. - "Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up and..." - There's no record of any carnival talker ( not "barker") ever yelling "Hurry, hurry, hurry! Step right up!" The "cant" was always much more elaborate, which is part of why the talker was the best-paid man on the lot. - "I almost feel sorry for him. Almost." Speaking about a nasty fate that the subject very much deserves. - "I am a man of my word." - "I am not jealous!" I'm heading right for a Green-Eyed Epiphany. - "I AM NOT SHOUTING!" and "I'M NOT ANGRY!" When someone is obviously very angry and the person they are speaking to (in a clearly angry, often shouting tone) is upset they are being yelled at. - "I am so fired." - "I am so grounded." - "I blame X." Everyone knows it was your fault, but you want to say something funny in a last ditch effort to take the blame off of you. - "I can't do this without you" often together with "I love you so much." this usually means the loved one is about to eat it, and the hero will be doing it without them. - "I can't hold on [much/any] longer!" — Said by a character who's holding onto a ledge. - "I could get used to this!" Said when a character is acknowledging the appeal of a life of luxury. - "I could kiss you!" Impulsively said during after a particularly exciting victory. Cue uncomfortable silence and/or stammering. - "I'd die if anyone sees me like this." Commonly said by the Bratty Teenage Daughter. Usually followed by someone seeing her like this, but it's rare for them to actually die. - "I deserved that." Said when acknowledging, however grudgingly, the truth of an argument or insult. Common in Soap Opera or Family Drama arguments. - "I didn't come all this way... pained gasp just to die here!" And if it's a villainous character, guess what? \|\|They die!\|\| - "I don't have time for this!" Usually said by The Hero as he's becoming bored or frustrated taking down all the Evil Minions between him and the Big Bad. Alternatively, the protagonist yells this sentence while he is trying to get something important done but people keep bothering him with trivial things. - "I don't know how to say this..." When someone is about to lay down some Brutal Honesty. - "I don't know how to tell you this..." Like the above, but much more likely to be sneered, the speaker having little-to-no sympathy for the person he's laying the Brutal Honesty onto. - "I don't know what you're talking about." The standard denial line for a character, and the asking person is never fooled by that denial. - "I don't know why I'm telling you this." Standard Hand Wave for getting a stranger involved in the plot. - "I don't know you anymore." Often said during a HeelFace Turn or FaceHeel Turn. A common response: "You never did." - "I don't think, I know." "I don't think you know, either." - "I don't want to die!" The potentially last desperate plea of anybody helplessly staring death in the face. - If the character saying this line is the target of someone's vengeance, the avenger may well respond with "Neither did (person who character killed)." - Lampshaded in the Death Row scene of The Adding Machine, where this line causes the guards dragging Zero off to his execution to stop in their tracks. One of them timidly approaches the Fixer to ask him about Zero saying that "he wants to live." "No," replies the Fixer. "He's no good." The guards dutifully resume. - "I don't want to know." An attempt to head off Too Much Information. - "I don't want your money." Response to someone who feels they are being robbed. - "I eat X for breakfast!" A common type of Badass Boast. - "I feel like I've known you all my life" Often said when someone feels an immediate affinity for someone without knowing why. Common in both fiction and Real Life. - "I hate to be that guy, but..." - "If I had my way..." - "If I didn't know (you) better I'd say you were X". X is often an action or emotion and if it's an emotion it's usually fear or jealousy. - "If I told you, it wouldn't be much of a secret, (now) would it?" - "If I were you" — To share what they'd do if they were in the shoes of the person they were speaking to. - "If it's a fight you want, it's a fight you'll get!" - "If he/she could do it, then so can I!" - "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times!" - "If you don't like it here, why don't you go back where you came from?" A common line indicating the speaker is some flavor of bigot, and usually directed against either immigrants or those with foreign ancestry. If the bigot, especially a North American one of colonizer ancestry is being really dumb, they could say that line to a Native American. - "If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it." Basically saying something is only meant for the super-rich for which money is not an object. Sometimes attributed to tycoon J. P. Morgan though not verified. - "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself!" - "I know a guy." Or sometimes, "I know a guy who knows a guy." - "I should/would know" - "If these walls could talk...": Your stock phrase for an Evidence Scavenger Hunt. Here's a straight use, from CSI. - Alternately used to explain that a room has seen a lot of notable moments. One episode of Benson has Kraus lobbying to have a local hotel saved from demolition due to its history. She and Benson are inside the hotel with the man leading the demolition when one of his bulldozers plows through the wall. Kraus goes on to discus the history of the hotel, saying "If only these walls could talk." Benson replies "Yeah, that one would have said 'Watch out! There's a bulldozer coming!'" - "If you ignore it, it goes away." The standard use is in reference to some sort of medical issue, but can be used for anything up to people. - "If you were a man, I'd...," and the invariable response, "If you were a man..." - "If you were, you wouldn't ask": The inevitable reply to a character wondering if they're insane, thoughtless, evil, or otherwise not that different from the villain. - "If you were anyone else...." A character is informed by another that s/he only gets away with something because they are them. A good example is what Worf says after Picard accuses him of being a coward in Star Trek: First Contact. - "If you're here, and I'm here, then who is that?!" Often said when two people try a Sham Supernatural on each other, but then realize that the ghost/monster in the room with them isn't either of their doing. - "If you're [reading\|watching] this, I'm most likely dead." See Dead Man Writing. - "If you're X, then I'm Y." X is usually true, Y is usually ludicrous. A cousin of If I Wanted X, I Would Y. - "If we met in different circumstances we might have been friends". - "I have to go now" — Said before a Screw This, I'm Outta Here moment or remembering you have to go home or to the bathroom. - "I have to try!" Usually preceded by something like "But you'll die!" - "I got nothing on my radar." Suddenly, an ambush. - "I got to get me one of those!" Jokingly said by a character upon encountering some incredibly awesome but wholly implausible weapon or device (Will Smith in Independence Day, Commissioner Gordon reacting to the Batmobile in Batman Begins). - "I had nothing to do with this!" Often spoken by someone who has been dragged, unwittingly or unwillingly, into a scheme that has gone wrong. - "I have an idea." Usually a sign that things are about to go your way. Alternatively, it could mean it's time to run. - "I have a plan." Usually a sign you should run away — fast. - "I have a prescription for that!" Said by anyone caught popping pills. - "I have a reputation to maintain." Said by the Jerk with a Heart of Gold who prefers to be known as a straight Jerkass. - "I heard that!" "You were supposed to!" - "I hope I'm wrong, because otherwise..." aaaaand... cut to a different scene. Note that the thing-too-terrible-to-contemplate that is the subject of this line always, always happens. See also Unspoken Plan Guarantee. - "I knew that." No they didn't. - "I knew you were alive!" After you find out your loved one survived the thing that supposedly killed them. - " I know that, and you know that, but he doesn't know that." - "I know what is best for you." Usually the one who says it is misinformed. If they're not misinformed, they're often malevolent. - "I see the way you look at her/him/me." Compare You Never Did That for Me and Everyone Can See It. - "I was about to ask you the same thing." - "I was just... um... [doing something obviously not true]" — Common phrasing for Blatant Lies. - "I wouldn't do that if I were you." - "I wouldn't date/marry you if you were the last man/woman on earth." Deconstructed by David Slater in The Moon is Blue. - "I'll believe it when I see it." Used by the skeptic. Most often, the thing he won't believe turns out to be true. - "I'll be right back." — If it's a comedy, you're going to the bathroom or to do something crazy. If it's a horror, you're a dead character walking. - "I'll deal with you later." Usually a villain's response to a Hero's Sidekick's snarky comments that usually translates as "You piss me off too and you'll pay for it, but I have more important business for now." - "I'll do it, or my name isn't..." - "I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count." Said when the situation is so painfully obvious that no one with half a brain should need more than the one guess, hence the first two being worthless. - "I gotta be dreaming this..." Spoiler alert, more often than not the person isn't. - "I'll never get to walk her down the aisle..." A father's lament: he always hoped to Give Away the Bride, but something happened. He's about to die, she died, they got teleported to opposite sides of the galaxy, he got stuck in a Ground Hog Day Loop, or whatever. - "I'll never wash (these clothes/this body part) again": Something romantic happens to a character involving his/her clothes/body part. Examples: Doug holding Patty's arm ( Doug), Arnold hugging Helga ( Hey Arnold!, "Arnold's Hat"), and there's also a variation in Hey Arnold!, "It Girl", involving Helga shoving Eugene. - Subverted in The Simpsons episode "New Kid on the Block", where, after Bart declares this about his hand, we cut to ten minutes later, where we see it's become incredibly dirty. - Similarly in the Discworld novel Jingo, Nobby says he'll never wash his handkerchief again, then blows his nose ("It still bends, see?") - In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Spike says this after Rarity kisses his cheek. He's serious about it, as a week later, the lipstick from the kiss (along with random accumulated dirt) is still on his cheek. - One episode of Cow and Chicken has the latter declaring never to wash his eyeball again. - "I'll see you in court!" Uttered by those seeking to bring a lawsuit against someone. - "I'll sleep when I'm dead," or "Sleep is for the dead." May be countered with "If you don't sleep, you are/ will be dead!" - "I love you!" "You don't know what love is!" Alternate replies along the lines of "Not enough." or "I actually used to believe that..." are also common. - "I love (or like) you... as a(n) friend/sister/brother/X!" Mostly said by Oblivious to Love characters. - "I meant recently!" You asked a hypothetical "When has X ever happened?" question, and someone just gave a genuine example. May get a response of "That was yesterday" or similar. - "I'm alive?" Reaction from waking up after a near-death experience. - "I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear/see that." Standard response to Too Much Information. - "I'm gonna regret this." - "I'm gonna write a number down on this piece of paper..." - "I'm in." (When The Cracker or the Playful Hacker breaks that last layer of security on a system. Often said within seconds of claiming that the security is extremely sophisticated, and will be hard to defeat.) - Alternate usage: X is expressing hesitation over a daring/dangerous plan. The convincer throws in an irresistible perk. Cue this line. Example: Jayne from the Firefly episode "Heart of Gold" upon learning that the people the crew are trying to help are whores. - "I'm just resting my eyes." Cue snoring. - "I'm just sayin'..." trailing off to an awkward pause. It usually follows some harsh criticism disguised as friendly advice, in a feeble attempt to prevent hard feelings. - "I'm just so angry all the time." Spoken by many an angsty teenage boy. Predominately when the writers need to illustrate the character to be conflicted but can't think of anything better to have him say. - "I'm just teasing!" - "I'm leaving, don't try to stop me!" "I don't want to stop you, I want to help/come with you!" - "I'm listening." A character has been offered to hear a proposal from someone, usually at a unusual time or place, and he's now intrigued enough to hear it out. - "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what this is all about." - "I'm not that kind of girl!" You Accidental Pervert spouting Innocent Innuendo! - "I'm not smart enough to come up with this." The person is using their known shortcomings to support the veracity of what they just said or did. Can be reversed ("Do you think I'm stupid enough to have done that.") or use a different shortcoming (i.e. evil character could not come up with a story of someone doing something noble.) - "I'm on it!" - "[I'm sorry, but] I won't let you do that." - "I'm sorry, who are you?" - "I'm sorry you had to find out this way." Usually spoken by a character who has been hiding an often dark secret that the one who's spoken to has just found out about. - "I'm too young to die!" Or, in more comedic settings, "I'm too pretty to die!" - "Incoming!" Accompanied by "Get down!" - "I never asked for this." The main character has an incredible power/gift/ability but the writers want to make things seem angsty? Cue this phrase. - "I never miss." The standard Badass Boast for any sharpshooter with Improbable Aiming Skills. - "I never thought I'd be back here." - "In my country we have a saying..." - "Insert [insert noun here] here." Appears as a placeholder within a sentence. Often comedic, a la [Trope Name] or Left It In. - "I remember... I remember everything!" or "I remember it all!" A character recovers from Easy Amnesia or Identity Amnesia, possibly through a Regained Memories Sequence. - "I said sit down!" - "Is he/she always like that?" A confused bystander or a Naïve Newcomer asked a colleague about bizarre behaviours of the seniors. - "Is he/she..." followed by trailing off or being interrupted. The last word is implied to be "dead". - "Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?" The standard quip by anyone under a great deal of pressure, especially as a result of trying to conceal lustful thoughts. Or maybe the building is on fire. - "Is it just me, or is it X?" — Said when something crazy is happening. A variation is "Is it just my imagination or..." - "Is it time yet?! Is it time yet?!" (Not yet! Not yet!) A variation on Are We There Yet?. - "Is that what they're calling it now?" A typical reply to someone's Not What It Looks Like excuse, especially when it can be interpreted as an Unusual Euphemism - "I should have stayed home/in bed today." - I should/would know. Someone swears like a sailor, and the person saying it IS a sailor. - "Isn't it sad?" — a stock phrase that, sadly enough, is now a member of the Permanent Red Link Club. - "I suppose you're all wondering why I've gathered you here today..." - "It can't happen here" - "It could have happened to anyone." - Bonus response: "Yeah, but it happened to me." - "It doesn't have to end this way!" - "It doesn't make any sense!!" - "I think I'm going to be sick." - "I think (s)he's dead already." Often uttered near the end of a killing where the killer is Pummeling the Corpse. - "I think we lost them." Often uttered moments before the bad guys reappear. A common example of Tempting Fate. - "It feels like I'm arguing with a [specific inanimate object]!" — When complaining about a one-sided argument. - "It may be a (noun phrase), but it's my (noun phrase)." Often rendered as "He/She may be...", where the noun phrase is something derogatory. - "I told you so." Spoken by the Genre Savvy or the Deadpan Snarker after Hilarity Ensues. Includes the following variations: - "I hate to say 'I told you so,' but I told you so." - "I hate to say it, but... hmmm, actually I don't. I told you so!" - "Is that the same thing as your regular X?" Said when someone mentions their "fucking X". - "It worked", "It actually works!", or "I can't believe it worked". Said when the plan that sounds Crazy Enough to Work, does. Ditto the insane invention that really does work. - "It's a bird! It's a plane!" — Due to Popcultural Osmosis. - "It's a boy/girl!" — When a baby is born. - "It's a [dirty, tough, etc.] job, but somebody's got to do it." - "It's a gift...and a curse." Stock line for the Defective Detective, reminding everyone that their Holmesian acuity comes at a price. Popularized by Monk. - "It's amazing what they can do with X these days." - "It's a long shot, but it might just work!" - "It's a trap!" — Said when something thought to be innocent turns out to be a setup or a form of ensnarement. - "It's beautiful!" — Usually said by a female character when she receives a gift. - "It's dead." / "Could you please not use the word 'dead'?" Exchange that takes place at that point in a horror movie when someone tries to phone for help. - "It's got to work!" (or "It has to work!"). Because if it doesn't work, they're dead. - "It's just your/my imagination!" - "It's no use, Johnny. I'm done for. You save yourself." From classic WWII films, the soon-to-be-martyred hero urges his friend to escape the oncoming enemy while he bleeds out. Sometimes results in the martyr being picked up and carried to medical aid, though. - "It's not (a) X, it's (a) Y." Often used in commercials, such as "It's not TV, it's HBO" or It's not a phone, it's a Galaxy." - "It's not about the (trivial thing)!" Said when it's time to discuss What's Going Wrong in This Relationship. - "It's not the end of the world." Said to console someone overwhelmed by loss or guilt, or in a more facetious tone to mock excessive self-pity. - "It's not what it looks like" When someone catches their partner in bed, this is what the cheater will say, usually complete with a Modesty Bedsheet. Also used for when it actually is something innocent, but looks suspicious. - "It's not your fault." - "It's OK to X. Everybody X sometimes, even Y!" — Said on kids shows about mistakes or emotions. - "It's our anniversary!" followed by "..." and "YOU FORGOT, DIDN'T YOU." or some variation on that. - "It's our only hope!" - "It's over (between us)." Standard breakup line. See Let's Just Be Friends for the more polite version. - It's showtime! Apparently Eddie Murphy's catchphrase. And Mr. Incredible's. - "It's so hard to get good help these days." Usually by the head villain regarding his bumbling Evil Minions (often with regard to the one he's just killed). See Surrounded by Idiots. - In Cactus Flower, Julian says, "You can't get decent help these days," after his nurse Stephanie protests against being made to play his wife so he can marry Toni. - "It's time!" — Said by people declaring they mean business, and by women who've just gone into labour. - "It burns!" The appropriate response to contact with open flames, strongly acidic substances, or anything that is too painful to look at. Most often preceded with a declaration of whatever is causing the burning or what is being burned. - "It's the right thing to do." - "It's working!" Sometimes a harbinger of Tempting Fate. - "It was all just a huge misunderstanding." Openly uttered at the very end of cliche sitcoms. See Three Is Company. - "I've been having these dreams lately." The character may be Dreaming of Things to Come. - "I've been waiting a long time for this." - "I've done it before and I can do it again!" - "I've got a bad feeling about this." Featured in all six Star Wars movies and several tie-in titles. Generally considered/acknowledged to be an homage when seen in a more recent show. - "I've got to take that chance!" Someone has a plan that is a dangerous gamble with disastrous consequences if it fails, but there is no alternative. - "I've got this." Someone who's calmly surveying a situation their colleague / associate thinks is going to be a big problem. Another possible harbinger of Tempting Fate. - "I've heard of _____, but this is ridiculous!" - On the March 15th 2016 episode of The Nightly Show, in response to a misfired "funny caption" that used a photo of a lynching, the show makes several such captions based on dramatic historic events, culminating in one of an atomic bomb captioned "I like my Jambalaya spicy, but this is ridiculous!" - "I've never met anyone like you before." - "I've said it before and I'll say it again..." - "I walked right into that one." A character realizes he just incited a joke at his own expense. - "I was afraid you were gonna say that." - "I was this close" (to achieving something): with the "this" accompanied by the appropriate one hand gesture. Without the hand gesture "this" is changed to "so". Either way, the character knows almost doesn't count, and lets others know it. Made famous by Get Smart, where it took the form "Missed it by that much". (The trope Missed Him by That Much is related In Name Only.) - "I wouldn't [cross the street to piss on] you if you were on fire." An expression of a strong hatred towards another that drives a person to simply avoid any interaction with them. - "I'm not made of money." Usually said in response to someone asking if they can have something expensive. Alternate version: "What am I, made of money?" - "Just described a dog." — When a character names what makes a person so likeable (almost always mentioning loyalty/fidelity, but also being friendly or playful), and then someone points out that everything they've just said could also be used to describe the perfect dog. - "Just got that suit cleaned!" — usually said by a Badass in a Nice Suit after an action sequence to indicate his Dirt Forcefield failed and now he's got a dirty expensive suit. May overlap with Major Injury Underreaction. - "Just where do you think you're going?" Someone got caught sneaking out. - "Just relax, it'll be okay." - "Kill me! Go ahead, do it!" says the villain, and as always, the hero will rescue them from the ledge/put down the weapon without fail. - "Kill me and be done with it!" - "(Shut up and) Kiss me, you fool!" - "Knock it off!" Enough already. - "Know your place!" Typically spoken by an arrogant character (such as a Rich Bitch or Feudal Overlord) to someone they regard as inferior. - "Leave it to (name)" — Means something was typical of the person. - "Leave no stone unturned." An admonishment to be extremely thorough when searching for something or someone. - "Leave (a particular task) to the experts." The standard annoyed response by an expert at a particular task after seeing a complete amateur trying to accomplish something with that task and failing completely. Also see The World's Expert (on Getting Killed). Another variation is "Leave the [action] to the [occupation]s". - "Let 'em have it!" Someone's about to open fire or punch someone in the face. - "Let 'er rip!" Meaning to go ahead with a task, usually an unveiling. Expect a Stripping Snag or a huge hole in a large sheet of fabric to follow. - "Let me join." or "I want to join." The usual line said by a former enemy that has been used by Big Bad and wants revenge. - "Let's dance." The confident good guy accepting the inevitable fight that's about to break out. Anime dubs also use this to translate I Am Your Opponent. "Let's play" is also sometimes said. - "Let's finish this." - "Let's go!" — Used to start a journey. - "Let's not and say we did." - "Let's pretend I don't know what that means." The Watson to Mr. Exposition. If it's the sidekick saying it, they may try to pretend they're not the ones in the dark, along the lines of, "Let's say the Hero doesn't know what the Technobabble device does." - "Let's rock and roll." - "Let's roll." Famously used during 9/11. - "Let's see how X likes this!" In response to a significant attack. - "Let me slip into something more comfortable." Spoken by a seductress right before she changes into lingerie, often behind a see-through screen. This can be parodic, since the lingerie sometimes looks more uncomfortable than the original clothing. - "Let them come." Spoken by the villain (often of the Evil Overlord persuasion) to his far-more-sensible underling when the heroes are on their way. Sometimes, it's because they're leading the heroes into a trap. Other times, it's basically a cheat based on the bad guy's unyielding arrogance to let the heroes get as far as the front door. - "Let them have each other." Spoken by The Chessmaster villain who sees his enemies eliminating one another. - "Like herding cats." Used to describe something that's difficult but not impossible to do. - "Listen to your body" — Said in any Edutainment Show when talking about bodies, but chiefly the Toilet Training Plot, with the Sleep Aesop being the runner-up. Also, sometimes said by sports coaches. - "A little help here? Anyone?!" - "Lock and load." followed by cocking a large gun. - "Look, mommy/daddy, there's [an unusual thing usually related to the protagonist]!" - "Look out! Coming through!" - "Look out for the—-crash—-.... [object]." - "Look out! He's got a bomb/gun/knife!" - "... loves this trope." Used on this wiki in lists of examples, to describe series (games, whatever) that use the same trope too many times to count. - "Many will enter; few will win." Used in ads for contests aimed at children. - "Me and my big fat mouth..." - "Medic..." Whimpered by the victim of Amusing Injuries while he lies in a mangled heap upon the ground. - "Mine" on repeat. Often used to show a character expressing a desire for something. - "The mission has been compromised." Said when secret mission goes awry. - "Mistakes were made." The quintessential non-apology apology. Alternatively, a much more restrained version of Oh, Crap!. - "Moderate to severe X". Used in prescription drug ads. Also weather forecasts. - "More!", said several times in a row. A person has eaten some delicious food and is still hungry, or someone is greedy and wants more money. - "More tea, vicar?" A Discredited Trope these days, but in seventies Brit Coms, the standard way of distracting The Vicar from whatever hilarity is ensuing. - "The more you buy, the more you save." (Advertising) - "Move, move, move!" Alternately, "Move, people!" (Primarily used in military settings, when an authority figure wants his or her subordinates to hurry up and do whatever they're doing, but faster.) - See also; "Go, go, go!" and variants. - "My body is a temple." International law dictates that this line must always be followed by a suggestion that a more appropriate comparison might be to an amusement park. Alternate comeback is "Yeah, the Temple of Doom." - "My door is always open." Extra points if the actual door is shut shortly afterwards. - "My eyes! " Often accompanies Eye Scream or Screaming at Squick. See also Ow, My Body Part!. MY EYES!!! - "My, my, what have we here?" Usually said by older good characters, or occasionally the villain from afar. - "My patience is growing thin." Spoken by many an Evil Overlord after repeated attempts to do whatever have proven futile. - "My wife doesn't have to know about it." The cad's excuse for proposing adultery or bigamy. - "My work here is done." - "My (X)!" — Said when the X is going away or being destroyed. - "My (x), my rules." - "Need a lift?" - "Never again." Phrase used to emphasize someone's oath to never allow an incident ever again. - "Never leave home without it." Catchphrase of the Crazy-Prepared. - "Never send an X to do a Y's job." Phrase said when someone has to do something that another person fails to. "Y" is frequently "a man." - "New plan: RUN!" A character will say this to initiate a Tactical Withdrawal. - "No, it couldn't be." Catchphrase for the Master of Delusion. - "No kidding / fooling / duh." Someone just heard the obvious. Also a synonym for, "Ya think?" - "No more Mister Nice Guy!" - "No one is indispensable!" A boss tells their underling(s) that they're easily replaced. - "NO! PLEASE!" shouts the heroine after being captured by the Big Bad and presumably taken to his lair to have things done to her, just seconds before the hero busts in. - Nobody insert phrase here. Nobody. Often heard in commercials. - "Nothing human could have done this!" Used in horror movies on discovering a savagely mutilated corpse. - "No, this is not a prank!" See Cassandra Truth. - "No trial for us, we're for stringing him up right away!" The Wild West lynch mob streamlines the legal process. - "Not again!" A variant of Oh, Crap! that occurs when the same bad thing happens that a character has previously experienced. - "Not the X-est Y in the Z." Another way to describe a not-too-bright character; "the brightest bulb in the box" is not an uncommon description. Subversion: "But still in the Z." - "Not if I have anything to say about it." A way of saying, "Over my dead body." Or, "We'll just see about that." - "Not tonight, dear, I have a headache." The standard bedmate rebuff (usually said by a woman, and usually she's lying). Memetic Mutation associated Midnight Resistance with this phrase. - "Not where, when." Said by one time traveler after the less experienced companion asks "Where are we?" - "Now if you will excuse me, I have a <noun> to <verb>!" - "Now it's my turn." - "Now it's your turn." - "Now I've seen everything." Said by a miscellaneous character on seeing the ridiculous culmination of ridiculous events. Used to be followed by the character's suicide until the Media Watchdogs put a stop to that. - "Now, now". Usually followed by "It's not so bad" or "That's not polite." - "Now that's how you <verb>!" A frustrated person (usually senior ones) does a task that a character fails at or done horribly and then says this line. - "Now what?" Another take on So What Do We Do Now? - "Now, where were we?" - "Nobody said it would be easy". - "... of the ____shire Smiths." That is, the old-money ones. Sometimes shortened to "... of those Smiths." - "Oh God, let this work!": The character has a Million to One Chance of survival with a plan that could be Crazy Enough to Work and is praying that it does. - "Oh no..." Is said when someone realizes that they're screwed or is about to experience some misfortune. "Uh-oh" is also an alternative. - "Oh no! Not Cool and Unusual Punishment! Anything but Cool and Unusual Punishment!" - "Oh no! Not Plan X! Anything but Plan X!......what's Plan X?" Common joke cartoon writers still think is funny. - "Oh no... they got to you too!" Mostly used by conspiracy theorists referring to skeptics, or friends/family who are no longer as patient or understanding as they used to be. - "Oh, please, Judge — my Tony, he's a good boy." The mobster's mother pleads for leniency for her child. Most often seen in 1930s and 40s dramas, more often parodied today. - "Oh, the agony!" - "Oh, this old thing?": Said after someone has complimented the speaker's garment, car, or house. - "Oh well, you can't win 'em all." - "Oh, X, not you too!" — Said by a character who's discovered yet another victim of the Plague Episode. - "Oh yes, well done." Said in a mocking tone. Occasionally accompanied by Sarcastic Clapping. - "Okay...okay, okay, okay, okay..." While freaking out as a Survival Mantra. - "O kay then..." Standard response to Too Much Information, Digging Yourself Deeper, Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick and other tropes of that ilk, generally indicates a Sarcasm Failure. - "Olé!" Response to any lively music that sounds even vaguely Spanish. - "... once and for all!" — how thoroughly the hero is going to defeat the villain, or vice-versa. - "One for all and all for one!" or "All for one and one for all!" - "One, two, a one, two, three, four"— To start a song. - " One, two, three, one, two, three..." Counting out the beats of 3/4 time is the perfect way to set people waltzing. - "One of these days..." A character does something that annoys another character frequently, with the annoyed one swearing to do something to the person annoying them some day as an expression of their frustration. - "One-way ticket" to someplace that you wouldn't want to go, e.g., "a one-way ticket to jail." - "...Or not." Used by a character who knows they're being ignored. For example, "We could always take the back road! ...Or not." - Also used when unexpected circumstances prevent that action. "Hey guys! I know a faster way. Let's take this bridge." UFO crashes, destroying bridge "Or not." - "Out of my way!" when someone's running, usually through a crowded area like a hallway. - "Over my dead body." Ironic and serious. - Traditional responses include "That can be arranged," "That's the plan," or "Have it your way then," followed by a gunshot. There's also the slightly less evil "If necessary." In Mork & Mindy once had Mork respond, "It may trip us, but it won't stop us." - "Perhaps not." - "Play time is over." Often used by villains to indicate that they're going to start taking the fight serious, and that the heroes had better do the same or else. Kind of like an inverse Let's Get Dangerous! - And of course, from the video game that manages to directly use so so many stock phrases completely straight: "Play time is over, Star Fox!" - "Please don't freak out!" - "Please don't shoot my dog, he couldn't have eaten those sheep!": "Shoot" can be replaced with any other punishment, and "eaten those sheep" can be replaced with any other misdeed. - "Please don't take this the wrong way, but..." The character is about to ask a blunt question that would seem offensive in most circumstances, but it has to be asked like "Why aren't you dead?" if the person has just escaped certain death for some reason. The person asked typically understands the spirit of the question and provides an explanation. - " Please tell me you're kidding..." - "Pretty please with sugar/a cherry on top?" - "Put that thing down." That "thing" is usually a device its owner isn't sure the person holding it knows how to use properly. Often a loaded gun. - "Rape isn't about sex, it's about power." Often Truth in Television. - "Ready?" - Sometimes followed up with "Ready as I'll ever be" or "I was born ready!". - "Remember where we parked." Usually a comedic phrase that either follows parking the automobile/ship in a crowded or unusual spot. - "Rest in pieces". Back when this joke was used for the first time, it might be amusing. It's not amusing when you hear it millions of times, though. - "Right, let's do this." - "Rules are meant/made to be broken." Common response to The Fettered from someone who doesn't hold to their rules. - "RUN (FOR IT/THE HILLS/YOUR LIFE/LIVES)!!!" - "Said no one, ever." Lampshader of sarcasm (though technically, the suffix makes it no longer that) that seems largely original to the 21st century. - Saw that coming When you know someones gonna get it for what they said or you can tell somethings gonna happen. - "Says the X..." In forms like "Says the X to the Y" or "Says the X who/that did whatever." - "Shaken, not stirred" or variations thereof. Either used to order a drink or to comment that a character has had a rough predicament but survived. - In The West Wing, Bartlet comments that Bond is "ordering a weak martini and being snooty about it". - Fabulously subverted by the very franchise that birthed it: in Casino Royale (2006), Daniel Craig's Bond orders a martini and is asked if he wants it shaken or stirred. He snarls, "Do I look like I give a damn?" - "Shouldn't you kids be in school right now?" Related to Shouldn't We Be In School Right Now?. - "Oh, shut up...": Usually said after an Incredibly Lame Pun or a lame Chew Bubblegum line. - "A simple no would have sufficed.": An indignant response to a dismissal or rejection that is overly demeaning, verbose, or both. - "Slowly I turn — step by step, inch by inch..." - "Smells like something died in here" — In a comedy, the smell turns out to be poop or a dead animal, but in a horror, it's a dead body. - An emphasised "Someone" or "Somebody": Code for "I'm not naming names, but it was you." - "Someone... or something..." Used to identify that an act may have been done by something paranormal. - When Harry Dresden used it, Action Girl Karrin Murphy calls him on it, saying, "You've been waiting years to use that one, haven't you?" Dresden, being the smart ass that he is, shrugs and mentions that opportunities don't arise as often as you'd think. - "Something's coming." Often said with great solemnity by a Magical Native American or other Noble Savage, sometimes with ear to the ground. - "So there I was..." - "Sorry, but duty calls..." What a cop/soldier/firefighter/other "on call" hero says to a pretty girl he's dating that he has to get back to work. She usually is gracious enough to leave it at that. - "Stick that in your (noun) and (verb) it." Most commonly used after making a point to rub it in. Original form is almost certainly "Stick that in your pipe and smoke it," but modern usage plays it as a mad libs. - West Side Story twists the syntax for the sake of a rhyme: "I like the island Manhattan— / Smoke on your pipe and put that in!" - Sometimes 'stick that in' is replaced with a completely different action. Stampylongnose gives us "You can bake it into a cake and you can eat it!". - "Stop me anytime." Someone is depressed or angry with themselves and starts listing all of their own failings, expecting the person they're talking to to break in and disagree. If the other person just lets them continue, they get annoyed and say this. - "Stop/follow that X!" - "Stop the presses!" Originally related to when a reporter has a news story that they absolutely must have in the upcoming issue. It's rarer in Real Life news outlets which would rather resort to an extra issue (actually stopping the presses is damn expensive and takes ages to start back up), and is generally used for any news that may need people to stop whatever they are doing. - In the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "Truth or Ed", Eddy yells this when he hears that the school newspapers actually have profit. - Parodied in The Simpsons episode "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?" when Homer gets a job as a food critic. The foreman complies, and after Homer tells them to start the presses his frustrated boss says "That takes four hours." - Parodied in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Ponyville Confidential". Sweetie Belle shouts "Stop the presses!" as she dramatically bursts into the office for the school newspaper, only for the kid running the press to say "We haven't started yet." - Parodied in The Truth, where a dwarf printer yells "Stop the presses!" because the cart carrying his press has come loose and is careening down the street. - Parodied on The Great Muppet Caper, where Gonzo shouts it because he always wanted to. - "Take a picture, it'll last longer!" Said by anyone being stared at, especially by a large group of people. - "Take two aspirin and call me in the morning." Commonly used by doctors in movies and TV to dismiss a patient who doesn't have a serious illness or injury, and almost always used in parody. Other analgesics or placebos are often substituted for aspirin in works made since the Turn of the Millennium due to aspirin's antiplatelet properties. - "Tell me again!", usually said by children. - "Tell me something I don't know." A rude response to someone playing Captain Obvious; about half the time, Captain Obvious will retort with some obscure or personal fact that the rude person couldn't be expected to know. - "Tell me/us how you really feel." An ironic response to "The Reason You Suck" Speech or a similarly scathing comment. Can be prefaced with "Don't hold back..." or "Don't sugarcoat it..." - "Tell my (wife/fiancee/girlfriend) I love her." "Tell her yourself.": Exchange often heard when the first speaker is about to go into a very dangerous situation (see also If I Do Not Return). Also sometimes used if the first speaker is severely wounded and the second speaker is trying to convince him/her that his/her wounds aren't fatal (often when this happens the wounds are indeed fatal, and the first speaker dies in the second speaker's arms). - Subverted in Fables, where the dying man says: "Tell each of my girlfriends I said her name last." - Subverted in the Futurama episode "Brannigan, Begin Again": Neutral Leader: "If I don't survive, tell my wife: Hello." - Subverted in No Country for Old Men, near the start of the film; Llewellyn, speaking to his wife: "If I don't come back, tell my Mom I love her." Llewellyn's wife: "Your mama's been dead for years..." Llewellyn: "Oh. Then I guess I'll tell her myself." - Subverted in Star Trek (2009), in which Spock starts one of these and Kirk cuts him off — to assure him the plan's going to work. - Used multiple times in Cyanide and Happiness: - Used in Avengers: Endgame when \|\|Clint and Natasha are fighting over who gets to perform the Heroic Suicide. Natasha wins, if you can call it winning.\|\| \|\| Clint: Tell my family I love them.\|\| \|\| Natasha: You tell them yourself. (falls to her death soon after)\|\| - "Tell that to ______." The person in the blank is nearly invariably someone whose experience proves whatever statement prompted this line wrong, or at least someone who is very unlikely to believe it. - "Tell X I said hi!" - "That can be arranged." A standard villain response to a hero saying they Would Rather Suffer than surrender to/join them. (Sometimes follows "Over my dead body." Also for "I can arrange that.") - "That can't be good." A catch-all under-reaction to whenever something strange and/or unfortunate is happening, or about to happen. - "That doesn't mean I have to like it": Said by a character who's complained about something and then told it's normal/okay/inevitable/etc. - "That's my cue to leave." - Used in The Flash (2014) \|\|season 1 finale when Eobard Thawne sees what's later confirmed to be Jay Garrick's helmet come out of the wormhole he's about to use to travel back to his time.\|\| - "Uh-huh." - "Until we meet again..." - "Umm..." Sometimes used in confusion, shyness, embarrassment, or when something is being waited for. - "Unlucky for some" Usually used whenever the number thirteen comes up. - "Very carefully". : As a response to "How did you do that?", "How do I do this?", etc. Sometimes, "carefully" is replaced with a different adverb or the person says, "With (great) difficulty" instead. - "Wait, I have a better idea": Usually spoken right after a character suggests a conventional course of action. Suddenly, another character preempts that with an idea for more creative and/or dramatic one, which we see in action. - "Was it good for you?": Asked after having sex. Or more ironically after killing someone. - "Was it something I said?": When a conversation ends with one person suddenly thumping the other person and/or storming out and slamming the door, the other person says this. Usually, what they said or did to prompt the reaction is blindingly obvious to everyone except them. But occasionally, it was something completely external, such as the activation of the Bat Signal. - "Watch out for that first step. It's a doozy!" Used most famously in Groundhog Day. - "Water! Water!" Has to be exclaimed when someone is fainting in public. - "We all want something." - "We make a pretty good team (you and I)." - "We might actually win this thing!" - "We only have one shot at this." - "We're even." or "Now, we're even." A line said by someone who was helped or saved by The Hero after they helped them. - "We are all X now." - "We are asking the questions here!" Usually with a German accent. Can make Talking Your Way Out very difficult. - "We attack at dawn!" - "We can't do X!" "Not with that attitude we can't!" (If it's just one person, "We" is replaced with "I" or "You") - "We can't take that chance!" Indicates when The Federation (or even the Hero) all-but-folds in the face of the huge demands of the villain backed by force. - "We didn't start this fight, but we're gonna finish it." - "We do not negotiate with terrorists". When this line is uttered, expect negotiation with terrorists to follow fairly quickly. - "We don't know what we're fighting for!" - "We don't know what we're up against." Said by The Captain or the highest-ranked individual around when going on a mission with any unknown variables. - "We got what we came for, now let's go!" said by the mooks, typically after they stole what their Big Bad wants for an Evil Plan, and are going to make their escape. - Or by someone on The Hero's side, for much the same thing. - "The weak perish, and only the strong survive" or some variation thereof. Typically said by The Social Darwinist - "Well, it was worth a shot." These days, often follows the attempted application of a trope that failed. - "Well, well, well..." Often said by villains when they discover and approach the heroes in the midst of their heroics and begin their villainous dialogue. - "Well I never!" Shocked phrase of the Grande Dame. Often followed with "The very idea!" - More often followed by a wisecracker saying either "And you never will with that attitude!" or "You should. It's fun!" Or, in the case of Daria, "Never in her life." when a Grand Dame said "Well, I never in my life!" on being asked if she dyes her hair. - "Well, that's new..." Overly calm reaction to a large change, frequently a form of Lampshade Hanging. - "Well, [do something weird to me] and call me X!" — A goofy way of expressing shock. - "We mustn't. I'd only feel cheap." Obsolete objection to adultery or other illicit behavior. - "We need to talk." A phrase that is usually followed by "It's over", "You're fired", or at the very least, "The Reason You Suck" Speech. Of late, it's generally followed by a wary reaction on the part of the person addressed. - Seinfeld dubbed this "The four most dangerous words in the English language." - Brent Sienna from PVP Online once stated that "In all the history of mankind, nothing good has ever come after the phrase 'Honey, we need to talk.'" - "We're all going to die!" - "Shut up, Rattrap!" - Alternately: "We're doomed!" (Shut up, Threepio.) - You've also heard it: "We're screwed/fucked/boned/toast/dead/dead meat." - Military version: describing a situation as FUBAR: Fucked/Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition/Repair. - "We're all in this together." - "We're both men of the world, you and I..." ...so you know that I'm about to threaten your life in the most genteel manner possible. - "We're done here." Said by defense attorneys when interrupting or ending a police interrogation of their client. Often followed by dropping a motion to dismiss evidence, or the whole charge. - "We're losing him/her!" Stock phrase used in most medical dramas at some point or other as the patient flatlines on the operating table. Expect the Magical Defibrillator to appear at this point. - "We're more than friends. We're family." Often said about a Family of Choice. - "We've got company!" Said as a warning of a newly-arrived attack force by the opposite side. - "What a waste of my time!" Typically said by villains or snobbish Corrupt Corporate Executives and others who feel that something they've been called to address isn't very interesting and they could be devoting their time towards something more worthwhile in their eyes. - "What are you always running from?" Bonus points if the reply is, "Maybe myself." - "What! Are you crazy?" Bonus points if the answer is simply, "Yes." - "What are you doing?" "Something I should have done a long time ago." Exchange which occurs when a henchman turns on the bad guy, thus saving the hero. Also sometimes as the hero surprises a love interest with their first kiss (or, if their relationship is more advanced, a wedding proposal). - "What are you doing here?" "What am I doing here? What are you doing here?!" - "What are you, twelve?" When someone makes or snickers at a particularly puerile dirty joke. Alternately, the age might be "four" if it's Potty Humor or they're throwing a tantrum. Occasionally, other numbers between four and twelve might be used. - "What are your intentions with my daughter?" Bonus if the questioner is cleaning a shotgun. - Parodied in the Friends episode "The One with Phoebe's Wedding". In the lack of any other paternal figures in Phoebe's life, Joey is walking her down the aisle, and spends the episode pretending she is his daughter even though they're the same age. At the rehearsal dinner, he meets with Mike, Phoebe's husband-to-be, and asks, "So what are your intentions with my Phoebe?" - "What are you talking about?" When someone says something stupid, weird, or just plain confusing, this is the response. - "What am I saying?!" When the person is saying it doesn't agree with what he just said and is confused about why he said it. - "What, behind the X?" The classical response is "It IS the X." - "What did I miss?" Usually for when a character shows up after something important or crazy happens. Expect those already there to say "Not much" or something similar. - "What did you say your name was?" "I didn't." Usually used to up a character's mystique, or if the audience knows their name, to show that they're keeping their identity hidden. Also can take the form of "You never told me your name." "No, I didn't." - "What do they have to gain?" The character is considering the exact reason for a suspect's actions, an essential clue. - "What do you mean, 'you people'?" A stock indignant response to any line including the phrase "you people". - "What do you want?"/ "Ah, it's not what I want, it's what you want." Standard opening to the Deal with the Devil. - Subverted in The Proposition: "You want me to kill my brother?" "I want you to kill your brother." - "What's happening to me?" Standard response to a Forced Transformation, Puberty Superpowers, Painful Transformation, and other forms of sudden, unwilling bodily change. - "What's the matter? Can't sleep?" Can be asked sincerely or sardonically. - "What's the worst that could happen?" Given potential for Tempting Fate, usually said sarcastically in response to someone else's bad idea. - There's also "What could go wrong?", which is pretty much always said sarcastically. - Flat "Whatever." Meaning, meh. - "Whatever <Character> is paying you, I'll (double/triple/etc.) it." Used both for rich kidnapping victims and for rich victims of assassins. Neither variant usually works. - Dan Marino in Ace Ventura uses this: "I don't know how much psycho-woman's paying you, but I'll double it." "Forget it. Psycho-woman keeps us out of prison." - Tyrion Lannister of A Song of Ice and Fire does this preemptively when he recruits the sellsword Bronn, saying "And remember, if you get an offer to betray me, I'll double it! I like living!" Bronn actually takes him up on the offer in the final season. - Also seen as: "Whatever <Character> is paying you, it isn't enough." - "Whatever you're gonna do, do it now." - "Whatever you say.": Code for "I don't really believe you but I'm going to half-heartedly pretend I do if it makes you happy." - "What have I ever done to you?" Often used in Bewildering Punishment, but also with villains who are either perfectly aware of what they did or haven't realised that that family they killed earlier was The Hero's. - "What have we here?" - "What have you done, You Monster!?!" - "What if it's a trick?" "What if it's not?" - "What in the name of X is going on here?" where X is usually a Running Gag of the character's interests; i.e. a wrestling fan would put names of famous wrestlers in the place of X. Can be used more generically with "God" or "Hell" in place of X. - "What is the meaning of this?": Usually "this" is either a crime or some madcap situation. - This is the final line of Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad, spoken by Madame Rosepettle to Jonathan after \|\|he kills Rosalie\|\|. - "What kind of fool do you take me for?" Usually followed immediately by "Don't answer that," usually just before the second person actually does. - "What makes you think I know anything about [X]?" Usually a specific kind of Suspiciously Specific Denial. - "What's my motivation?" Typically used to indicate a Classically-Trained Extra or roleplayer who's trying to get far too much depth out of a meaningless part. - "What sorcery is this?!" Usually said by a character from a primitive civilization/time period, usually when confronted by technology, rather than actual magic. - "What's burning?" Someone smells smoke in another room, usually in the kitchen, and there's a good chance of a fire coming into play. - "What's that smell?" If Evil Smells Bad or Signature Scent is in play, this can be used to indicate the presence of a villain/monster, or the presence of Deadly Gas or gasoline. Can also be used to add tension if someone is transporting an object (e.g. a dead body) which they don't want discovered. - "What the hell happened back there?" - "What treachery is this?!" A character realizes that he or she has just been betrayed. - "What, was (X) busy?" Mocking - they must be really running out of options if they sent you. - "What would <character> want with a place like this?" - "What will they think of next?" (Sometimes used sincerely, often used sarcastically.) - "When are we?" The time traveler trying to figure out what year he's landed in. - "Where am I?" — Said by an amnesiac or someone who's just woken up from unconsciousness. - "Where have I heard that voice?" Say hello to the recurring villain. - "Where did you find/get this guy?" - "Who are you, and what have you done with X?": Said to X, after some display of out-of-character behaviour. Often said by mothers after a display of affection or gratitude by their teenaged kid. - "Who the hell are you?" - "Who the hell do you think I am?" — Most prevalent in Gurren Lagann, but you'll find it all over the place, uttered by hot-blooded and/or self-confident characters who just git underestimated. - "Who were you expecting? ( name of noted figure)? Also as "You were expecting maybe ( name of noted figure)? - "Whoever he is, he is no amateur!" What the heroes will say when discovering that the villain in question is acting with Genre Savvy and is obviously professional enough to have thought through his plans to present a real challenge. - "When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much..." The opening of The Talk. Often parodied to explain the existence of Mix-and-Match Critters. - "Where have you been? You missed all the excitement!" Usually said to the one who was secretly the cause of the excitement. Common in the Super Hero genre. - "Where is your sense of adventure?" usually said before a character instigates something reckless and daring. - "Where's your sense of humour?" — Said to someone who disapproves of or doesn't understand a joke or dislikes a situation that was inconvenient but at the same time funny. - Variants of "Who do you think you're fooling?" - "Whoa, there!" A Motor Mouth is interrupted by someone who noticed something that shouldn't have come up. - Or whenever something a little too ambitious is suggested. - "Who said anything about X?" Used when someone has a dark or embarrassing secret about X and thus doesn't want to talk about it. - "Why can't I make you see, Pa? I got music inside of me." The gifted child tries to explain what drives him to his more down-to-earth parent. Variations are common and continue to the present day — see Billy Elliot, for example. - "Why don't you come up to my place?" The classic come-on line (though variations in phrasing are numerous). - "Who turned out the lights?" A character has just been blinded, often by a bucket landing on his head. - "Who wants to know?", or alternatively, "Who's asking?" The classic response of the Private Detective, First-Person Smartass, or The Informant in the Bad-Guy Bar to being asked if they're themselves. Frequently, the character being asked or doing the asking is a Mook for The Don or even the Big Bad. - "Who's 'we'?" Commonly used in place of "You and What Army?" (type 3). - "Why am I Surrounded by Idiots?!": Said by the Big Bad after displays of particular incompetence by his minions. - "Why, I oughta..." Spoken with clenched fist and suppressed rage. - "Will you stop saying (X)?": Usually said because X is unpleasant, or because X reminds them of the bad situation the characters are in. - "With you by my side as queen...": Said by a villainous ruler who has a creepy crush on a heroine. - Why am I not surprised? Usually when something comes up out of the blue, but the character is Genre Savvy enough to know either the habits of the offending character(s) or the rituals of the event in question. Or both. - "Why me?" Often uttered by characters (usually the Deadpan Snarker or Butt-Monkey) when things never seem to go right for them. - "Wild horses couldn't/wouldn't/can't stop me/keep me away." - "Ya gotta believe me!" The Standard Suspect Punch Line, used to end almost every interrogation that includes an unbelievable alibi. - "Yes, I did it, and I'm glad!" Standard line in the Motive Rant, often used by the faithless wife confessing to her husband's murder. - "...yes? no?" Funny Foreigners like to turn declarative sentences into questions by appending this. - "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus". Derived from an 1897 editorial in The New York Sun where a little girl is told that Santa Claus is real in our hearts and minds. It is frequently referenced in Santa's Existence Clause plots (or other stories where the existence of a mythical figure is called into question). - "You and your [annoying trait]" - "You are getting sleepy..." A Standard line used when inducing hypnosis. - Can be said by ANYONE, regardless of whether they are The Hero or the Big Bad. - "You ARE the One!" The usual statement when the most adamant doubter of the The Chosen One is finally convinced. - "You call this X?" - You can stop me any time now...: Said during an increasingly humiliating string of apologies when they realize the person is clearly just letting them go on for their own amusement/vindictiveness. - You Can Take An X Out Of The Y: "You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy." Almost any other noun can take the place of "country" in order to fit this to the current context. - In Calvin and Hobbes, after a successful sneak attack on Calvin, Hobbes says: "You can take the tiger out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the tiger!" - To which Calvin retorts, "The question is, how do you get the tiger back in the jungle?" - "You can't do this!" "I just did!" - "You can't get rid of me that easily." - "You can't imagine..." - "You can't fire me, I quit!" or "You can't quit, you're fired!": A disgruntled employee to an angry boss, or vice versa. Often spoken in tandem. Note that saying this line usually means less juridical hassle to the recipient, so Don't Try This At Work. - "You can't save everyone." Often followed by a grimly determined, "I can try." - "You did all this for me?" - "You did it!" "No... we did it." - "You did what?!" - "You didn't hear this from me." When Character A is giving Character B a warning or information they're not supposed to give. - "You don't believe in anything!" Said, for instance, by Starbuck to Lizzie in The Rainmaker when she persists in calling him out as a Con Man. - "You don't get out much, do you?" Said in response to a blank look or other uncomprehending response to something the speaker feels is well-known or obvious, usually some element of pop culture. - "You don't have to do this!" - "You don't just X Y, you X with Y." - "You don't know how 'x' feels!" - "You go on without me." Typically said by a soldier wounded in battle, or by any other hero stuck in a bad situation. May be preceded by "Don't worry about me." - "You just don't get it, do you?" - "You insolent fool!" - "You had me at X." When the most basic premise of one character's Zany Scheme is cool enough to convince another character to go along with it. - "You had one job." - "You haven't (really) changed at all" may be preceded or followed by: "You're still the same (X)." It could also be said indirectly and not in the face of the recipient, "She/He/They/'X' haven't changed at all." - "You have something on your face." Said either as a way of flirting, or by overbearing relatives to children, who often wipe the kid's face with their own spit. - "You know me better than that." "I thought I did." The most common exchange in a You Know What You Did plot. - "You know what I mean!" The standard irritated response to another character taking a figure of speech literally, or an attempt at exploiting Exact Words, and demanding they then act properly in keeping with the previous statement's intent. - "You look different." Usually said after a character has just gone through rapid Character Development. - "You look like shit." So common, it has its own Fully Automatic Clip Show. "Shit" is also commonly replaced with "death" or "hell", or "...you haven't slept/eaten in [long time]." Occasionally, the person simply says, "You look terrible/awful!" instead. - "You make X look like Y." For when someone so embodies a negative trait (stupidity, cruelty, dullness, etc.) that they make someone famously associated with said trait look like someone else who embodies the opposite trait. - "You may have won this time..." - "You must be mistaking me for someone else..." When someone is brushing off someone who recognizes them for one reason or another, be it Laser-Guided Amnesia or Identical Strangers. - "You never write, you never call." ...So I'm complaining about it face-to-face. - "You okay?" The starting-point for almost every conversation in almost every scene of Lost. - "You sealed your own fate." - "You should have killed me when you had the chance." - "You should see the other guy!" Usually said after a character is badly injured in a fight or 'won' a bet. - Daredevil (2015). When nurse Claire Temple is treating a badly wounded Matt Murdock in her apartment he makes the obligatory quip, only for Claire to reply that she has seen the other guy, as the criminals that Daredevil beat on turn up in her hospital. - The Punisher (2017). Frank Castle sleeps with a female bartender who's shocked at the scars he has. "I mean, you should be...should I see the other guy?" - "You should sit down." — Someone is giving bad news and doesn't want the other person to go into shock. - "You think you're the only person who's ever lost someone!?" - "You took everything from me!" - "You took the words right out of my mouth." - "You want a piece of me?!" - Particularly aggressive characters may reply that they want several pieces. - "You won't get away with this!" "But I already have." Your typical superhero and enemy exchange. Related to Just Between You and Me. - "You would do that, after the way I treated you?" Something a former antagonist would say after being shown a good turn by a hero who s/he was an opponent, indicating against all expectations that they are forgiven. - "You would have done the same." Standard response of a character confronted by their past morally ambiguous actions. - "You wouldn't!" The Phrase Catcher just made a threat s/he's not backing down on. - "You'll be dead before you hit the ground." Variation: "You'll be dead before you can feel it." This phrase is most often used to describe poisons or highly destructive weapons. Specifically, it was used in The Lost World: Jurassic Park to describe a poison. More examples can be added. - "You'll have to do better than that." And then the Phrase Catcher meets the challenge. ("How am I doing now?" might be their verbal counter.) - "You'll never work in this town again!" Originally said by Samuel Goldwyn, the G of MGM. - "You'll pay for this!" The usual threat of a villain while being beaten up by the hero, or at least thwarting the Evil Plan. The hero usually defiantly responds with another punch while saying something like, "How's that for a down payment?" - "You'll thank me later" The usual statement of a Well-Intentioned Extremist to an opposing member of a group favored by the person, when the masterstroke of his/her scheme is about to be done. The typically resistant opponent usually answers with something like "Don't hold your breath." - "You're a dead man! Do you hear me? A dead man!" - "You're a genius!" Usually immediately follows an (inadvertent) "Eureka!" Moment on the part of the hero's friend; neither the friend nor the audience will be told how he's a genius until at least the next scene. House has this reaction pretty much Once an Episode, but rarely actually uses the phrase. - "You're alright." Often said to a Sitcom Archnemesis or some sort of rival who has earned a character's respect in some way. - "You're dead! I killed you!" Often said by a villain to someone who is Not Quite Dead, or who has been brought Back from the Dead in some form (such as a cyborg or undead). - "You're fired." "No need. I quit." - Alternately, You cant fire me, slaves have to be sold. - "You're going to do X, and you're going to like it!" - "You're joking, right?": Usually, it turns out that the other person was emphatically not joking. - "You're not leaving the house dressed like that!" Standard line of a Boyfriend-Blocking Dad to a Bratty Teenage Daughter about to go out partying. - "You're not going anywhere!" - "You're not real! You're just in my head!": Said either to a hallucination, or someone (usually someone supernatural) that they think is a hallucination. - "You're not the boss of me!" - "You're one to talk" saying that they're a hypocrite for critizing a trait they themselves have - "You're pregnant?! How did this happen? Well, I know how, but..." - Stage example: Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. In the third act, Gladys Antrobus, depicted in the first two acts as in her early teens, turns up with a baby: Sabina's reaction is a stunned, "Where did you get it? — Forget I asked! After all these months in camp, I've forgotten how to behave." (There is a war on: she's just realized that Gladys could be married, could be widowed, could be a rape victim, or might indeed have been a camp follower like Sabina herself.) - This also shows up in Veronica Mars, though Veronica's talking to Duncan about \|\|Meg's (and Duncan's) child.\|\| - "You're probably all wondering why I called you here today." Usually immediately subject to an I Always Wanted to Say That. - "You're really starting to piss me off." - "You're weird. I'm <really strange thing>, but it's you that's weird." The dark grey pot tells the kettle that it's really, really black. - "You see if it doesn't!" Used when someone is suggesting something will go wrong, but nobody is taking much notice of their concerns. - "You still have family in The Old Country, don't you?" Standard lead-in to a threat/blackmail attempt by an enemy agent in a World War II or Cold War setting. - "You've got til noon to leave Santa Fe." Or there's going to be one heck of a gunfight at the climax of the film. - "You've been hurt!" Or just "____, you're hurt!" - Often followed by "It's nothing." Then they generally stumble or pass out. - "You want him? Come and get him!" - "You want to try that again?" Alternately, "Dare you to try that again." Get ready to get your ass kicked. - "You were saying?" Tempting Fate during Rock Bottom is not an uncommon catalyst. - "You were thinking it." Usually uttered after a character protests that they never said X about someone/something (examples: Diego says this to Sid in the first Ice Age movie, Mike says this to Sully in the teaser for Monsters, Inc.). A variation is a character saying something very weird and/or tasteless, and in response to the looks of shock or disgust, protests "Oh come on, you were thinking it too!" - "You weren't so bad yourself." - "You wouldn't hit a lady (would you)?" Said by a female who sees her male companion taken down in a fight. And sometimes answered, "You're no lady!" Upon which she is promptly knocked out cold with one good blow.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtherStockPhrases
Ostentatious Secret - TV Tropes "The secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything." So you want to have a secret. You may not even be sure what the secret is. You are pretty sure, though, that you want everyone to know that there is a secret. That you have. That everyone else doesn't have. Because it is yours. And you have it. Sometimes ostentatious secrets are eventually revealed, and sometimes they stay that way forever. This can be just a Running Gag, or it can be source of dramatic tension as a MacGuffin. In fact, their primary use is as a MacGuffin, reserved for use in a B-Story, or possibly even a "C"-story, a narrative thread that is around just to build continuity. One problem is that secrets tend to build up to a Secret Critical Mass. After this point, the obsession of others to discover the secret far outweighs any potential dramatic payoff from The Reveal, and it requires some extremely deft Playing with a Trope to avoid an Anti-Climax. The Ancient Tradition and the Ancient Conspiracy are often ostentatious secrets: their existence can be widely known, and membership may also be, though it's less common. Contrast the Open Secret and Everybody Knew Already, both where not only is the existence of the secret well-known, but everybody knows the secret itself. ## Examples: - In one The Kindaichi Case Files story, a woman carries around a small box that she coos over and talks to, treating it like a child. Subverted when \|\|she reveals she's an undercover cop, and the box holds her gun. Doubly subverted when she reveals that the box only held the gun that one time, and that she still has her REAL box\|\|. - In Slayers, the motives of Xellos are always a secret. In one manga chapter, two nobles have a secret box they keep sending back and forth to each other. It eventually turns out to contain a diary which they use to exchange shallow gossip. - Calvin and Hobbes, at the start of the first Get Rid Of Slimy girlS club arc: Calvin: Good news, Hobbes! I'm starting a secret club, and you can be in it! Hobbes: Oh, boy! Calvin: It'll be great! We'll think of secret names for ourselves, secret codes for our secret correspondence, a secret handshake... We'll have a secret club-house with a secret knock to get in, and we'll do big secretive things! Hobbes: Why all the secrecy? Calvin: People pay more attention to you when they think you're up to something. - In another strip, Calvin pulls this in Show and Tell. He loudly declares that he's not showing the class what he brought, and declares that it'll haunt them for the rest of their lives. - The mysterious blue box in the David Lynch film Mulholland Dr., which has a matching blue key. It is shown to open once or twice, though the Mind Screw makes it hard to tell what if anything is going on. - The Prestige: Borden's cryptic comment in the page quote alludes to his own secret: \|\|He is an identical twin. Not very impressive on its own. The trick he uses it for? The Transported Man, wherein he appears to be teleported instantly across the stage. The trick works so well because no one knows the secret. Not even one twin's wife or the other's lover.\|\| - Marsellus Wallace's briefcase in Pulp Fiction, the contents of which are described as beautiful, are never known to the audience. Wild Mass Guessing ensues. - According to this article, it was originally just diamonds, but they decided that an ostentatious secret would be more interesting. - Another one involving Marsellus is the bandage on the back of his neck. Ving Rhames has a scar that they were unable to cover up with make-up, so they put a bandage on it instead. Of course, the bandage ends up standing out a lot more than the scar would have, and it's led people to think that it's meant to show the spot where his soul was ripped out, his soul being one of the guesses for the contents of the briefcase. It's a mystery as to why the cast even went through the trouble of covering it up, since it certainly wouldn't be unusual for a mobster to have scars. - Dave Barry Slept Here, Richard Nixon campaigned in 1968 on his secret plan to end The Vietnam War, "but of course he couldn't tell the voters what it was, because then it couldn't have been a secret plan." Immediately upon being elected, Nixon has the secret peace plan buried to protect the national security, though he could have had it dug up and implemented at any time. - A running question in Emma Lathen's novels about banker/amateur detective John Putnam Thatcher is what's in that tin box in his secretary's desk? Thatcher is too much the gentleman to peek when Miss Corsa is elsewhere, but that doesn't interfere with his attempts to deduce the solution. - Formed the focus of an episode of Dharma & Greg. Greg has a locked mystery box and Dharma is torn between her curiosity at wanting to know what's inside and her love for Greg, whose trust she doesn't want to betray. Greg realizes that the box is driving Dharma nuts, so he first gives Dharma the key, so she can decide for herself whether to invade his privacy. This drives Dharma even crazier, so Greg empties it and puts the stuff away in their apartment without telling Dharma what was in there. At the end of the episode, Dharma is sitting on the couch in their apartment and concludes that she is in the box! Very Zen. Or something. - Felicity used this with Felicity's witchy roommate Meghan, who made a big issue of no one having permission to look in her locked box. In this case the box was used as a running gag and its contents were never revealed, although there was a Formula-Breaking Episode styled after The Twilight Zone (1959) in which it was intimated that all the series regulars were actually trapped in a magical universe within the box. - This is apparently one of Odin's powers. As Neil Gaiman put it in American Gods: "And I know an 18th charm & that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that nobody knows but you is the most powerful thing of all." - Also, whatever Odin whispered in his son Baldur's ear as he, Baldur, lay on his funeral pyre. Odin would use that secret to best Vafthrudnir in a Riddle Contest. - In The Order of the Stick, the unnamed and unidentified "Monster in the Darkness" is a living Ostentatious Secret. The main villain of the series keeps him shrouded in darkness, despite its constant objections. He is kept shrouded in order to keep him a secret before his final climactic confrontation with the heroes — he's even been held back from fighting them (despite apparently being extremely powerful) because revealing himself at that point in time wouldn't have been narratively climactic enough. - V's gender would qualify for this as well. - A meta-example for Gargoyles is whatever Titania whispers to Fox at the end of "The Gathering". Creator Greg Weisman has said that he wants to keep it secret in case he ever gets to make the series again and use it, but admits that it's not as great as people are probably hoping. - Spongebob Squarepants, "The Secret Box": SpongeBob tests his friendship with Patrick to the limits when he tries to learn the contents of Patrick's "secret box", and eventually resorts to sneaking into Pat's house in the dead of night. It turns out to be... \|\|a string. After SpongeBob leaves, it turns out that pulling the string opens a secret compartment, with an embarrassing photo of SpongeBob in it, specifically from the Christmas party (which is actually one of the guesses Spongebob made at the contents of the box).\|\|. - Robin's incredibly important stolen briefcase in Teen Titans is revealed to contain \|\|_____________\|\|. - In general, intelligence agencies seems to have a bit of a fetish for prominent architecture. The CIA has the George Bush Center, the NSA has that sinister black monolith at Fort Meade (Which is engraved with a variety of messages encrypted by different methods. One of the messages is only known by two people, the man who invented the algorithm and the man who chose the message to encrypt and engraved it on the monolith), MI6 has 85 Vauxhall Cross, GCHQ has that doughnut-shaped building in Cheltenham, the NKVD and KGB has the Lubyanka Building in Moscow. All together, it does project a vague "come at me, bro" attitude to their enemies. - Though apparently, in the case of British intelligence services at least, the only reason that they haven't moved is that they haven't found anywhere that's both large enough and anonymous enough to suit their purposes. Which is very believable, since MI5 didn't officially exist until 1989, GCHQ and MI6 until 1994, and none of them came out of the shadows by choice.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OstentatiousSecret
Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous - TV Tropes Ray: It's a girl. Egon: It's Gozer. Winston: I thought Gozer was a man. Egon: It's whatever it wants to be. Whenever you see a demon, god, or someone or something else otherworldly you'd expect it to be easy to tell if it is a man or a woman. But when they have qualities of both? Or lacks qualities of either? Or can change from one to another with neither being the confirmed default? They are Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous. There might be reasons why or how the demon, spirit, etc., is a hermaphrodite, can change sex, etc., be it either magical corruption, or the creators didn't want to give the character a definitive sex, so they made them ambiguous. Sometimes it's just a striking detail that reminds the audience that this individual isn't a mundane creature, and that the shape they're in now might just be A Form You Are Comfortable With. Much as Discount Lesbians and Female Angel, Male Demon, non-binary audiences often accuse this trope of having Unfortunate Implications, due to implying that the "non-male-non-female-ness" of these characters is due to their lack of humanity. See also No Biological Sex, Hermaphrodite, Voluntary Shapeshifting, Non-Human Non-Binary, Non-Humans Lack Attributes, and Ambiguous Gender. May cross over with Shapeshifters Do It for a Change. Subtrope to Speculative Fiction LGBT. ## Examples: - The angel that appears in the anime of Black Butler is capable of changing sex. So what appears to be two separate characters \|\|Angela and Ash\|\| are actually the same angel's male and female forms. The angel also is against the concept of beings being divided into separate genders, and goes so far as to fuse \|\|Ciel's parents\|\| together as some manner of constructed being for this purpose. - In Devilman, Satan is shown to be a hermaphrodite, having both male genitals and female breasts. In DEVILMAN crybaby, Satan also has a more androgynous-sounding voice courtesy of Ayumu Murase. - Envy the shapeshifting homunculus from Fullmetal Alchemist is androgynous to the point where they are always posed in ways that make it essentially impossible to tell if they have breasts. Their true form is a tiny slug thing, so they appear to be truly genderless. Truth is similarly often humanoid but a featureless version of the person talking to it, so its gender is impossible to discern. - Crimvael, better known as Crim to everyone, of Interspecies Reviewers is a hermaphrodite angel whose body is so androgynous that he has to present as male to keep his Loveable Sex Maniac friends off of him. - \|\|The Holy Sword\|\| from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is unsure of their own gender when asked and their physical sex changes every time they try to check. - Apos from Mnemosyne, the Guardian of Yggdrasil, is an intersexed man (that is to say, identifies as male), and it's suggested that he has both functioning sets of genitalia, given that he qualifies as both male and female according to the laws of magic in that world. - Ashura, the god of war from RG Veda, is stated to have No Biological Sex. This is justified as it's the result of a curse that will keep the Ashura clan from continuing, and they're actually treated as both male and female in the series. The English dub of the OVA series completely glossed over this and just called Ashura "Princess" leading to confusion in the west for a long time until the rest of the manga was translated. - The goddess Kanzeon Bosatsu from Saiyuki is a female-presenting hermaphrodite, as noted by the author in a between-chapters illustration. - Yubel from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is a dragon spirit who has a body divided into a masculine half (with pronounced muscles, a flat chest, and a taloned foot) and a feminine half (breast tissue and a foot with what looks like a natural stiletto heel). They also alternate between a high-pitched feminine voice and a deeper masculine voice before settling on one that fits androgynously in the middle. (The dub ignored this and made them completely female - probably so that their romance with the main character wouldn't come off as gay.) - Defenders (2021): The personification of the fourth multiverse was, in their prior mention in The Ultimates, said to be male, but on making an appearance in the flesh (figuratively speaking) the fourth Eternity looks feminine, much like how Cloud of the Defenders starts identifying as genderfluid. - The Mighty Thor: The third Loki (God of Mischief, Chaos and Stories) can change their apparent gender at will. Their shapeshifting powers (unlike the first Loki's) are limited to aspects of their own personality, the very fact that they can do these forms shows that they're genderqueer. They also have the tendency to flirt indiscriminately. - In Miracleman, the alien Warpsmiths are multi-dimensional, and ultimately genderless beings, who have sex in ways that defy anything resembling biology on Earth. - Desire from The Sandman (1989) is the personification of lust, and so they can be a man, woman, or both, depending on whom the viewer finds the most attractive. - The Presence from Supergirl: Wings is always referred to as "Hair" pronouns. - The Prince of Egypt portrays God as the burning bush with a primarily male voice (who's played by Val Kilmer, the same actor as Moses, possibly symbolizing how God is speaking through him rather than to him) with a whispery female voice layered into it to invoke this. The creators also intended to have a child's voice in there as well until it got nixed in production for sounding way more demonic than they intended. - Aleister Crowley of A Certain Magical Index is a Historical Domain Character famous for being an occultist, a ceremonial magician and the founder of the Thelema religion, who in real life looked like this,◊ but in the series looks like this,◊ complete with a visible bustline. The novels describe him as androgynous, so much so that he cannot be described as conclusively male or female, at least based on his looks. - The Ghost of Christmas Past from A Christmas Carol. In most adaptations, it's made either a woman or a small child (of either gender), but the book never establishes what it is, in any sense of the word. Indeed, it shifts and flickers in appearance constantly in the book, not just in terms of gender but also growing and losing body parts at random. - In The Dark Tower, the demon who had sex with Roland in the first book and raped Susannah in the third book could change sexes. - In Dragon Bones the god Aetherveon is called "he", but when he talks to the protagonist by taking over the body one of them, he speaks with a "voice that could belong to a woman, man, or child", and later changes voices, so it is likely that the gender is just assigned by mortals who don't have gender-neutral pronouns. - The Dresden Files: - In Turn Coat, after losing a Curb-Stomp Battle to a skinwalker and wondering whether he should use "he" when talking about it, Harry asks Bob for the correct pronoun. Bob tells him that the question is irrelevant since the shapeshifter has no definitive gender, and afterwards Harry uses "it". Despite the genderless pronoun being justified "It" Is Dehumanizing is still in effect because the skinwalker is lacking in any sort of humanity or redeeming qualities. - There is also some question about the correct pronouns to use concerning the Corpsetaker, who exists pretty much only as a body-jumping mind. Since the Corpsetaker seems to prefer taking female bodies, consensus has come down on female. \|\|It is also heavily implied that the being that would become the Corpsetaker started existence as a female Native American witch, given that this is the appearance of their ghost when they are seen sans a body.\|\| - Forest Kingdom: At one point in the Hawk & Fisher spinoff series book 3 ( The God Killer), Hawk and Fisher come face to face with an androgynous demon called up by decadent young nobles. Unfortunately for its summoners, it started draining their lifeforce to sustain itself, until the title characters deactivated the spell and sent it back to where it came from. - In Good Omens, it is stated that angels and demons are normally sexless, unless they really want not to be. Both otherworldly protagonists take the form of human males, though. - Flinx is perplexed by the (lack of) gender or familial relationships among the furcots in Mid-Flinx of Humanx Commonwealth, as Teal insists that they're not male, not female, and the young ones aren't offspring of the adult. \|\|In this case, it's because furcots are asexual Planimals "born" by budding from They-Who-Keep trees, as revealed in the previous novel Midworld.\|\| - Mallory from Jacob's Ladder Trilogy exhibits physical traits of both men and women and the narration goes to great lengths to avoid gendered pronouns. This is possibly due to Mallory having \|\|a whole bunch of dead people\|\| rattling around inside the brain. - In Konosuba, Vanir makes the claim that demons are genderless beings. At least in Vanir's case he's a spirit tethered to a mask, and he's able to shapeshift his projected body at will. He also shows no hang ups with possessing the bodies of female adventurers if it suits his purposes. \|\|In one amusing incident he transforms into the form of a succubus, and participates in a beauty contest. The men in the crowd are understandably disturbed when he reveals his true identity to them.\|\| - Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away. Roze-Kattee, the God of Love and Madness, is a hermaphrodite with a hideous appearance: a humanoid covered with shaggy, coarse hair, blazing yellow-white eyes brighter than daylight and pointed ears. - In Neverwhere the angels are genderless, and are referred to as "it". "It" Is Dehumanizing is averted, however, as the pronoun is applied to one angel by another angel, who uses it in a perfectly matter-of-fact way. Neil Gaiman said in the commentary of the TV series that they wanted an androgynous looking actor or actress to play Islington but they couldn't find one and ended up settling for Peter Capaldi. The BBC Radio adaptation also gave up and went with Benedict Cumberbatch, whose deep voice could never be anything but male. Despite this, characters still refer to Islington as "it". - Nightside: One book features a self-fertilizing artificial Humanoid Abomination created by Dr. Frankenstein. - No Game No Life has Tet, the god of games (and, being the only surviving god, the de facto ruler of Disboard), who appears in the form of a pink-haired, pink-clothed, ambiguously-gendered child. - In Operation Chaos, succubi (female demons that seduce men) and incubi (male demons that seduce women) are actually a single kind of demon that changes its form according to whom it is attempting to seduce. - The Reynard Cycle: In Carcosa, the robotic Lotos seller's voice is described as being neither male nor female. - Secret Histories: Features the omnisexualized Lady Faire, also created by Dr. Frankenstein, who had a serious kinky streak in the Greenverse. - In A Song of Ice and Fire, one of the faces of the Faith of the Seven, called The Stranger, is neither male nor female and signifies death. - The Space Trilogy: The final book, That Hideous Strength, has spirits in it that have genders, but do not have sexes in the biological sense. A quote about the Oyarsa of Jupiter and the Oyarsa of Saturn: The three gods who had already met in the Blue Room were less unlike humanity than the two whom they still awaited. In [Mercury] and Venus and [Mars] were represented those two of the Seven Genders which bear a certain analogy to the biological sexes and can therefore be in some measure understood by men. It would not be so with those who were now preparing to descend. These also doubtless had their genders, but we have no clue to them. - Tales from Netheredge has \|\|Jewel, a sun god who lives pleasurably in the Harem as a High Class Sex Worker and presents as a sexually ambiguous person as part of his note : he doesn't have a preference for specific pronouns, but most characters settle on "he/him" appeal.\|\| - Referenced in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol novel, The Shield of Time. Time Patrol agent Manse Everard masquerades as an angel to warn a Medieval knight against a choice that would cause a Bad Future. The knight suspects something fishy is up. As was common in those days, the knight believes angels are sexless beings, so he proves Manse isn't an angel by grabbing his groin. - On Babylon 5, the Centauri deity of sex was a fusion of male ("tentacles") and female ("receptors") parts. - Some of the demons in the Buffyverse are of ambiguous gender, though most of them are not. One episode of Angel has the gang meet Lorne's family and mistakenly assume his mother is a male, as she has a deep voice and full beard (and is played by a man). - Doctor Who: - The Sufficiently Advanced Alien Kronos in "The Time Monster" is referred to by male pronouns, as was his counterpart in Greek Mythology, and depicted in a masculine paper bird costume... er, humanoid bird form. At the end of the story, she appears as a sort of massive shining woman and explains to Jo that she is whatever she wants to be. - Subverted in "The Hand of Fear", when the Kastrian Eldrad regenerates from a severed hand into a glittering, androgynous female alien with a queenly bearing and claims of god-level scientific achievements, leading the audience (and even the Doctor) to read her as this sort of character. After the Doctor goes out of his way to take her in the TARDIS back to her own planet, we find out that he merely took on a tough feminine form because his regeneration was modelled after Sarah Jane, the first human he saw - when he is injured and regenerates into the male body which is apparently normal for Kastrians, he becomes a dull, thuggish, hollering idiot that the Doctor easily outwits. Sarah even tells the Doctor, "I quite liked her, but I couldn't stand him." - Game of Thrones: The Seven Gods consist of a male trinity (Father, Warrior, Smith), a female trinity (Mother, Maiden, Crone), and the Stranger (Death) who is neither. - In Good Omens (2019), as in the book, all supernatural characters are technically sexless, though most appear to present with a specific gender. Beelzebub and Pollution are explicitly non-binary, while Crowley seems to regularly flip between male and female presentation across time periods (including the disguise as "Nanny Ashtoreth"), and God is voiced by Frances McDormand. - In The Sandman (2022) features Desire and Lucifer. Desire is non-binary character played by a non-binary actor. Lucifer, a traditionally male character, is played by a female actor, but dressed in a stylized but androgynous outfit and hairstyle. - The Metrons in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Arena" have an androgynous appearance and wear a shimmering dress-like garment. - The angels in Supernatural are genderless, and while they take human vessels, the gender of the vessel seems unimportant to most angels. - Wagyl from Noongar mythology is an intersex being to emphasise their role as a Fertility God. Consequently the nightmarish mess of an umbrella term that is the "rainbow serpent" often is cited as intersex despite this notion coming from this specific god (others like Yingarna from Gunwinggu mythology are explicitly female or male in the case of her son Ngalyod). - Satan in Tarot Motifs is often depicted as being a hermaphrodite. - Although the Judeo-Christian God is usually referred to by male personal pronouns, this is more convention than canon. Several Biblical verses show God identifying with roles which western culture would generally consider feminine. Most languages (English included) do not have any gender-neutral personal pronouns and God was referred to as "He" because most societies in which the Bible was written were patriarchal. It's not impossible to find instances of medieval Christianity where people have visions of Jesus breastfeeding them, or other things that seem bizarre by most modern standards. - Inari Okami, the Shinto God of fertility, rice, agriculture, foxes, industry and worldly success, is generally considered to be neither male nor female, though like YHWH, masculine or feminine aspects are often emphasized depending on the context and the region. This is true for many other Kami as well. - Angels and demons in Christianity are sometimes considered to be sexless because they don't reproduce in Heaven or Hell and so would not need to be male or female. The Bible always refers to them as male, but at least for angels, this is considered to be for similar reasons as God, as mentioned above. "The sons of god," who are often but not always interpreted to be angels note : The other common interpretation is that it's referring to Seth's lineage, sired the Nephilim, which some say is evidence that at least some of them are actually male, or were at the time capable of "shapeshifting" the necessary equipment when taking human form. It's generally not considered a important issue in Christianity, but is still debated. Androgynous depictions of angels were also popular in medieval art, a phenomenon sometimes attributed to an association between angels and court eunuchs in Byzantine culture (in an inversion of Eunuchs Are Evil—though the straight version of that trope also existed alongside the more angelic and pure perceptions of eunuchs). - Egyptian Mythology: - The Egyptian god Hapi is generally considered male (including having one or more wives), but is also pictured with breasts to represent his ability to nurture and feed people (he's a god of the Nile). - In general the vast majority of the gods have both male and female forms (even gods seen as "masculine" in the modern lenses like Horus and Ra), a short hand sign for their vastness and multi-facted nature (and, more pragmatically, tying local gods to state favoured ones). - Even with that in mind, the Aten, Akhenaten's infamous favourite, is almost completely referred to in gender neutral language, fully emphasising its all-encompassing nature and distance from humanity. - The Hittite sun goddess is usualy conceptualised as female; however she is also "the mother and father of the gods" and the sun is thought to be male during the day in Hittite theology. She was syncretised with several ostensibly male solar deities across Anatolia. - Medieval legends had devils called succubi who raped men in their sleep, causing Nocturnal Emission, and incubi who raped women, which could result in pregnancy. However, under a belief that demons could not create life, later versions suggested that the two demons were actually the same thing — succubi had sex with men, collecting their semen, then changed sex to become incubi, using that human semen when they had sex with women. Sometimes the semen was even altered by demonic contact, so that offspring from encounters between women and incubi would be demonic too. - Jewish Lore: As a divine being, God is viewed as transcending physical form, and therefore has no gender, but due to the structure of the Hebrew language, is often addressed in the male (or occasionally the female) second person during prayer (depending on the liturgy). - In the original telling of Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld, two androgynous creatures are used to rescue Inanna from her sister Ereshkigal, the goddess of death, (who is angry with her for killing her first husband note : Why he wouldn't be down in The Underworld with his wife, and therefore what the problem is, is never explained.). In the Babylonian version (where she is known as Ishtar), the two creatures are merged into one Hermaphrodite being, which Ereshkigal cannot comprehend. - Dungeons & Dragons: - Demogorgon, a.k.a. the Prince of Demons, is a hermaphrodite. He also looks like a two-headed monkey with tentacles for arms. - Malcanthet, a.k.a. the Succubus Queen. Malcanthet uses illusion, pheromones, etc., to make herself attractive to beings of all species and sexes, but some know her true nature and seek her out for that. - Elven deities - Corellon Larethian is the leader of the elvish pantheon. He is known to appear in both male and female forms. - Hanali Celanil normally appears as a female, but has appeared as a male on rare occasions. - Labelas Enoreth can appear as male, female, both or neither. - The gnome deity Urdlen appears as a huge mole that is neuter and sexless. - The Book of Erotic Fantasy, an Open Game License splat adding rules for sex to Dungeons & Dragons, has the deity of passion and lust as a hermaphrodite. - Dragon magazine #24 "Choir Practice at the First Church of Lawful Evil (Orthodox): The ramifications of alignment". Several deities fit this trope: Cyrullia, who appears as a beautiful hemaphrodite, Slarsken Obel who appears as a man most of the time but as a woman in matriarchal societies, and Demyuritas, who appears as a stunningly beautiful youth who can be either male or female. - 1st Edition Dragon Lance Adventures supplement. The section "Gender and the Gods" says that it's not entirely clear which gender each of the deities is because legends speak of them appearing as either gender at different times. For example, Takhisis is said to appear as the female Dark Temptress or the male Dark Warrior. - Role Aids supplement Witches. The Powers worshipped by Faerie witches can appear as either male or female. In their true form they are neither. - Eberron: The Traveler is said to be a shapeshifting Trickster God with no specific default gender. - Planescape: In the supplement Faces of Evil: The Fiends, it's revealed that Yugoloths/Daemons, the Neutral Evil fiends, are universally hermaphrodites regardless of their appearance. Meanwhile, the Chaotic Evil Tanar'ri/Demons can change sex at will but most simply choose male or female and stick with it rather than changing regularly. - Exalted: Luna, the main God of the Moon. Female pronouns are used to refer to her, but given that she is the patron of Voluntary Shapeshifting and of tricksters, she appears as male and female equally often (sometimes with aspects of both — she has appeared before as a heavily pregnant young man). - In Nomine: - Celestials predate the existence of biological life by a fair margin and do not typically reproduce the way animals or humans do. Consequently, with some exceptions, angels and demons treat gender more as a personal affectation than anything else, useful for dealing with mortals or if you like the aesthetic but of little intrinsic personal importance. It's common for celestials to casually change gender presentation over time — Gabriel, for instance, used to mostly prefer male vessels but now mainly appears as a woman — and most never bother to pick a specific gender at all. - This is averted by ethereal spirits, who typically strongly lean towards mortal genders. The reason is that, unlike the primordial and often inhuman celestials, ethereals are the living manifestations of human thoughts and beliefs. As a result, even generic ethereals are strongly influenced by human thought patterns, while specific ones — such as the pagan gods — by definition manifest with the traits, including sex and gender, given to them in the stories that they originate from. - Mage: The Awakening: Having ascended to godlike archetypes of tyranny and domination, the Exarchs no longer have genders, and are referred to with alternating pronouns. The one exception is the Father, who presents himself as the ultimate patriarch. - Magic: The Gathering: Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver is a Planeswalker and Humanoid Abomination who specializes in bringing people's worst nightmares to life. Ashiok is confirmed by Word of God to be of Ambiguous Gender. - Pathfinder: - Gozreh is an ancient, primal deity of the elements and fury of nature, and has no set gender — he is as likely to appear as a sky goddess as she is to appear as a sea god. - Arshea the Empyreal Lord of freedom, physical beauty and sexuality, has a form that "suggests the best traits of both the masculine and the feminine" and who the text refuses to give any pronouns at all, referring to Arshea by name or title only. - RuneQuest: One deity is either male (Rashoran) or female (Rashorana), depending on the myth. - Scion: In the second edition, Loki is referred to with they/them pronouns. While they were born biologically male, they are comfortable with either gender. - Unknown Armies. The Mystic Hermaphrodite archetype is the embodiment of magick. It represents not just men and women, but other dualities as well: love and hate, war and peace, and killing and mercy. It grants its Avatars the ability to switch genders at will at a high enough level (though if they suffer a Critical Failure on the roll, they become a hermaphrodite and can't change back — unless they were born intersexed). Its Godwalker, the Freak, is referred to as "they" because they never stay the same gender for very long. - Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, and Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. The Chaos God Slaanesh has a nasty habit of sending hermaphroditic daemons at people. Not to mention being one itself. By default, Humans speak of it as a god, Eldar speak of it as a goddess ("She who thirsts"). - Technically all of the Chaos Gods are genderless, being abstract concepts and all. It's just that most of them are referred to in male terms and don't have female characteristics to suggest otherwise. - Elisabeth: - In the original German/Austrian production, Death, per the likes of Uwe Kröger and Máté Kamarás, is this trope coupled with Mystical White Hair. - Casting directors seem to have given up after Mark Seibert was chosen for the role. Death's entire look had to be changed to Hell-Bent for Leather in order to accommodate Seibert - his understudies and replacements follow suit. In their defense, they did try to stuff him into the earlier Death costume. It wasn't exactly flattering. The Mystical White Hair got downgraded to the actors' natural light blond hair, though the lighting makes it look white. - In the Takarazuka Revue productions, all characters - including Death - are played by actresses. Asaka Manato's Death costume is also Hell-Bent for Leather, probably inspired by the aforementioned change. - Eden in The Binding of Isaac, an alter-ego of the eponymous Isaac who gets randomly generated stats each time, and represents purity and possibility. While most of Isaac's alter-egos have a gender (some male, some female), Eden is explicitly stated to be genderless. - Zariel in Brawlhalla is an angel from Elysium who outright states on their bio "Mortal or angel, male or female I am above such primitive distinctions. And they look the part with an androgynous look that remains even in their alternate skins. - Control, with its plot revolving around The Men in Black running an Artifact Collection Agency, naturally features a good number of cosmic horrors from beyond our reality, including some friendly ones; and some of these cosmic horrors, like The Board and FORMER, explicitly or implicitly exist outside the concept of sex and gender simply because of how incomprehensible they are. Interestingly, some other eldritch presences in the game are aversions; for example, another of them - Polaris - is always referred to as female. - The Ultarians from Cthulhu Saves the World are green-furred felinoid aliens who are described by Paws, one of their members, as each having their own gender. Paws also tells Cthulhu's party that, for convenience, they can refer to him in particular as, well, "he". - The Despair Embodied in Devil May Cry 2 is able to freely shapeshift between a male and female form, depending on its weapon of choice; the male uses a Flaming Sword, while the female brandishes a whip. - Diablo: - According to Word of God, demons are genderless. Diablo's description in Heroes of the Storm outright says his gender is malleable. Within the games, Diablo's physiology is based partly on that of its mortal host. - Whereas the angels are always clearly male or female, as signified by their armor (and voices), demons are as likely to resemble a mass of spikey tentacles as any recognizable creature, and so applying gender to them is somewhat futile. Nevertheless, some are distinctly female (Andariel, Lilith, Cydaea, all succubi), which helps to explain how they were able to found a race of mortals by "comingling" with angels without requiring large amounts of Brain Bleach for the audience. What good these traits served before humans existed is another question. - Spirits and demons in Dragon Age don't really have genders. In particular, Desire Demons take on a distinctly feminine form, but this is only to appeal to potential victims, and two such demons are referred to with male pronouns. - In The Elder Scrolls series, this is technically true of most of the series' various deities, who are essentially genderless spirits. Most will take A Form You Are Comfortable With when dealing with mortals, however, and most stick to presenting as just one sex. A few exceptions to note: - Among the Daedric Princes, the et'Ada ("original spirits") who did not participate in the creation of Mundus, the mortal realm, several are known to change gender in different appearances. Boethiah, the Daedric Prince of Plots, has appeared variously as male or female. Even Boethiah's followers will sometimes refer to them with different pronouns in the same sentence. Mephala, a Daedric Prince whose sphere is obscured to mortals but is associated with manipulation and lies, is said to be a hermaphrodite, but is typically referred to as female. Hermaeus Mora, the Daedric Prince of Knowledge (specializing in eldritch knowledge), doesn't even try to resemble anything with a gender (although generally speaks with a deep male voice). - Y'ffre, the Bosmeri "God of the Forest" and the "Spirit of the Now", was one of the strongest of the et'Ada and is said to be the first to transform into the Ehlnofey, the "Earth Bones", which allowed for the laws of physics, nature, and life on Nirn. Different stories refer to Y'ffre as variously male or female. - Fate/Grand Order: - The gender of Romulus=Quirinus is simply marked as "-" due to the fact that now that Romulus has been conceptualized as the ultimate being, characteristics that would apply to living beings or positions on Earth no longer apply to them. That being said, since they are still Romulus, they are treated with more of a masculine leaning. - Sorcerer Amakusa calls \|\|Beast VII\|\| "him" as he thinks it's Satan, but it later appears as the \|\|female Olga Marie, whose connection to it remains ambiguous. Since it didn't have a proper body until Olympus and it intended to use a Tree as its body, it's likely gender doesn't apply to the Foreign God.\|\| - Final Fantasy: - The Cloud of Darkness from Final Fantasy III takes on an unmistakably feminine form, but "she" refers to "herself" using the Royal "We", and as an undying personification of the Void likely has no actual gender or sex. More prominent in her Dissidia Final Fantasy appearance, where in the sequel game exclusively calls the Cloud "it". - Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII was originally scripted to appear with feminine curves when his naked body is seen, to allude to his resemblance to his mother Jenova. This was eventually cut due to a desire to make Sephiroth conventionally attractive. - Adel in Final Fantasy VIII, a powerful sorceress imprisoned in space, is female but has a masculine body. - The pixies of Shadowbringers in Final Fantasy XIV are androgynous in appearance, and all use they/them pronouns. Feo Ul, the first of the fae that the Player Character meets, is referred to only in this manner for the entire game. This even extends to Titania, King of the Fairies. Despite wearing a long flowery dress and being distinctly more feminine in appearance, Titania is also referred to only with they/them pronouns. - Final Fantasy XVI's antagonist, \|\|Ultima\|\| certainly qualifies. Though voiced by a male actor across all languages, the character is referred to with neutral pronouns (they/them or even "it") and has a physical appearance with both masculine and feminine traits. - In Hades, most of the Greek gods identify as either male or female, but Chaos is the notable exception. Chaos has a bizarre and androgynous appearance, speaks with a masculine and feminine voice simultaneously, and is referred to using they/them pronouns. Nyx calls them both her mother and her father. - Minogame from Hellsinker is a sort of artificial god and his gender ambiguousness is constantly brought up as well as being a hermaphrodite. He is as a result always referred to as a male for convenience sake. - In Mother 3, the Magypsies, whose only "life goal" is protecting the Seven Needles \|\|and who die when the Needle they must protect is pulled off\|\|, are described in-game as neither men nor women. - The titular character in Ori and the Blind Forest is never referred to using singular pronouns, only ever plural pronouns when referring to Ori and their Exposition Fairy Sein. Ori's kind don't sexually reproduce, but they are usually referred to using gendered pronouns, making Ori a unique case in universe. - In Pokémon, extraterrestrial Pokémon Deoxys, Jirachi, Solrock, Lunatone, Staryu and Starmie are genderless. - Shin Megami Tensei: - Satan in the art used until Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse has clearly visible breasts, despite otherwise being masculine. - Persona 3: The Nyx Avatar. \|\|It is a Cosmic Entity who is referred as female and 'mother' multiple times in the game, but both of its human incarnation, Pharos and Ryoji, were male. When it shows up as the final boss, it's a quite androgynous being, with Ryoji's head and chest attached to a feminine looking body and outfit.\|\| - Raven in Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind is of variable gender, and the Yanadling raven shaman Retva is both man and woman, something that your shamans consider evidence of powerful magic. Meanwhile, traditional Hyaloring shamans dress very androgynously by Hyaloring standards, in part because dealing with spirits is easier that way. - Xaku from Warframe is the first warframe released to fall outside of gender binary, described by Lotus in their profile video using they/them pronouns and their codex description (until Update 33) having even began with "neither he nor she". They are also the most otherworldly, being assembled from multiple other warframes lost to the Void and possessing an array of abilities themed around the Void itself (complete with ominously sounding names), including one that reveals what they have underneath their skin — a skeleton flowing with Void energy. - Oyashiro-sama from Higurashi: When They Cry. In the anime it's referred to as male. In the sound novels, as female \|\|since they're talking about Hanyuu, who is female\|\|. Its statue is very gender neutral too, in a religious way. - In A-gnosis' comics on Classical Mythology, the god Dionysos has a non-binary gender identity and alternates between masculine and feminine clothing. A man in Anthesteria unwittingly calls Dionysos a Creepy Crossdresser and gets a hard lesson in why one doesn't insult gods. - Ghouls in Bloody Urban have physical sexes but a much looser concept of gender than humans, and Word of God says they also have reproductive organs similar to those of the spotted hyena. Shaz, the only ghoul who has appeared in the comics so far, is extremely androgynous and alternates between male and female pronouns. - Uryuoms in El Goonish Shive are naturally gender-neutral, being shapeshifters who reproduce by Bizarre Alien Biology, though those living on Earth often adopt (temporarily or permanently) the gender of their choice. Seyonolu (Uryuom hybrids) which are part human, such as Grace, can have a certain amount of gender-fluidity as well, especially if they can change sex. - Kill Six Billion Demons: - While most lesser deities are associated with a specific gender, Top God Yisun is identified interchangeably with any, all, and no gender. Presumably, comprising the totality of everything that exists, everything that does not exist, and everything else puts one beyond such concerns. - Angels are completely inhuman and genderless in their true forms in the void, but interacting with mortals often cause them to develop a preference for a gender, which will in turn change their void form to reflect that. The more traditionalist angels consider this unnatural and profane, and encourage their kind to remain genderless. This is rather loaded with hypocricy and misoginy, however, as the issue of gender only seem to come up when an angel identifies as female; Even the most traditionalist angel 2 Michael refers to himself by male pronouns, and refers to the angels as a "brotherhood". - Phantomarine: While Cheth is primarily referred to as male, he rarely restricts himself to a single gender and will wear any soul he pleases. - Word of God confirms that Grimm, the cat-spirit that possesses Catharine in Sister Claire only has a gender when it is possessing someone and should be called "Them" rather than "It" when by themselves. Also makes sense with later revelations that show that Grimm is an amalgamation of Shards that were once abused children, so Grimm really is a "them." - True Villains: The Gods are genderless, but it's common practice to refer to a god using the speaker's own gender, as it's "more personal". - The spirits of Widdershins are manifestations of emotions, so gender is one of those curious human quirks that they don't quite get. Most obvious with Pride, who is referred to as "they", and Lust, who uses Humanshifting to assume both male and female bodies and whose true form is \|\|a vague, unfinished sketched-out humanoid figure\|\|. - The medieval Templar order of knights was disbanded and its leaders burnt for heresy due to allegations they really worshiped such a demon, one Baphomet, whose statues and representations conveniently turned up for the trial depicting a horned demon with beard, breasts and an erection that would have pleased erection-fanciers everywhere. Allegedly Baphomet, or the qualities he/she/it symbolizes is popular among the 19th and 20th Century occult. - The Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten ci-devant Amenhotep IV, most famous for trying to change the nation to Atenism, is depicted in art with an unusually feminine figure, including wide hips; nearly every other Pharaoh is shown as a young, physically fit man, no matter what they looked like in reality. Some scholars believe Akhenaten was trying to invoke this trope as part of his religious reforms, while others think he just actually looked like this and didn't care if the artists showed it.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtherworldlyAndSexuallyAmbiguous
Pose of Supplication - TV Tropes You put up a front, you put up a fight And just to show we feel no spite You can be our acolyte! But first boy it's time to bow Kowtow! When things just get too much, when you're totally defeated, shaken to your core, and at a loss for how to cope, sometimes, there's only one thing you can do. Genuflect!◊ Drop to your knees. Fall forward with arms outstretched, bow your head, and curse cruel fate. Sometimes called OTL, orz, note : no relation to the Orz or STO because the shape of the letters approximates this folding of the body. If things are particularly bad, or the favor is particularly big, the supplicant will touch their forehead to the ground in a full kowtow. If played for laughs this is usually done in a Corner of Woe, Color Failure optional. If this is towards an antagonist who still won't grant the humble person a favor, it's a good sign that they're a complete Jerkass who will be zapped by Laser-Guided Karma later. And if a hero rejects helping the supplicant, expect them to be chewed out by the rest of the cast. Compare Kneel Before Zod, Knee Fold Fall of Defeat, Ain't Too Proud to Beg. See also Cower Power. Note for Anime/Manga fans: This is called "dogeza (土下座)" in Japanese, and is often used in works as a sign of complete humiliation (either humiliation forced upon someone by making them do it, or humiliation received by a character willing to accept it as their just due, or as a price to pay for a failure). However, it is used without this context (as more a sign of respect than humiliation) in various formal ceremonies (religious, political, even sports), as well as when beseeching various favors as a supplicant to someone higher on the social ladder. ## Examples: - Early in Ace of the Diamond, Sawamura does this with Chris, after he learns of the latter's injury that left him unable to play for a whole year, while he tries to apologize for all the harsh things he said to Chris without knowing what he'd gone through, before begging him to teach him how to play baseball. - Minoru in AKB49 Renai Kinshi Jourei did this pose on stage before the audience on one occasion to demonstrate his sincerity in apologising for his lateness for a performance. - In Amanchu!, Hikari and Futaba do this in toward Ai, after she threatens to beat them up for using the school's diving equipment without permission. - Aquarion EVOL takes this to the extreme by having the Humongous Mecha Aquaria use it as a FINISHING BLOW. This causes the simulation to crash. - Played for Laughs in Asteroid in Love. Mira prostrates herself towards the hot springs during Chapter 6 after Mikage discusses the potential origins of them, so as to express her gratitude. - Attack on Titan: Eren collapses after he was unable to rescue \|\|Hannes\|\| from the same titan that killed his mother, laughing with tears in front of Mikasa. - Parodied in Azumanga Daioh. During the second vacation, Yukari boasts her English skills, which is treated as a divine miracle (complete with a visual of sea parting away) to the point that Osaka, Tomo, and Kagura begin prostrating before her. - Bakemonogatari: During the events of Nekomonogatari (Black), Araragi assumes this position for nearly five straight days, with no breaks, food, or even sleep, as his way of \|\|asking Shinobu (who has yet to be given a name at this point) to assist him in dealing with Black Hanekawa.\|\| - Bleach: - The ability of Izuru Kira's zanpakutou, Wabisuke, is to double the weight of whatever it strikes. As a consequence, after some blocked hits, the enemy is unable to even lift their weapons, and often go into a Pose Of Supplication due to said weapon's weight. Kira uses this as a chance to deliver the coup de grace, decapitating the opponent with his zanpakutou. In his words: " A warrior does NOT beg for his life." - A straighter example happens when Chad goes to Urahara, after being easily defeated by Yammy and unable to fight against D-Roy, and asks him to train him. - Bocchi the Rock!: Bocchi does a dogeza while apologizing to her father for breaking his guitar in episode 12. - Captain Tsubasa: - Hyuga goes into the pose of supplication in front of his ultra-strict Toho coach, begging him to let him play in the finals after having disobeyed his orders and being benched as a result. When the coach refuses, the whole team imitates Hyuga to support him. After a last test to see Hyuga's ability and how serious he is, the coach allows Hyuga to come back. - In the manga and old anime series, Hyuga's mentor and the person who unwittingly caused his fall of grace arrives from Okinawa right before the finals... and goes into the pose too in front of Hyuga's actual coach, explaining his part in the whole mess and apologizing for the troubles Hyuga and the team went through. He refuses to get up until the other coach assures him Hyuga will play. - More than one culprit in Case Closed has gone into the pose as soon as their crimes have been revealed. - Chainsaw Man: After Reze spots her, Kobeni is left too flatfooted to stand up, instead slumping over and begging for her life. True to her claim she'd rather avoid killing people, Reze leaves, and Kobeni continues groveling afterward. - Lelouch does this to Suzaku in Code Geass R2, when asking for his help to protect Nunnally, his sister and Suzaku's friend. At this point, Suzaku is so pissed off at Lelouch that he steps on his head and grinds his face into the gravel. - Aito of * The Comic Artist and his Assistants* spends approximately 120% of the time in said pose, the girls occasionally join him. - Kaoruko falls into this when she heard that her manga is very poorly received in the first episode of Comic Girls. - In the first episode of Demon King Daimao, Junko prostrates herself before Akuto (in combination with a convenient camera angle) after mistaking him for a thief and kicking his face in. - Dragon Ball: - Common way for non-combatants to express their frustration at being unable to join the battle. - Tien does this during the original series episode "Tien's Atonement", begging a man he had previously brutally injured for forgiveness and even offering to let him take revenge on him if he wants. The man forgives him and gives him the dragon ball. - Excel takes this pose while being lectured by the Great Will of the Macrocosm in the first episode of Excel♡Saga. - In Eyeshield 21, Panther becomes convinced (thanks to his friend Watt, a self-proclaimed but usually-mistaken expert on Japanese culture) that dogeza involves dangling from one foot with your arms and legs outstretched. When he gets to Japan, Sena has to show him how it's really done. Later, Panther tries to use dogeza to convince Apollo to let him play for the NASA Aliens, but Apollo doesn't relent until the rest of the team does dogeza as well. In a later episode, the American character Big Bear is shown doing the same posture as Panther initially thought a dogeza was. - Fairy Tail has Natsu and Happy get into a dogeza position for Lucy as a sign of appreciation after the latter treats them to a meal. Lucy is utterly embarrassed by the gesture. Natsu goes in this pose again during his fight against Gildarts and admit his defeat. - In Future GPX Cyber Formula, Miki and then Ryohei does this in episode 14 when they apologized to Hayato for not checking close enough to find the cause of Asurada's understeer (it was caused by a speck of dust on the lens). Kurumada does the same thing in front of Hiroyuki, Kojiro and Gen-san in a flashback after he finds out that his mistake causes his friend's car to crash. - Shinjyo does the pose towards Katagiri in episode 32 when he apologizes to Katagiri for mistreating him and his staff. - In episode 35, Hayato himself does this in front of Asuka and the rest of the team when he realized that it wasn't Asurada's fault for causing Ohtomo's crash. - In Get Backers, Shido does this to Ban, who has always been a bitter rival, to convince him to help save the kidnapped Madoka; Ban initially brusquely refuses, and other characters are astonished ("Don't you know how hard that must have been for him?"). - Gravitation: Shuichi spends several hours in this position outside Yuki's front door, only to discover Yuki isn't even home. - Principal Uchiyamida does this to his insurance company whenever his Cresta gets destroyed in Great Teacher Onizuka. - In Higehiro, Yoshida does this to Sayu's mother, begging her to be a more responsible parent to Sayu, rather than giving her a well-deserved chewing-out for her horrible treatment of her daughter. This spurs Sayu's brother Issa to do the same thing, causing her to have a breakdown. - Gon does this in chapters 304 and 305 of Hunter × Hunter upon finding out that \|\|Kaito is dead\|\|. - I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level: Associated strongly enough with Halkara that she is shown doing it in the anime's opening as part of a "roll-call" sequence briefly showing the full cast. When she comes back after trying to find a cure for "gnome mushrooms" that shrank Azusa to child-size, which she ate because of Halkara in the first place, she walks in, smiles, and does an acrobatic flip into an apology pose to report her failure. - JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: - Golden Wind: After Giorno tearfully confirms that \|\|Narancia\|\| is truly dead, Mista falls to the ground and cries for the latter. - Steel Ball Run: As Gyro is about to killed by Sugar Mountain's Spring, Johnny believes he's unable to save him and assumes this posture until he decides to \|\|hand over the corpse part to one of the Eleven Riders to save Gyro\|\|. - Kagerou Project: This happens a lot, particularly to Mary — who is nearly always shown doing this pose when \|\|Kuroha kills everyone and her Despair Event Horizon triggers her Painful Transformation into the Queen Snake\|\|. Konoha is also shown in this pose, \|\|cowering behind Kuroha\|\| during the Outer Science PV. - The extreme gambling manga Kaiji features a rather cruel and nightmarish version of this when the Big Bad demands that his henchman Tonegawa show just how sorry he is for failing him... \|\|by bowing on an iron plate heated by burning coals\|\|. - Near the end of I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up, Hana, the best friend of the protagonist who'd proposed a fake marriage in order to stop Machi's parents from pressuring her to get married, gets drunk while spending time with one of her exes. Said ex then picks up the phone when Machi calls, making it seem as though Hana was doing a one-night stand with her, but Machi refuses to believe it and picks Hana up. Once Hana's sober (although she doesn't remember much apart from Machi coming to get her), she enters this pose when apologizing to Machi. - Medaka Box: - Zenkichi does this in chapter 115 after \|\|Medaka deems him worthless\|\|. - Medaka herself in chapter 139 after \|\|she loses to Zenkichi in the election\|\|. - In the 'lost' Mobile Suit Gundam episode, the Gundam itself goes down on all fours, which makes Amuro complain that it makes it 'look like a dog'. - Molester Man, as someone who Apologizes a Lot, does this almost every chapter, one time to Kansai through his cell phone (though she can't see him) to thank her for inviting him out with the girls. - This happens a few times in Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun. - In chapter 8, Mikoshiba does this when he loses a bet with Nozaki on whether Sakura has a case of Weakness Turns Her On. - Mikoshiba does this again in Chapter 19. After volunteering to model for the school's art club, he looks to his figures for pose ideas. Unfortunately for him, all of his figures are of girls in feminine poses, causing him to assume this stance. - Kashima does this in episode 3 when she thinks her (self-proclaimed) status as Hori's favourite kohai is being threatened by Nozaki. She boasts that Hori favours her because he always chases her and gives her lead roles but Sakura argues it's only because she skips club activities and her good acting calls for it — this leads to her in this stance. - In Moyashimon, after Professor Itsuki samples Misato and Kawahama's home-made kuchikame sake, he's so impressed by their inquisitive spirit that he does this as he asks them to join his lab team as research assistants. - "orz" in lowercase appears in the title of My-Otome episode 6, referring to the pose. It even made it to the English dub title ("Nina Entangled...orz"). - A rare example of willing and eager supplication occurs in Nana & Kaoru. Tachibana presents herself to Kaoru at the start of a supervised breather to demonstrate her acceptance of him as her temporary master, although both Kaoru and Tachibana are mostly acting. She does so by kneeling before him with her forehead to the floor, her hands clasped behind her, and her hair flowing over her naked shoulders and back to show that she is ready to be bound. \|\|Two nights later, Nana presents herself to Kaoru with the same pose, but this time her submission and the emotions behind it are completely real.\|\| - In Naruto, Hiashi ends his telling Neji the truth about his father's death by entering a Pose Of Supplication and asking for his forgiveness. This is especially significant because Hiashi is head of the clan and Neji is a branch house member forced to serve him, and Neji, overwhelmed, accepts his apology and tells him to raise his head. Later on, Naruto approaches the Raikage and enters this pose to beg him to spare Sasuke, but the Raikage is unimpressed and tells him that the strong rule the ninja world and that begging for one's comrades is not friendship. Naruto then realizes that he must ultimately deal with Sasuke himself. - In New Game!, Nene accidentally eats Ko's pudding, not noticing Ko's name written on it until it's too late. When Rin sends a company-wide email asking who ate the pudding, Nene considers confessing, but decides not to, worrying that she'll get Aoba in trouble by association. The anime version of the Imagine Spot has both Aoba and Nene doing this for Ko and Rin, both of whom are still fairly upset over what happened. In reality, Ko's a bit annoyed that Rin's going this far for a 120 yen (barely over a single US dollar) pudding, and it's implied that Rin forgives Nene after she confesses and replaces the pudding. - When Nichijou's Yuuko mistakenly buys yakisaba instead of yakisoba and nothing to go with it for Mio one lunch period, the latter starts a very heated "The Reason You Suck" Speech and goads "stupid" Yuuko to "bow deeply." By the time Yuuko has gotten really angry, she mock bows, then proceeds to formally genuflect but continues to get chewed out and it's obvious both times she's not apologetic. In the anime, Mai adds to the farce by balancing a cup of water on Yuuko's back. - One Piece: - Early on in the Drum Island arc, Vivi assumes this pose after accidentally getting shot while trying to gain entry to Drum Island for Nami's medical treatment, and chastizes Luffy for losing control. Luffy apologizes and follows suit. - Zoro \|\|enters this pose shortly before the time skip, when begging Mihawk to train him\|\|. - After Luffy defeats Doflamingo in Dressrosa, Admiral Fujitora does this before the citizens and ex-king Riku, to apologize for the World Government giving Doflamingo Ultimate Job Security with which he used to take over the country. This is considered Serious Business, as everyone sees one of The Government's strongest warriors in its primal militia begging for forgiveness. - Sanji does this when saying goodbye to Zeff and the other cooks of the Baratie, thanking them for everything. - Tamaki and Haruhi in Ouran High School Hostclub do this often. - Used several times in Pani Poni Dash!. Not just the pose, but it sometimes actually has the letters orz or OTL or STO clearly visible.◊ - Yukari and Ryo spend nearly two hours straight in the Pose Of Supplication in order to save both of their jobs in Penguin Revolution. - In the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney manga "Turnabout Illusions", client Ian Knottworthy does this at the drop of a hat. - The Prince of Tennis: - After having a nasty fight with Tezuka over his place in the Senbatsu that even included Tezuka losing his temper and slapping him in public, Ryoma has to go into the pose of supplication to apologize and beg Tezuka to let him get in the Senbatsu team. - When Ryo Shishido finishes his self-appointed Trainingfrom Hell, he goes into this pose in front of Atobe and the Coach Sakaki to ask them to return to the regulars team. When Sakaki refuses, Shishido cuts his until-then long hair to prove that he's serious, and Atobe intercedes for him. - Ranma ½: - Genma Saotome tries to pass this off as a martial arts technique: "The Crouch of the Wild Tiger." It is surprisingly effective. - And when he's forced to admit that he can no longer defeat his son, Ranma, in combat, he performs the "Carp on the Chopping Board" technique (lying down on your side, hands stretched and joined over your head, feet extended and crossed over one another.) It shocks Ranma to the core when he sees this, as it is a pose that acknowledges absolute defeat and submission. - Later on, when Ranma catches a supernatural cold that makes him freeze the very air around him, he kneels and bows deeply before Akane. When she notices he's been in that position for a long time, he replies that he has frozen himself to the floor. - Finally, near the end of the manga, Shampoo has Akane at her mercy, and Ranma's hands and feet are bound (the former, by a crystalline substance he can't break; the latter, by a ball-and-chain that Shampoo snapped around his ankles.) She forces him to yield to her with the threat of killing Akane if he doesn't. He goes down on the supplicant position, bowing his head... and uses the momentum to lift his feet off the floor and swing the ball-and-chain at Shampoo. - In the Sailor Moon R movie, the four Inner Senshi go into the pose to \|\|beg Fiore to spare the life of their beloved Moon, whom he intends to torture to death\|\|. - Tenma does this in School Rumble when her attempt to get Karasuma under an Umbrella of Togetherness fails. - In The Seven Deadly Sins \|\|Dreyfus\|\| does this and throws his sword when he confesses his crimes. - Seen a few times in Sgt. Frog. In episode 26, Keroro imagines Natsumi doing this out of gratitude for helping so that her mom can come to the sports festival. In episode 27, Keroro himself does this when he begs Natsumi and Fuyuki to pretend they've been captured so Keroro can impress his visiting father. - In SHUFFLE! (the anime), Rin resorts to dogeza to humbly beg Primula for her help. The emotionless girl's pupils change size at Rin's behavior. - Aouta of Slam Dunk does this pose when begging his teachers to re-take an exam. - \|\|Mitsui\|\| also does this, while \|\|telling Anzai-sensei that even after spending two years away as a delinquent, he loves basketball and wants to come back to the team\|\|. - Minori of Toradora! does this around the beginning of the story, in a Shout-Out way to the aforementioned Captain Tsubasa scene (she even uses the same pre-scene badass pose of sternly crossing her arms, with her jacket put on her back like a cape dramatically floating in the wind!), when she, in a misunderstanding, believed Taiga and Ryuuji were an item, and begged the latter to take good care of the former. - The Twelve Kingdoms anime features a ruler who bans the pose of supplication from his subjects, since she's come to think of it as humiliating. Additionally, the kirin in The Twelve Kingdoms select the rulers for their realm by bowing in front of them. (They're not able to bow in front of anyone else — even if they want to, they're physically incapable of doing so. This causes lots of angst to Taiki, the Naïve Newcomer among them, since he's not sure if he'll be able to do so.) - Yu-Gi-Oh!: Many, many Duelists adopt this pose after being defeated in a duel. - Yuugai Shitei Doukyuusei: Miyakonojou does a dogeza to beg Yatsuhashi to let her touch her boobs. - In YuYu Hakusho, Yusuke does this after his fight with Toguro during the Dark Tournament arc when \|\|he believes that his friend Kuwabara has been killed\|\|. - Kido does this after the heroes clear all his and his friends' trials in the early Chapter Black arc, after revealing that \|\|Genkai told them to do it\|\|. Considering that the trials involved Yusuke being kidnapped, Hiei, Kuwabara, and Botan temporarily losing their souls, and Kuwabara being abducted and impersonated, an apology was clearly in order. - Gravity Falls: Lost Legends: In "Comix-Up", during their journey through the comic book world the Mystery Shack crew finds themselves in a parody of shojo manga. Mabel encounters a bishonen version of Gideon Gleeful but rebuffs his advances, leading him to go into this pose. - The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot: Batman is about to attack a crook who is holding Robin hostage when Batmite sneakily influences Batman into falling to his knees and pleading for Robin's life. - Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia is a graphic novel dealing with the duty and ritual of supplication. As such, this pose and its meaning is dealt with heavily. - The main protagonist Liska does this in Katmandu in front of the Goddess at the very end of The Search of Magic sub-arc as a way to show her respects for her. - The "Prince Ali" song in Disney's Aladdin directly refers to this: "Genuflect/Show some respect/Down on one knee". And when Jafar becomes Sorcerer Jafar, one of the first things he does is magically make the Sultan and Princess Jasmine genuflect. - The Lion King (1994): Multiple: - A lot of the animals do this at the beginning of the film at Simba's presentation. - Pumbaa does a quadruped version of this, bending his front legs and bowing his head, after the revelation that Simba's the king. And then he screws up trying to say 'grovel' at your feet' and says 'gravel' instead. - In Mulan, first the Emperor of China bows before Mulan, and then the massive Chinese crowd assembled do full bow of supplication before her. - In Where Talent Goes to Die, the protagonist, Kaori Miura, does this for Shiro Kurogane at the end of Kurogane's Free Time Events. Miura had defeated Kurogane in a shogi match despite never having played before, proving herself to be the Ultimate Beginner's Luck, but humiliating him in the process, and resulting in him holding a grudge against her. In their School Mode ending, Kurogane returns the favor, since he realizes that he's been unfair to Miura over something that doesn't matter anymore. - In Hellsister Trilogy, Black Adam gets into the supplicant pose and begs to be spared when Mordru demands his allegiance and displays enough power and willingness to destroy him if Adam refuses. "Spare me!" begged Teth-Adam, who would never have spared a foe himself. "Agree to serve me, then," said Mordru, not giving an iota. Teth-Adam knelt before his new master, touching his forehead to the floor three times. - Tangled Adventures in Arendelle has Elsa get into this pose to beg Rapunzel and Eugene for help around her kingdom on day 9 of their honeymoon. It technically doesn't count as Ain't Too Proud to Beg since Elsa is the one with more power in the situation, but this is also Elsa trying to ask for Rapunzel and Eugene to put aside their anger towards her from the last few days. Elsa's just overwhelmed and guilty about her life situation, and she wants a break from the two. That said, it also shows some good development seeing the girl who used to push everyone away actually get down on her hands and knees to ask for help. - Played for Laughs with Germany and Japan in Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità after they realized what touching Italy's curl meant. \|\|Played for Drama with Italy after Germany and Japan screamed at Italy for purposely ignoring their feelings. Italy did so because of his insecurities.\|\| - Feralnette AU: Played for Laughs when Marinette is taking Felix out of class in a headlock. Felix brushes off Alya pointing this out by accusing her of being jealous, only for Adrien to drop into this position as he dramatically admits that he is jealous, and wants to be carried by a strong woman just like that. This spurs the realization that he Has a Type, something Adrien processes with wide-eyed wonder. - One for All and Eight for the Ninth: After calling out Sir Nighteye on his selfish attempts to demoralize and tear him down in order to force him to pass One For All to the successor he chose — something that would be a death sentence for Mirio — Izuku leaves his office to give himself some time to calm down. When he returns, he's shocked to find Nighteye in this position; during his absence, Nighteye looked on social media and discovered just how well accepted and admired Izuku already was, having a full Jerkass Realization about his behavior. - In This Bites!, after the truth Cross had been hiding about his nature as a self insert character or that the world of One Piece is fictional where he's from, Cross bows on his knees with his head to the deck of Going Merry to beg for the Straw Hat Pirates' forgiveness for lying to them, tearfully pleading that they let him stay with the crew as he's come to love them all genuinely. - In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, Gary Oak knocks on the door of a veteran retired trainer named Casey Snagem, and gets on his knees to beg him for training \|\|after he suffered a devastating defeat against Paul.\|\| This is notable given that in their previous encounter, Gary had dismissed Snagem's arguments about what meant to be a Pokémon Master, but now he's willing to swallow his pride and acknowledge him as a strong trainer and the person who can help him find what he needs. - In Here In My Arms, after receiving a What the Hell, Hero? speech from Kurumu for spurning Tsukune's Love Confession, which drove him to jump off of the cliff and become a vampire in the first place, Moka, realizing that Kurumu is completely right, does this, complete with placing her forehead on the ground, while tearfully begging her for forgiveness. - Pose taken by Leonidas in 300, gathering his strength before the final battle (and simultaneously duping King Xerxes into thinking that he was surrendering). - John Preston in Equilibrium, after \|\|Mary O'Brien is executed\|\|. - In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, one of the three tests to be worthy to reach the Grail is being a penitent man, who kneels before God, \|\|(conveniently putting one's head below the huge buzzsaw blade that lops off the head of those not worthy.)\|\| - No Time to Die: James Bond is left with no option but to go into this pose and beg for forgiveness when Safin threatens to have his henchmen execute \|\|Mathilde, James's daughter,\|\| on the spot. However, when Safin is gloating about how he has power over James, James is able to draw a hidden gun and kill Safin's henchmen. - In Mister Roberts, the ship's crew, upon noticing that someone has uprooted their tyrannical captain's prized palm tree and thrown it overboard, do this in front of the now-empty planter in an act of mockery. - After marrying into the family, Songlian of Raise the Red Lantern is instructed to kowtow to the shine of the Chen ancestors; it's implied that she does not. Those important family customs she disregards will come back to haunt her later. - In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Caesar adopts this pose before his human father. An Alpha Ape later adopts it before Caesar, who happens to be using Gunboat Diplomacy at the time. - One of the nuns in The Song of Bernadette does this after calling out Bernadette because she believed that suffering was required to meet God, and didn't believe Bernadette had. But when Bernadette revealed the tuberculosis tumor on her leg, the other nun ran into the chapel and fell down in this pose to pray for forgiveness (as is common for nuns in Real Life, see that section below.) - In Train Man, the main character does this in a Dream Sequence after losing hope completely. - Watchmen: - When Dr. Manhattan is working for the government in Vietnam, there is a scene where some Viet Cong surrender to him personally in this pose. - Nite Owl adopts this pose when \|\|Rorschach is burst into flesh and blood by Dr. Manhattan near the end\|\|. - A repeated scene in Wayne's World and its sequel has Wayne and Garth kowtowing as they chant, "We're not worthy! We're not worthy! We're scum!" before one of their Heavy-Metal gods; Alice Cooper in the first, Aerosmith in the second. - Older Than Feudalism: In Greek epics such as The Iliad and The Odyssey, the gods themselves will occasionally fall to their knees before Zeus and clasp his legs to beg mercy or favors. - Supplication is common in the heroic society of the Homeric epics (and, probably, the warrior societies of Dark Age Greece they were composed for), not just among the gods. Most famously in book 7 of the Odyssey, Odysseus supplicates Queen Arete of the Phaeacians in order to plead for aid in getting home to Ithaca. Homeric supplication does not involve pressing one's head against the floor, but rather kneeling and grasping the knees of the one supplicated, and symbolically touching their chin with the hand. The symbolism of this is as an appeal that the one supplicated does not walk away or speak until the request is made. As a position of weakness and vulnerability it is very much a last resort for a heroic character, damaging to his heroic reputation (kleos) and thus not undertaken at all lightly. Given the significant degree of body contact involved in the Homeric hug-the-knees version, it could sometimes cause problems. In Odyssey 6, Odysseus ponders supplicating Arete's teenage daughter, Nausicaa, for aid, but decides not to as he is naked and filthy and the act may be mistaken as one of (perhaps sexual) aggression, (so he resorts to purely verbal pleas and elaborate praise for her from a distance instead). - In Hecuba, Odysseus physically recoils from Polyxena to keep her from supplicating him for her life. - On the subject of Greeks, Xenophon's Anabasis records that, during the debate of the Ten Thousand (the Greek mercenaries, one of whom was Xenophon himself) after trying to overthrow the Shah in favor of his younger brother (only to have said younger brother killed in the battle, resulting in the murder of their leaders at a Persian banquet), the consensus was that the Ten Thousand were screwed. A single mercenary sneezed. All of the others immediately prostrated themselves—the Greeks considered a sneeze a sign from the gods—and decided right then and there to elect new officers and fight their way, if need be, all the way back to Greece. - Subverted in Animorphs, where Marco and Cassie are captured by the Helmacrons, who order them to grovel before them. Being general morons, however, they fall for it when Marco says that Earthlings grovel differently than other races, and proceeds to lounge on the ground while pretending to beg for his life. - In the short story "Assumption" (scroll down) by Desmond Warzel, the primitive people of an unexplored world—a literal Cargo Cult—make this gesture before the object of their worship. The narrator is incredulous and makes an explicit comparison to jungle tribes in old movies. - City of Bones by Martha Wells: - When Khat is arrested by \|\|the Heir\|\|'s forces, he is forced to his knees by security; after that, when he sees her, he drops to his knees without any provocation, seeing nothing to be gained by defiance. - Lampshaded later when Khat meets \|\|the Elector\|\| and collapses from a fever, but he thinks to himself that it's fine because he's probably supposed to be on the floor anyway. - One relic collector has his manservant genuflect in a way that's outdated and far beyond what's appropriate for the trader's rank. Elen makes a note of it for possible Blackmail purposes. - Parodied in the Discworld novel Interesting Times where incompetent, cowardly, wizard Rincewind muses that not only does it symbolise submission, but it also provides quite a good launching pose to break into a sprint from if the person you are doing it for doesn't accept your submission. - Nanny Ogg has a different take in Lords and Ladies. She's of the opinion the route to a happy life is to 'Stand before your God, Bow before your King, and Kneel before your Man.' - In the Dresden Files, \|\|Lasciel\|\| does this \|\|in Harry's mind\|\| when Harry agrees to work with her. - In the sequels to Ender's Game, the nobles of Chinese-esque planet Path are taught so strictly to honor their elders that the sight of her father touching his forehead to the ground for her horrifies Qing-jao. - In Galaxy of Fear, people who are experiencing their worst fear cringe and kneel at best, or this at worst. Luke Skywalker was on his hands and knees. He seemed to be fighting hard against something. He whispered over and over again: "Ben! Ben!" - Mary Renault's The Persian Boy describes the serious controversy over this practice as (historically) espoused by Alexander the Great. He's just conquered Persia and become Great King, so the Persians naturally accord him this respect. The Greeks and especially the Macedonians deplore it as "groveling." Alex wants all the people to adopt it to emphasize equality. - Yamani guardsmen bow like this in a flashback in First Test, the first Protector of the Small after Ilane of Mindelan saves the god's swords from Scanran pirates. Keladry also bows to the Yamani princess this way when they meet years later in Tortall, because Yaman is basically Japan. - Pretty much once a chapter in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. When the author wants to tell you that it's really serious this time, a character will knock their head on the ground until they bleed. - Referred to by name in The Song of Achilles, when Patroclus performs the Greek version (see Older Than Feudalism above) in order to beg King Peleus for Achilles's whereabouts. I went to Peleus. I knelt before him on a wool rug, woven bright with purple. He started to speak, but I was too quick for him. One of my hands went to clasp his knees, the other reached upwards, to seize his chin with my hand. The pose of supplication. - In the Star Trek Novel Verse, the Voth demand this from others as their due, particularly when bestowing their benevolence. As the eldest race in the Delta Quadrant (or at least they assume so), they consider themselves its rightful rulers. In a story from Star Trek: Myriad Universes, when agreeing to spare Fluidic Space from destruction their condition is that the Species 8472 representative bow before them and pledge his loyalty to the Voth Council. - Parodied in The Tamuli, by David Eddings: this is the traditional way to greet the Tamul emperor, but only because one of his less-than-bright ancestors mistook an inebriated minister's drunken bumbling for a show of respect. - In Temeraire, this becomes a diplomatic hazard: Will Laurence is expected to kowtow before the Chinese Emperor, but to do so would implicitly place his home nation of Great Britain in a subservient position. However, by the time they meet, he's been adopted as the Emperor's son, so he resolves the issue by kowtowing in his capacity as Prince of China rather than as a representative of the British Crown. - In The Thrawn Trilogy, some of the Noghri do this to the daughter of their savior; one genuflects when he realizes who she is, and others do so at the end of Dark Force Rising after she's proved to them that their debt has been more than paid. Afterwards, they tend to limit themselves to bowing and sometimes kneeling. - In Ascendance of a Bookworm after one of Myne's many mistakes, she instantly leaps into a dogeza pose. However, she's (basically) in medieval Germany and they've never heard of anyone kowtowing when giving an apology. After she explains they sort of get it, but in context it's probably too extreme of a gesture anyway, though they wouldn't know that either. - Cluedo: Professor Plum does this, in front of a gloating Jack Peacock, from whom he desperately wants to buy a drug to cure the common cold. Jack Peacock: Let's start at fifty thousand. Prof. Plum: I can't get my hands on that sort of money. Jack Peacock: Too bad, old bean. (Sets fire to the drug) Prof. Plum: (in a pose of supplication) Noooooo! I'd have paid, I'd have found the money somehow. Jack Peacock: That's better. - Kamen Rider Zero-One: In the penultimate episode, \|\|Aruto crossing the Despair Event Horizon and becoming the villainous Ark-One is seen as an utter betrayal by the HumaGears (whom Aruto had championed and fought for throughout the entire series), making them threaten to go rogue and follow MetsubouJinrai.net's commandment to Kill All Humans. Just when it looks like everything is going to boil over, Hiden Intelligence's Vice-President Jun Fukuzoe gets down in dogeza with his head on the ground and begs the HumaGears to give Aruto the same trust that he placed in them. Immediately afterwards, his HumaGear secretary Shesta does the same of her own free will, which helps defuse the situation.\|\| - In Lexx, officers deliver reports to His Divine Shadow from this position. - Merlin: In "Lancelot du Laq", Gwen falls to her knees when brought before Arthur after being caught \|\|kissing Lancelot\|\|. Arthur orders everyone out, then insists Gwen stand up. - On The Office, Dwight surreptitiously tries to unseat Michael and take his place — when Michael angrily tells Dwight he's on to him, Dwight goes into a terrified fit of dog-like submission and drops to the floor as if waiting to be beheaded. - Star Trek: The Original Series: Captain Kirk does this a lot. - One of Quark's employees in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine does this in front of Liquidator Brunt when he realizes they've been caught forming a union/worker's guild. - In the musical The King and I, the titular king bans the pose of supplication from his subjects since he's come to think of it as humiliating. - In El Goonish Shive, Nanase does this when her repeated experiences of death as a fairy doll get too much for her to continue to stand. - In Questionable Content, Beeps performs the full "forehead to floor, hands clasped over head" version while begging Roko to not fire her for a less-than-intelligent move. At the time, Beeps is actually Roko's boss and tries to promote her to make the "begging to not be fired" work. Roko does eventually accept promotion, since she's the most competent person in the office. - Unsounded: When Duane realizes just how horrifically he's messed things up he apologizes to \|\|Lori for Sara's death and the destruction of the shrine which his actions made possible\|\| kneeling and lying prostrate before her. - In Islam: - According to beliefs, one may bow, even kneel before humans, but never prostrate oneself. Only GOD gets this treatment. It's actually forbidden to touch your forehead to the ground unless it's for Him. And if you aren't practicing, not even then. This does lead to culture clash in some places. In Indonesia for example, which is overwhelmingly Muslim, prostration is still used in some cultures to respect people much higher in social class. - Prostration is a major component of salat (ritual praying to God) and is done twice for every rakaat (the amount of times you prostrate from standing up). So for example, the dawn prayer, which has two rakaat, requires four prostrations, while the noon prayer, which has four rakaat, requires eight prostrations. The only time that prostration is forbidden during salat is when you are praying for the dead ( salat al-janazah if the corpse is present or salat al-ghaib if it is not present) because of the aforementioned restriction of prostrating to anything other than God. During funeral prayers, the salat is conducted strictly while standing up. - The Jewish religion works the same way, except that even bowing to another human is discouraged (because Jews pray standing up, and therefore bow to God rather than make full prostration). - Karaite Jews are known to make full prostration in prayer. - It was practiced in the Jerusalem temple, but it was discontinued since it was destroyed. Twice. - Some Jews do a full prostration, known as the "great Aleinu" (Aleinu being the prayer said during it), but only on Rosh Hashanah. - In ancient Iranian culture, there were three ways for people to greet others. The first was a kiss on the lips, done between people of equal standing. The second was a kiss on the cheek, done by a person of slightly (but not much) inferior standing. The third was proskynesis, a type of bowing/prostration done by a person much lower in social standing. It might be a slave to his master, or a commoner to a government official. Naturally, the only person who received proskynesis from everyone in the empire was the shah. The ancient Greeks mistook this as a sign that Persians worshiped their emperors and gleefully attacked it in propaganda during the Greco-Persian Wars. - Proskynesis is still used today as the term used to refer to Orthodox Christian genuflection. This was rooted in the Eastern Roman Empire, which adopted the Persian custom to venerate emperors as agents of God. Full prostration before God (bowing so that one's forehead touches the ground) is practiced on certain special occasions. It's particularly associated with Orthodox monks and nuns, but it is not limited to them. Orthodox priests are supposed to perform one prostration while consecrating the Eucharist on Sundays. As in Islam, it is a type of extreme reverence strictly reserved for God. - In imperial China, the kow-tow on the ground was considered a standard formal greeting to those of high rank (when you are really in the mood for grovelling, the procedure requires you to hit your forehead on the ground hard enough to make an audible noise). To greet the emperor, the subject performed 9 kow-tows, the empress received 8, and so on. - In Russia, there are two verbs for supplication: "poklonit'sya" and "bit' chelom," which mean to bow with the knees and to beat (the ground) with your forehead, respectively. "Chelobitye" was seen as humiliating, as the Muscovite princes had to prostrate themselves before the Khan during the years of the Mongol yoke. The meaning was carried over into the "Chelobitnyy Prikaz," a Muscovite government office to which people sent complaints and petitions meant for the tsar. A letter sent to that Prikaz would begin "Vash kholop byot chelom..." (Your slave prostrates himself...)	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Orz
Otherworldly Communication Failure - TV Tropes Bob has spent the entire film up until this point running away from ghouls, ghosts, and inhuman creatures that seem hellbent on capturing him for unknown reasons and unlucky for him, he's hit a dead end. He reluctantly turns to face the creatures...only to learn that they were never malevolent and just wanted to talk to Bob or warn him of the actual threat. Otherworldly Communication Failures typically happen for one of two reasons (or some combination of both). The character the ghouls and monsters are trying to talk to is, understandably, scared out of their minds by the inhuman creature made from the stuff of nightmares approaching them. Though the entity is fully intelligible to humans, Bob unfortunately can't hear what it is trying to say over his own shrieks of terror. In other cases though, the being may not be able to communicate with humans at all or is unable to do so in a way that they can easily comprehend. For example: a ghost unable to communicate or interact with the living outside of very specific circumstances or events; a monster that speaks only in gurgles, garbles, and growls; an alien that communicates using a Starfish Language; a god, deity, or an Eldritch Abomination so unfathomable to the human mind that even the most basic communication with it can accidentally drive a person mad, just to list a few. This trope is often used as a misdirect or Red Herring, seeing as monsters and ghosts are some of the typical suspects for the Big Bad. In stories with happier endings, the human the creatures are trying to communicate with will eventually realize what's going on and will summon up the courage to hear what the creatures have to say or find a way to comprehend the message. But many versions of this trope take a darker tone, with the human character going mad from being harangued by nightmarish monsters for an extended period of time. Some, in their terror to run away or hide from these creatures, even die in freak accidents or intentionally kill themselves to escape it all, never realizing the creatures meant them no harm. Sub-Trope of Poor Communication Kills. Related to Impeded Communication and Impeded Messenger. Compare and contrast Language Barrier. See also Dark Is Not Evil, Not Always Evil, Creepy Good, Not Evil, Just Misunderstood, Reluctant Monster, and Innocent Aliens which the supernatural beings often fall under, as well as Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?, which may be the positive outcome of this trope. A common trope in stories that involve I See Dead People, Magnetic Medium, Quieting the Unquiet Dead, and Benevolent Alien Invasion. ## Examples: - Pokémon: - In Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai, Darkrai tries to warn people that Dialga and Palkia are going to trap their city in a dimension that they will slowly destroy with their fighting. Unfortunately the way he communicates is by limited telepathy and giving people nightmares, which leads to Darkrai being seen as the villain. - Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire: In "Absol-ute Disaster," the Pokémon Absol starts appearing around an island town where bridges have suddenly started collapsing, and the local townspeople accuse Absol of causing the bridges to collapse. It's later revealed that Absol can detect oncoming disasters and has been trying to warn the town about the local spring, which is overflowing and in danger of flooding the entire town, but since he can't speak in a human language, the townspeople believe it's to blame. - The first Cthonic god to meet the amnesiac god-turned-mortal Zagerus in wasting beats of this heart of mine is Tisiphone, who has a One-Word Vocabulary. At the end of a chance encounter where she captures a murderer while screaming "murder" and "murderer," she ominously points at him and says the only other word in her vocabulary: " Zagerus." The readers know that Tisiphone knows his name because they knew each other, but to Zagreus it only comes across as disturbing; Callisto even worries that he's cursed. - ParaNorman: At the behest of the spirit of a recently deceased teacher, ghost-whisperer Norman Babcock attempts to complete a ritual to prevent a curse on the town from coming to fruition. However, the school bully, Alvin, prevents him from finishing, causing a horde of zombies to rise up and chase the two boys. The townsfolk, thinking they're fighting against a Zombie Apocalypse, begin to riot and even try to kill Norman for causing the situation. Once cornered, Norman finally begins to talk to the zombies and discovers \|\|the zombies have been chasing him because they know he can understand them. They explain that they were the town's founders, who were cursed by Agatha, a young girl they hanged for being a witch all because she, like Norman, could also speak to spirits. Part of breaking the curse involves them getting the aid of another who shares her ability\|\|. - Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island: The Scooby Gang goes to Moonscar Island to deal with the alleged ghost of Morgan Moonscar, the pirate that the island is named after, thinking it's just another hoax. It's not: he's real, as are the other spirits and zombies that are trying to get them to leave the island and terrifying the gang in the process. After some sleuthing, they learn that \|\|Moonscar is an Asshole Victim of the island's caretakers Lena, Simone, and Jacques, who are centuries-old werecats that suck the life force of visitors to the island to sustain themselves. He and the other spirits were trying to warn the gang to leave before they became the trio's latest victims\|\|. - Arrival: The Starfish Aliens that land on Earth naturally speak a Starfish Language that the protagonist, linguistics professor Louise Banks, spends the entirety of the film trying to decipher and decode in order to understand their intentions and whether or not they're benign, while the national governments around the world debate when and with what weapon they should use to blow the aliens off the face of the planet because they don't know their intentions. \|\|Through her persistence, Louise learns that the aliens are in fact benevolent and are actually trying to communicate with Earth to ask for future help in saving their population\|\|. - Crimson Peak: Edith learns rather quickly that the home of her new husband Thomas and his sister Lucille is very obviously haunted. However, this is not Edith's first time dealing with ghosts, as she's been able to see ghosts since she was a child. After living in fear for a few weeks, Edith finally is made to listen to the ghosts, from which she learns that \|\|they are all victims of the real villains, Lucille and Thomas, and are trying to warn her\|\|. - The Others: Although the house that Grace and her sunlight-sensitive children live in is very clearly haunted, she refuses to believe it until she sees that her daughter has seemingly been possessed by the spirit of an old woman. However, inverting the trope, \|\|it is Grace, her kids, and the entire house staff who are the ghosts. The "spirits" they encounter are actually humans now currently living in the house who have hired a spirit medium to try to communicate with them as the dead can't interact with the living otherwise.\|\| - The Pact: Considering the dreams Annie keeps having as well as the visions of the ghost woman in the floral dress she has when awake, Annie is rightfully terrified and thinks this ghost is the cause of her sister Nicole's disappearance. While Annie is right that the house is indeed being haunted by the ghost of Jennifer Glick, \|\|she was only trying to warn Annie about the murderer living in the basement, who was the actual killer\|\|. Jennifer is finally able to at least give Annie a hint (by naming the murderer) when she brings in her psychic friend to help. - Scary Movie 3: The main plot centers on a perceived invasion from a hostile alien race. However it turns out that the aliens are actually friendly and are on Earth to \|\|find Samara from The Ring as their entire population accidentally watched the cursed tape and are now slated to die in seven days\|\|. When asked why they were attacking the humans, the aliens explain that to say "hello" in their language, you grab someone in a chokehold. To say "goodbye", you kick the other person in the nuts. - The Sixth Sense: Cole Sear is a ten year old who can see ghosts and is constantly being haunted by them. Once the child psychiatrist sent to treat him, Malcolm, accepts this, he advises Cole to try hearing the ghosts out. When Cole finally does, he realizes that the vomiting young girl spirit that has been haunting him as of late actually \|\|just wants him to help her reveal that she was murdered by her mother who suffers from Munchausen By Proxy. Later, Malcolm learns that he too is just a spirit who was unknowingly drawn to Cole to get help being laid to rest\|\|. - Frankenstein: One of the most famous literary examples of this trope. The monster of Frankenstein attempts to communicate with several human characters throughout the novel. When he tries to befriend the DeLaceys (the family he watched) and reveal his presence, they don't listen to him and try to attack him because of his ghastly, grotesque appearance. - Metro: The Dark Ones are universally feared by the denizens of the Metro as terrifying boogeymen that can fry the brains of humans simply by approaching them. As Artyom learns, however, none of this is intentional on the Dark Ones' part. They mean no harm: in fact, they want to coexist, but unfortunately their Psychic Powers are so potent that human minds can't handle it. Each time the Dark Ones reach out to try to telepathically communicate with a human, it drives the human to madness. - In the Diogenes Club story "Egyptian Avenue", Richard Jeperson investigates what appears to be a Curse of the Pharaoh in an Egyptian-themed tomb in a London cemetery. It turns out the unquiet spirits are \|\|the servants of the interred man, who took his pharaonic pretentions too far by having them entombed with him. And they're trying to warn that his son is going to do the same thing to an entire building of employees.\|\| - Ghosts (US). Played for Laughs. The ghosts are upset that Sam lied to Jay about them not enjoying their game of Dungeons & Dragons. Trevor, the only ghost that can move objects and therefore somewhat interact with humans, writes "she lied" in the steam in the mirror while Jay is in the shower. But, when Jay sees it, he just says "About what?" much to Trevor's frustration. - The Haunting of Hill House: The Crain family's childhood home is haunted by an array of spirits and much of the trauma the kids deal with as adults comes from the spirits' seemingly malevolent influence on their family. However, it is later revealed that \|\|most of the ghosts of Hill House, while terrifying and creepy, aren't malevolent and are more or less trying to scare the Crains into leaving the house because 1) there are some genuinely evil spirits that reside in there and 2) the house itself is an Eldritch Location that feeds off of the spirits trapped in it\|\|. - The Outer Limits (1995): In "Dark Matters", \|\|the aliens are trying to tell humanity that they are friendly and just want help in escaping, but they're unable to do so because they don't speak any human language and thus can't communicate directly with humans\|\|. - Supernatural: After Dean \|\|is released from Hell and pulls himself out of his own grave\|\|, he soon hears a deafeningly high sound which shatters glass all around him. When he meets the angel Castiel at the end of the episode, Castiel admits that the sound was his attempt to speak to Dean while in his true form, believing that Dean would be able to understand him. From then on Castiel always speaks in a very low and gravelly voice, which Misha Collins has confirmed as being out of worry at harming Dean or anyone else like that again. - Defied in the Gospel of Luke. An angel appears to a group of shepherds, scaring the hell out of them. As a consequence, the first words out of the angel's mouth are "Fear not!" This has spawned many memes featuring Angelic Abominations shouting "Fear not!" at rightfully terrified humans. - This happens to ghosts all the time in Chronicles of Darkness. The nature of ghostly existence means that they need specific, special powers to communicate with living people at all. Even using gestures or mouthing words gets increasingly more difficult as a ghost ages and loses its connection to its mortal life. One of the abilities of Sin-Eaters is that they can actually talk coherently with the dead without any extra work. - Bugsnax: There's a mysterious creature composed of different Bugsnax that has been stalking the Grumpuses across Snaktooth Island. You find out later that \|\|it's the Snaksquatch, a Golem Elizabert Megafig (the reporter you are looking for) created to try to stop the rest of the Grumpuses from eating any more Bugsnax, as she can't make the Bugsnax talk despite her connection to them. This backfires: she used the Snaksquatch to forcibly free the Snax from Gramble's barn and carve "No More Bugsnax" into the camp sign, which only made the others too anxious about about the identity of the creature and fearful of the possibility that something wanted them dead to realize that the thing didn't want them eating any more Snax\|\|. - Digital Devil Saga: The main reason behind almost everything wrong with the world is that the Top God Brahman is completely incapable of communicating with humans and understanding things on a human scale. For example, he sensed that Sera was incredibly sad and that other people were at fault, so he ends up punishing the whole planet for it. The final arc of the second game is all about properly communicating with him, which does solve all their problems once they achieve it because Brahman is a benevolent god despite his lack of understanding. - Pokémon: According to the Pokédex, the Pokémon Absol can detect oncoming disasters with its horn and appears to humans before natural disasters to try to warn them. But since it can't talk, humans believe that Absol causes disasters instead, so Absol hides in remote mountains to hide from humans. - Wandersong begins with the Bard's home village being terrorized by an outbreak of ghosts, whose speech is rendered as strings of colorful symbols instead of words. While able to placate them by singing, the Bard is only able to properly communicate with them after gaining the ability to understand spirit language and discovers that they're the ghosts of \|\|the villagers' loved ones, who've learned that the world is about to end and want to spend what little time remains with their families\|\|. The villagers still can't understand them, but it's the sentiment that counts. - The unnamed Starfish Aliens in Just Deserts are the primary antagonists of the game, having invaded Earth for unknown reasons and causing anyone who gets too close to them to become catatonic. However, Eves ending reveals that \|\|its not an invasion: the aliens are travellers looking for a new homeworld, and theyre just making a stopover on Earth so they can gather the resources they need to finish the journey\|\|. The Brown Note is caused by them attempting to communicate their intentions through telepathy, which is inadvertently harmful to human brains; they never intended to hurt anyone, and the ones you fight are only acting in self-defense. - A running gag in the haunted house arcs of Sluggy Freelance, the ghosts' attempts to communicate with the living always get cut off or otherwise obscured. - Amphibia: In Night Drivers, while trying to take a shortcut home, Sprig and Polly are repeatedly harassed by a creepy, hook-handed hitchhiker. When they finally make it back home, they run into what appears to be the hitchhiker; its actually a statue dedicated to the late Zechariah Nettles, a frog who dedicated himself to guiding and protecting travelers. They then realize that the hitchhiker was the ghost of Zechariah himself, and that he was actually trying to steer them to the safer path home. - One episode of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command has a comet haunted by the ghost of an older space hero who keeps saying "enola eno on" note : "no one alone" backwards in an attempt to warn Buzz from being a lone wolf. \|\|Subverted, as it turns out the guy is not completely dead and therefore not a ghost, just frozen. After he's revived, he's surprised to hear he was speaking backwards.\|\| - Casper the Friendly Ghost: Occurs frequently in both the original comics and the cartoon because Casper is a friendly, Reluctant Monster who just wants to befriend everyone and almost anything but accidentally terrifies almost every human he meets because, despite his friendliness, he's still an undead being trying to communicate with the living. - Played for Laughs in the Rick and Morty episode "Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion", which parodies Mech vs. Beast-type shows. The post-credit scene reveals that the giant alien bugs that routinely attack the world are actually sapient and entirely benevolent, having come to Earth to help humanity cure AIDS. Unfortunately, their language sounds like roars of anger, the portal disintegrates their clothing, and their world is comparatively gigantic.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtherworldlyCommunicationFailure
Otherworld Tropes - TV Tropes Tropes and settings that are not of our Earth. For tropes about Earth, see This Index Earth. <!—index—> <!—/index—> - Agri World: A world dedicated primarily or entirely to agriculture. - Alien Landmass: Using unusual or exotic landscapes to signify that the setting is alien and unlike the mundane world. - Alien Sea: Making the ocean strangely colored or otherwise weird to signify that the setting is alien and unlike the mundane world. - Alien Sky: Using a weird or exotic sky to signify that the setting is alien and unlike the mundane world. - All Planets Are Earth-Like: The climate, habitability and other details of every world you come across are conveniently like good ol' Terra's. - Alternate History: A world fundamentally like ours, but whose history took some weird turns. - Alternate Tooniverse: A parallel dimension where everything's a cartoon. - Balkanize Me: Alternate history where large real-life nations fragment into lots of smaller ones. - Bazaar of the Bizarre: A marketplace where you can buy weird, magical or just very exotic stuff. - Beneath the Earth: Large, far-reaching cavern systems extending beneath other settings. - Binary Suns: There are two suns in the sky. - Bizarro Universe: A parallel dimension where everything is weird. - Brown Note Being: An entity whose mere presence is enough to harm others. - Colonized Solar System: After humanity leaves Earth, it builds homes on Mars, Venus, the Moon, Jupiter and the rest. - Constructed World: A setting ideated and designed by a story's writer. - Crystal Landscape: A setting made of or filled with crystals, gemstones and jewels. - Cyberspace: The Internet as an alternate dimension. - Dark World: A world that serves as a ruined or pessimistic parody of another. - Daydream Believer: Someone believes their daydreams are the world's objective truth. - Departure Means Death: Someone cannot leave a certain area or they will die. - Different World, Different Movies: When you go to a parallel dimension, famous media will be subtly, glaringly or comically different. - Dimensional Traveler: Someone who journeys from alternate dimension to alternate dimension. - Dream Land: Dreams as an alternate dimension. - Dream People: Self-aware beings who live in other people's dreams. - A Dungeon Is You: Someone becomes the Genius Loci of a complex, probably underground, building full of monsters. - The Earth-Prime Theory: In the multiverse, one universe existed first, is at the center, or is a keystone for the existence of all the others. - Easily Conquered World: A world that is very easily taken over by the bad guys. - Elseworld: Already-established characters are put into a different continuity. - Expendable Alternate Universe: Universes besides the story's primary one can be ruined or destroyed with little fuss. - Extradimensional Emergency Exit: A character avoids a crisis by escaping into another dimension. - Extradimensional Shortcut: Going faster than light by popping over into a dimension where that's a thing you can do. - Fantasy Americana: The wilderness of North America as a fantasy setting. - Fictional Earth: It's got one sun, one Moon, the same weather and climate and flora and fauna, it's probably still called Earth, but it's a different world. - For Want of a Nail: When one tiny action drastically changes the course of history. - Gender-Bent Alternate Universe: An alternate dimension where everyone's sexes and/or genders are switched around. - Genius Loci: A place that's also a person. - Grim Up North: The northern lands of fantasy settings — expect cold, barbarism, and lots of dangerous monsters. - Hellgate: A gate that leads to Hell. - Hollow World: A world inside of a world that has its own inhabitants. - Inexplicable Cultural Ties: The natives of distant planets develop suspicious similarities to Earth's own cultures. - Space Romans: Aliens who behave like Ancient Rome at its imperial, militaristic height. - Inn Between the Worlds: A pub, inn, bar or other watering hole that serves as a travel hub between dimensions. - Interdimensional Travel Device: A gadget that lets you travel between universes. - In the Doldrums: A place that is actively dull, featureless and dead, and takes steps to keep itself that way. - Intrepid Fictioneer: A character who travels into in-universe fictional settings. - Land of Faerie: A magic-filled dimension where the fairies live. - Layered World: A world built in layers, which are either metaphorically above and below one another or physically so. - Level Ate: A place made out of food. - A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...: An interplanetary setting far removed from Earth and humanity as we know it. - Lost World: A place somehow isolated from the wider world, where unusual things and creatures or ones from the past still exist. - Mage in Manhattan: A villain from a Magical Land comes to our world to cause havoc. - Magical Land: A fantasy world with magic that is accessible from the "real" world. - Media Transmigration: A character's soul is transferred from their current body into that of a fictional character. - Merged Reality: Two or more timelines/dimensions/realities are merged into one. - The Metaverse: An internet-like system represented as a place where people can walk around like in the physical world. - Mirror Universe: An alternate dimension where the good guys are bad and the bad guys are good. - Modern Mayincatec Empire: A mesoamerican nation, or one inspired by mesoamerican culture, existing in a present-day or future setting. - Multicultural Alien Planet: An alien planet home to multiple independent cultures and/or nations. - Multipurpose Monocultured Crop: A single farmed crop that can be used for everything. - The Multiverse: Many universes existing alongside each other. Travel between them may be possible. - Mushroom House: Houses built within giant mushrooms. - Mutually Fictional: The natives of two different dimensions/universes know of each other as characters from works of fiction. - Never Was This Universe: An alternate history without a specific point of divergence from real life. - New Life in Another World Bonus: If you end up trapped in another world, you also get skills or powers to go with your new life. - Platonic Cave: The world is not as it seems, and a deception keeps you from seeing it. - A Planet Named Zok: Alien planets' names tend to be heavy on the z's, x's, k's and the like. - Planet of Copyhats: A planetary race with very specific, similar traits. - Planet of Hats: A planetary race defined by a specific quirk, habit or value. - Planetville: Planets are treated as culturally uniform throughout — essentially like big towns or cities. - Portal Pool: A pool that serves as a portal between places or universes. - Post-Soviet Reunion: Russia reunites with post-Soviet states into an alliance, supranational union or superstate. - Psychological Torment Zone: A location that preys upon your deepest, darkest fears and secrets. - Real-World Episode: Fictional characters visit the real world. - Recursive Reality: Reality exists infinitely within itself. - Refugee from TV Land: Fictional characters escape to or become trapped in the real world. - Reincarnate in Another World: You die, and are reborn in another universe. - Retro Universe: An alternate universe where retro, vintage or antiquated technology, styles and aesthetics are still used. - Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: A historical figure who, in an alternate universe or history, holds a vastly different job. - The Savage South: The distant south of pulp or fantasy settings. Expect jungles, stifling humidity, hostile wildlife and hostile natives. - Save Both Worlds: Protagonists who need to save Another Dimension find their original one endangered as well. - Sealed Evil in Another World: Where the Big Bad was banished to a different world in order to keep this one safe from them. - The Series Has Left Reality: A previously more grounded or realistic series gains more fanciful elements as it goes on. - Single-Biome Planet: A planet improbably covered in a single biome — all swamp, all desert, all rainforest, all constantly-erupting volcanoes, etc. - Space-Filling Empire: Alternate history where one or a few sprawling nations cover most of the world. - Speculative Fiction LGBT: Fantasy and science fiction with a heavy emphasis on LGBT themes. - Sudden Lack of Signal: When you find yourself somewhere weird, you will also find yourself without wi-fi or phone reception. - Thin Dimensional Barrier: Location where whatever keeps dimensions separate can be easily passed through. - Tidally Locked Planet: A natural satellite that has one side always facing the body it orbits and the other always facing away. - The Time of Myths: The often-vague period in the ancient past when gods, heroes and monsters walked, often with little emphasis on hard chronology. - Toon Town: A place where cartoon characters live in an otherwise normal world. - Trapped in Another World: Characters from one world are left stranded in another. - Trapped in TV Land: Characters are left stranded in an in-universe work of fiction. - United Europe: Europe unites under a single government that supersedes or supplants the traditional national governments. - Up the Real Rabbit Hole: Fantasy worlds and their inhabitants are of no consequence because they're not really "real". - Vision Quest: A character goes on a spiritual journey of self-discovery. - Weird West: The Wild West with supernatural elements. - Weird World, Weird Food: A strange world is established as being strange thanks to the food it contains. - Win to Exit: Characters trapped in a virtual reality must win a game to exit it. - The World as Myth: All fictional universes are real and accessible to one another and the real world. - Worldbuilding: The process of filling out and expanding a fictional world's lore and setting. - World Pillars: A world, or a part of it, held up by literal pillars. - World Shapes: Worlds with unusual shapes — flat, cubical, ring-shaped, etc. - World Sundering: A world is physically broken into pieces. - World Tree: A tree that holds up one or more worlds. - Your Magic's No Good Here: Traveling to an alternate dimension/reality/universe causes a person's special abilities (magic, super powers, etc.) to work differently. - Zeppelins from Another World: How to show that a work takes place in another universe or an alternate history? Put zeppelins everywhere.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtherworldTropes
Otaku - TV Tropes Otaku come in many flavors, but one thing can be said for each and every one of them. They've each staked out their own favorite thing, and they obsess over it relentlessly. Regardless of other intelligence, an otaku will have an obsessive, unhealthy, and almost encyclopedic knowledge of their chosen topic. There are almost as many flavors of this type of character as there are things under the sun, but a few of the major ones are: Essentially, someone could be an otaku about just about anything: politics, sports, history, etc. When otaku is used by itself by a Westerner, 99% of the time it will mean "anime/manga otaku". Neither geek nor nerd is an adequate translation. However, in modern use, both words may carry a shadow of the right connotations of obsessive interest and/or social ineptitude; see the geek page for details. Think of the older, more pejorative senses of geek and you're on the right track. The British term anorak and the Internet terms neckbeard or weeb/weaboo are also close translations. Speaking of The Internet, in more dickish online communities, autism-related terms get slung around in a similar manner. The closest troper-speak cognate would be "Loony Fan." In Japan, the term doesn't carry a positive meaning at all. One of the first things most Japanese language classes often have to teach people is that calling yourself an otaku in Japan is a very bad thing. (Although it must be said that in more recent years this sense is mellowing out, to the extent that more Japanese are self-identifying as otaku. See The Other Wiki's page on this for more info.) A related term is hikikomori, which refers to a teenager or young adult who withdraws completely from society for an extended period, typically isolating themselves within their parents' house and becoming psychologically fixated on particular hobbies; hikikomori in media are usually otaku of some sort. Hikikomori are also critically viewed as lazy and outright creepy, which doesn't help the perception of otaku much — especially after 1989, when serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki was shown to be both an otaku and hikikomori, leading to a moral panic. Otakuism is associated with men, with the notable exceptions of the Fangirls, Wrench Wench, the Cosplay Otaku Girl, and creators of a certain kind of comic. However, females seem to be either getting more common lately or becoming more relaxed about showing it. The term itself comes from the very polite form of "you", which can come off as socially awkward. The best guess as to how the term became associated with obsessive fandom is that the word was an inside joke among the production staff of the anime series Super Dimension Fortress Macross in 1982, and that they would have characters (notably Lynn Minmay) use the over-polite form of address, even when inappropriate. Fans picked it up and used it in conversation between each other even well past the point when they would use other forms of "you", such as "kimi" or "Anata" or "omae". A writer for a Japanese magazine noted the meme and wrote an article that cemented the term as being used for obsessive fans. See also: Occidental Otaku, Chuunibyou. Compare: Loony Fan (who are more weird than obsessive) and The Movie Buff (a similar type of obsession over movies.) ## Examples: - In Action Heroine Cheer Fruits, Ann Akagi is a major Tokusatsu otaku, not just of the action heroine shows that drive the show's plot but of real shows like Super Sentai, Kamen Rider and more, as evidenced by the Shout Outs she delivers. Contrary to the stereotype, she's actually exceptionally fit for a high schooler, which is precisely why she gets cast as the "Red Ranger" when the girls of Hinano start their own action heroine show. Roko Kuroki, another member of the team, is a railfan: her father is the stationmaster of Hinano's train station, she actually lives in a train car converted into a bedroom, and she's shown to enjoy the smell of diesel; no points for guessing what she suggests when the girls are brainstorming for themes for their show. - Tama and Rin in Bamboo Blade are also toku fans, and eventually become Promoted Fangirls when they get a chance to go on the set of the Blade Braver movie. - Julius Novachrono from Black Clover is a huge magic geek, becoming excited when learning about unique magics, complete with sparkling eyes. So much so that he often shirks his duties as the Wizard King to search for new magics in disguise. - Staz, the main protagonist from Blood Lad is a Vampire of Royal Lineage, ruler of a portion of Makai, and a self-confessed Otaku who loves human entertainment, particularly Anime and Manga, and is a proud Dragon Ball Z fanboy who idolizes Goku. - In Bokurano, Maki Anou and her father are milder examples. They both love anime and military stuff, but they dearly love each other and Maki manages to bond with her fellow Pilots as well, specially Takami and Kana. - Shinichi Kudo from Case Closed is both an Amateur Sleuth and a huge fanboy of mystery and crime novels. He's sometimes referred to as a suiri otaku aka a mystery otaku. (Particularly by his "not girlfriend" Ran.) - In a filler case, Shinichi/Conan investigates a murder that took place in a gathering of tokusatsu fans. The victim hits many, if not all the stereotypes of the "bad" otaku: obsessive, a borderline hikikomori, bitchy, lives in an apartment that's chock-full of memorabilia, etc. \|\|It turns out that his most valuable merchandising piece was stolen from a kid... who later was hit by a truck while trying to retrieve it. And the boy's older brother, the leader of the fans club, is who killed the otaku, to punish him for the horrible incident.\|\| - Officer Chiba is a milder example. He's often seen reading a manga about a pretty girl detective and it's strongly suggested by Takagi that his room is full of character figurines and models. When we do get to see his flat, almost every exposed surface in the living room has figurines or other merchandise, but Conan finds it excessive rather than creepy. Chiba's collections seem to be mostly superhero and kaiju related, and naturally, the Detective Kids love it. - In the filler Séance Locked Murders case, one of the suspects is an otaku named Yutaka, the president of a deceased Idol Singer's fans club. He at first seems to treat the deal as a game, and when \|\|a fellow fangirl is found strangled to death\|\| he happily and melodrmatically claims that the singer's spirit has come to take revenge for her own strange death. - Codename: Sailor V (the manga that would eventually give birth to Sailor Moon) actually has a one off character called Takurou Ootaku, whose name is a pun roughly meaning "wandering otaku". He's a Game Otaku who refuses to believe a girl could be better at games than he is. He flips out at the idea of Minako even going to an arcade (which he considers a "castle for lonely boys") and accuses Minako of being a man in drag when she beats his highscore. He even demands she take off her clothes. When she tries to fight him as Sailor V he tries to look up her skirt, so she kicks him. - Kaoruko of Comic Girls might be an Older Than They Look high school girl, but her hobbies are more similar to male anime / manga otaku in their twenties: Schoolgirl Series manga, figurine, and seiyuu-chasing. This has been pointed out by one of her roommates, as the only other time that roommate saw a desk like Kaoruko's was of a 25-year-old man. - Cowboy Bebop: The episode "Speak Like a Child", which is about a time-capsule videotape, features an otaku with an interest in VCRs and other obsolete video equipment. - Kiko from Darker than Black. In a world where murder and superhumans with insane abilities are rampart, and people have fairly normal looks, she is a pink-haired sidekick to a bad private detective. - Kiyoshiro Higashimitarai in Digimon Ghost Game is a Teen Genius who got his Master's degree in the United States at the age of 13, but went back to school with kids his own age anyway because he wanted the "authentic Japanese high school experience" like in his manga, and he wears Handwraps of Awesome around one of his hands constantly simply because he thinks it's cool. Some of his friends are also fellow Otaku themselves. - Tsutomo Sasaki from Domu: A Child's Dream failed to get into college for three consecutive years because he spends all of his time building model airplanes. - Dragon Ball GT features a deceptive cult leader, Dolltakkii, who is creepily obsessed with dolls, even turning girls into dolls for him to coo over, and his cult revolves around bringing a giant killer doll to life by sacrificing his followers. His very name is even a pun on the term doll otaku. - Emerging: Mori, the office manager for the Department of Virology in the National Institute for Infectious Diseases, is an otaku for, of all things, deadly viruses. Especially Ebola. - In Final Fantasy: Lost Stranger, Shogo is this for the Final Fantasy series. While he and Yuko are both fans, he possesses encyclopedic knowledge about the series and obsessively plays Final Fantasy XIV in his downtime. He's also shocked that his "inner Ultimania" is completely wrong when he misnames the races in the world he ends up in. - Winry of Fullmetal Alchemist is an automail engineer and a "gear junky". Edward lampshades this, and is promptly accused of being an "alchemy freak". - Hanaukyō Maid Team. Ikuyo Suzuki, head maid of the Technology department. She writes and sells her own manga. - Nagi from Hayate the Combat Butler is a manga otaku, and has been drawing her own ever since she was six years old. She's also a Gamer Chick. Gotta do something with all those hours inside, right? - Wataru (a.k.a. "Waka") works as a clerk in a video store, giving him plenty of opportunities to indulge in his hobby of action anime. - It's arguable that Hayate himself is one, seeing as he's been in many positions that other otaku would kill for. And the fact that he redrew Nagi's manga chapter into one that would appeal to many otaku. Then again, he might just be too dense to be one. - Gym teacher Kaoru is given his own chapter, titled "Lost in the Path of the Otaku". He is a Gundam otaku, his room filled to overflowing with Gundam models (he built them himself), but the main focus of his character isn't about this part of his life. - Kotetsu is shown to be this way over trains, his fascination with them is used to put the 'dark side' of Japan's outlook to a lampshade when two girls, who previously were discussing how Bishōnen his looks are, are visibly squicked when the camera he's pulling out of his bag is used to take pictures of the trains going by, and quickly leave. - Japan from Hetalia: Axis Powers is an anime and games otaku; he has stated he prefers 2D to 3D and is a direct parody to Japan's (the country) otaku culture. - France of all people seems to be one for manga as well. He's shown shopping for manga with Japan in one strip, mentally compared Germany to Light in another and was in one live event told by Japan that if he doesn't behave, he wouldn't let him have any more manga. Justified Trope since France imports more manga than any other nation. - Rumi from The High School Life of a Fudanshi is one for BL manga. She's passionate about manga, has friendly arguments about certain pairings, and is familiar with the Seme and Uke terms. - Highschool of the Dead: Hirano is a gun/military otaku, turned specialist after spending a month training at an American Blackwater firing range. As such, his expertise makes him invaluable to Takashi's group as he often lays down cover fire, during engagements, and even begins teaching the others how to use firearms. - Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: - Resident Lovable Jock Kazeno, ends up becoming an idol otaku \|\|after his girlfriend Osaragi breaks up with him.\|\| - Fujiwara describes her fellow members of the Tabletop Gaming Club as "mega otaku", both of whom seem to be of the stereotypical anime/manga variety. Gigako in particular seems to be a fan of the Super Robot Genre, judging by the figurines she keeps in her bedroom. - Hiroshi Akiba of Inubaka is stated by the manga to be a pop-idol otaku turned dog otaku. He knows more about dogs than the title character. - Megane Kakeru in Inazuma Eleven. At least he's not that bad, and can be even awesome at a time, especially when he's compared to another soccer team made of otaku \|\|who use their traits to cheat matches.\|\| - The main protagonist of Kekkaishi is a cake otaku. Another person lampshades this. This is made funnier when his feelings for an older childhood friend and briefly gaining a Stalker with a Crush of similar age to said childhood friend has given him a reputation for being fond of older women, which other characters have also pointed out. - Kankichi Ryotsu of Kochikame has a past time of collecting toy models. Judo fighter Sakonji is obsessed with dating sims and miniature female figures. - Lucky Star: - Konata, another exception to the Cosplay Otaku Girl rule, who seems to be primarily a gaming otaku (specifically, MMORPGs and eroges), though she also talks a lot about anime, manga, and Collectible Card Games. She inherited her interests from her father Soujirou, who's very much an otaku himself. - Patricia Martin is a parody of the typical American weeaboo, knowing nothing about Japan and its culture besides what she learned from anime, manga and yaoi. She learned most of her Japanese from subbed anime, only listens to Japanese bands whose songs have been used as anime themes, and believes Akihabara is a more important cultural landmark than anything else in Japan. Needless to say, she's way geekier than even Konata. - During the "dinosaur" episode of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Sasshi is briefly depicted as the ultimate negative Japanese stereotype of the otaku: solitary, overweight, bad complexion, and with the implication of poor hygiene, body odor, and paraphilia. (See image above.) - Fuu from Magic Knight Rayearth loves video games (specifically RPGs), and uses terms such as "experience points" and "treasure" when she and the other girls receive their first mission from Presea. - Maken-ki!: Kimi Satou and her best friend, Akaza Chacha, first met through their mutual love of manga and cosplay. Chapter 60 delves deeper by featuring them cosplaying as Alena and Manya, from Dragon Quest IV, at a schoolwide manga convention, during which, Kimi tries to sell some of her own doujinshi. - In the anime version of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, the serious and sensible Rina is given a rather ridiculous vice: she's a plasma TV otaku. This is used without fail to allow the writers to dangle a TV in front of her and ignore any situation where she would take the Idiot Ball from her friends and punt it somewhere else with her good sense.* Midori Days: Takamizawa is a fanatic when it comes to cosplay figures and has an entire showroom, which includes everything from limited edition models, to one-of-a-kind originals. It's just missing one thing: Midori, herself. But since he's unable to add her to his collection (for obvious reasons), he does the next best thing, by making a perfect likeness of her in the form of a hand puppet. - Graham Aker from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is a Japanese culture fanboy. A VERY badass Japanese fanboy who manages to avoid being an Occidental Otaku if only by virtue of the fact he is totally serious about his passion and has hardly any traits of the Occidental version aside from the fanaticism. - Gundam Build Fighters gets pretty Meta about this. Since the entire sub-franchise is about people building custom model kits and battling them using a simulator-like machine, most of the cast are Otaku for the Gundam franchise itself. Original Build Fighters protagonist Sei Iori is a stand-out example: in one episode where he was put under hypnosis, he proceeded to recite Amuro Ray's dialog from Mobile Suit Gundam... all 43 episodes of it note : And for the record, he wasn't ordered to do this by the hypnotist; he did it entirely of his own volition. - Izuku Midoriya of My Hero Academia idolizes Pro Heroes and aspires to be one himself. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of all Pro Heroes (even obscure ones like Eraser Head who tries to avoid appearing in the media) and takes obsessive notes on any detail regarding heroes. His bedroom is also covered from floor to ceiling in All Might merchandise, his favorite Pro Hero. - The Big Bad All For One is a huge fan of the Demon Lord featured in the Captain Hero comics. His motivation to become Japan's most dangerous criminal mastermind comes from his desire to cosplay the Demon Lord. Ironically, his younger brother was a fan of Captain Hero and became the progenitor of the One For All Quirk that seeks to defeat All For One. - Chiaki from Niea_7 loves investigating UFOs, and it's just her luck that aliens have landed on earth. It also makes her bond with Niea very well. - Tomoko Kuroki of No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular! is an Otome otaku who tries to gain popularity in school in the same way that Keima does his job. Unfortunately for her, things are not what it seems... - Shigeru Mikami in Not Lives is a gaming otaku, and he is even called out for being one. He later uses his gaming skills to defeat the other players in 'Not Alive'. - Renge Houshakuji in Ouran High School Host Club is so obsessed with the fictional Dating Sim videogame Ukidoki Memorial (a rather transparent allusion to the real Tokimeki Memorial games) that she decides to redesign the personalities of the Host Club members to better match the characters in the game. The reason she transfers to Ouran in the first place is because she instantly decided to marry Kyouya after seeing a photo of him, as he bears a strong resemblance to her favorite character from Ukidoki. Unfortunately, she finds out the hard way that Kyouya isn't anything like the dating sim character she loves. - Elda, the titular Otaku Elf, is a timid shut-in who prefers to spend her time watching anime and playing video games than do her duties as the (admittedly false) deity of the Shinto shrine she inhabits. It turns out that she's always had addictive tendencies, and not just towards modern-day media; as she was summoned to Japan 400 years ago, she used to be fixated on collecting woodblock paintings that used to come with medicine. - Paranoia Agent features an otaku who patronizes (as in, he pays the hookers for sex, not treat them in a condescending manner) hookers that play to his cosplay fetish. It turns out to be a plot point later on. - Patlabor has Noa Izumi and Shige. - Noa is a huge fan of Labors, which is the reason she signed up for duty with the newly formed second Special Vehicles Unit - in hopes of being able to pilot one of her very own. She had even chosen the name "Alphonse" for it, before ever being accepted as part of the division. So, for her, being a Labor pilot is literally her dream job. - The same can be said in regard to Shige. The difference being, whereas Noa wants to pilot Labors, Shige is a gearhead who wants to study them in order to better understand how they work, so he can optimize their efficiency. Which is why he became a mechanic at the SVU. - In Ashes of the Past, members of the Squirtle/Wartortle/Blastoise evolutionary line are all Otaku of one thing or another, usually anime. Ash's Squirtle and Gary's Blastoise are obsessed with Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, May's Wartortle is a huge fan of the Disney Animated Canon, and a Squirtle that sees May's Blaziken in action decides to take up kickboxing and become The Strongest Squirtle. And then there's the Hidden Village of the Turtle... - Hetalia: Axis Powers fanfic Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità: Italy and Japan are both otakus for Death Note to the point they decided to Cosplay as Light Yagami and Teru Mikami respectively and say their signature lines before bursting into laughter. Germany is not amused. "That's true!" The brunet laughed. "'Boku wa Kira janai!'" Japan played along. "'Sakujo!'" The two burst out into laughter, clutching at their sides. "...Okay." Germany so doesn't get anime. - The Rigel Black Chronicles: - Harry's first and true love is brewing potions. She learns an impressive variety of other subjects through necessity (such as physical and mental self-defence), or because they're tangentially related to brewing (like wandless magic, which is used to stir multilayered potions), but at the end of the day, she's at Hogwarts to learn from Professor Snape, and could cheerfully spend all day in a lab. (She's astounded to find, in her third year, that Alchemy has a similar appeal.) When Professor Snape first tests her skill by having her write down all the ingredients she knows of and the basics of handling each one, she runs out of parchment. - Kasten is even more extreme. He has spent ten years as a mortal, and fifty as a vampire, extracting and isolating the essence of different substances, aiming to collect the essence of everything on Earth, and shows no sign of any other interests. - Kung Fu Panda has a rather hilarious take on the otaku phenomenon, with Po as a Kung Fu enthusiast. Not only does he know all the tales of great Kung Fu masters like the Furious Five, recognize each sacred or amazing artifact in the temple with ecstatic glee, and pour out gushing praise of Crane in his bedchamber to the point he hovers outside the door waiting for the master to speak again, but he confesses to them that he has all their action figures—which of course are much smaller than the real thing, except Mantis who is "the same size." The fact he is chosen to learn Kung Fu at their side and becomes the Dragon Warrior is probably an example of an Ascended Fanboy as well—the artifact-examining scene certainly smacks of it. - The title character in Muriel's Wedding is a hard-core marriage otaku, who makes it a point to go to every dress boutique in Sydney with fake stories about comatose family members to score pictures of herself in various wedding dresses. - Our Shining Days 2017: Chen Qing's first ensemble members are four dormitory girls infamous for living in the 2D world. They spend most of their days playing video games, reading manga and cosplaying, but they are also very passionate about Classical Chinese music and are well-versed in their history. - Several of the people featured in the Documentary Special When Lit come across like this. The most prominent example is Sam Harvey, a former bowling operator who lives alone and spends his days working on his collection of 400 pinball machines, complete with meticulous logs of owners' histories. - In Another Note, Beyond Birthday is into manga. He \|\|as Rue Ryuuzaki\|\| spends an entire paragraph gushing over Akazukin Cha Cha. \|\|He also tucks an important clue into the set of that manga title in one of his victims' homes.\|\| - In A Lullaby Sinister, Kaito Inoue is obsessed with anime, manga and video games to the point of it invading his everyday conversations. He is unaware that his references typically go over everyone's heads. - In the Discworld novel Going Postal, Apprentice Postman Stanley Howler is an obsessive pin collector, to the point (no pun intended) that all the other collectors in Ankh-Morpork think he's "a little weird about pins". After the main character invents postage stamps, Stanley takes up stamp collecting... with pretty much the same obsessiveness he had for pins. - Don Quixote makes this Older Than Steam. Even before he goes crazy enough to actually try to become a knight, he's established early on as being very obsessed with novels about chivalric romance. He argues with his friends over which knights are the strongest, overthinks all the technical aspects of the chivalry stories, and is even tempted to write Fan Fiction of one of his favorites. Disturbingly similar to some modern-day fandoms... - You can see this quote in Chapter I, Part I: You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to reading books of chivalry with such ardor and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his property. - Walker and Erika on Durarara!! are big anime/manga otaku who don't really distinguish between fiction and reality; \|\|in fact, they fit the negative stereotype that otaku are psychotic, although they're still basically "the good guys"\|\|. - Family Skeleton Mysteries: Madison Thackery quite happily refers to herself as one. - Sergeant Sousuke Sagara from Full Metal Panic! is described as a military otaku by Kaname, before she finds out he really is in the military. However, Sousuke is still a military nut even though he's a real soldier, since he's completely clueless about anything that doesn't have to do with fighting or the military and always acts as though he's on the battlefield. Shinji Kazama is a straighter version of the trope, specifically a military AS fan. - All-around badass Belfangan Clouseau's guilty pleasure is moe anime. During the climax of the story, he monologues about how he's going to survive so that he can retire, move to Akihabara, and spend the rest of his life translating said anime so that everyone can enjoy it. - Gonna Be the Twin-Tail!! has an entire set of antagonists who are basically this: The Ultimaguil, who are one part extra-dimensional invader, one-part Emotion Eater, one part Dirty Old Man, and lots of helpings of Otaku. Heck, each has their own native "fetish", from twintails, to bloomers, to little girls holding dolls... - The titular character of Haruka Nogizaka's Secret. Being an popular girl from a rich family, she has to hide the fact that she's secretly an anime otaku, otherwise people will look down on her... and then the male protagonist catches her red-handed and she's terrified that that he'd use that knowledge to that advantage (turns out he didn't). This is an in-anime example where people do look down on otaku, if it gets blown out of proportion... like the male protagonist's best friend, whose otakuness is shown right off the bat. - Tomoya, Eriri, and Utaha of How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend are all otaku to a large degree. Tomoya is very open about it, Utaha doesn't bring it up, and Eriri tries to hide that aspect of her from the public. - Apart from wanting to be a sumo wrestler, Shoji from I Knocked Up Satan's Daughter also carries a Dragonball Z backpack and has a sketchbook full of anime characters. "Demon Girls" are apparently his favorite. - Eitarou, Professor Stein and Agaliarept in Magician's Academy are all otaku in the purest sense of the word... except they're also all-powerful mages, mad scientists and hold positions of at least some power at the Magician's Academy. - Annie Wilkes of Misery fame is a well-known western example. She's so obsessed with the Misery book series that when author Paul Sheldon decides to end the series with the main character's death due to being tired of writing it, she kidnaps Sheldon and forces him to write another book in between drugging and torturing him. - My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: The "monkey girl" and Atsuko loved anime, manga, and otome games. After the monkey girl reincarnates as Katarina, she begins reading Chivalric Romance novels with gratuitous Courtly Love to fuel her addiction, bonding with Sophia due to their shared tastes and even get Mary interested in them too. However, given that Sophia is a reincarnated Atsuko, this is most likely not a coincidence. - Otaku Girl has a main character that is... you guessed it, an otaku. In this story, otakus could visit a virtual reality world that allows them to use the powers of their favorite fictional characters. And the main character, Haru Kinomoto, has the various powers that are inspired by anime and manga. - The Dutch series Pindakaas en Sushi has this trope as a major theme, centering around a main character who gets more and more involved with the anime and manga community. - In The Rising of the Shield Hero the four Legendary Heroes are all Japanese otaku, as were previous generations of Legendary Heroes. \|\|The reincarnated pawns of Medea are also otaku, but notably less sane\|\|. - In Rolitania, a good portion of the population in the titular country are otaku. Their interests vary widely, and they all seem to get along for the most part. It helps that their Queen is an otaku as well. - Kaoru Yamazaki from Welcome to the NHK has a huge collection of anime and video game merchandise, and he's especially obsessed with the children's anime Ojamajo Doremi (in the anime adaptation, he's obsessed with the fictional anime Puru Puru Pururin instead). Although he comes off as slightly less severe then some of the other characters, he's treated with the same humorous objective criticism as everyone else. Yamazaki's influence makes main character Satou become an otaku as well, though while he watches more anime than is probably healthy, he's not quite as obsessive about it as Yamazaki. - In World War Z, there is an Otaku of the hikikomori type who is so obsessed with studying the Zombie Apocalypse on the Internet that he doesn't treat it as something to worry about until it reaches his apartment building, stuck with useless information and trapped in a very zombie-friendly Japan. He manages to survive, finds a genuine katana from a WW2 veteran's flat, and takes a level in badass. - And then he gets trained by a blind swordsman, and gains a couple thousand more levels in badass. - The central cast of The Big Bang Theory are obsessively crazy about comic books and scifi/fantasy TV and cinema. Each of the four could be said to be Westernised versions of the otaku. even their girlfriends go through a brief phase, much to their discomfort. - The geeks in Freaks and Geeks as well. One episode has them cosplaying for a convention as Luke Skywalker, Yoda and the Fourth Doctor. - Western (sort of) example: Hiro from Heroes. Even if is japanese, Hiro is an avid fan of western superheroes and science fiction. - Nearly every character in Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger in an Otaku with varying degrees of obsession. Justified since the show is set in Akihabara, which is the center of Otaku culture in Japan. - Kamen Rider Fourze uses the term several times, in reference to female lead Yuki Jojima (an outer space and rocketry fangirl) and Goth girl Tomoko Nozama (a fangirl of insects and the urban legend of the Kamen Rider). - Train Man (2004) centers around a group of otaku who meet over an online message board, and their attempts to get one of their number to win the heart of a lady. - Dempagumi.inc, a Japanese idol group, is said to be made up of ex-otaku, with each member having their own otaku "specialisation". Whether this is true or just a marketing ploy is unclear, but it is worth noting that all the members were employed at the well known "Dear Stage", an otaku hangout, in Akihabara, Tokyo's well-known otaku district. - In New Dynamic English, Kent Moss once interviewed a Superman fan who has "100 Superman comics", would only read Superman Comics and said that he even wants to be Superman, to the point where he wears his costume. His current passion of Superman is questionable, because he's selling the comics and he said he read them when he's a boy. - Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues: - While they try to hide it out of embarrassment, Ivy and Luna are both big fans of anime and manga, and bonded specifically because they both had an interest in it. - Vivian has a lot of nerdy interest, ranging from anime to musicals, that she's both deeply invested in and deeply embarrassed if anyone finds out about. - Ken-Sama on NoPixel is a stereotypical fat otaku who enjoys talking in-depth about anime and peppering his speech with Gratuitous Japanese. When he thinks he meets his future self, his first impulse is to ask how One Piece ends. - Nishijou Takumi, the protagonist from Chaos;Head, is a hikikomori and a massive otaku (Dolls, Anime, and Gamer) to the point of spending all of his time in his room (a cargo container on the roof of a building) and vastly preferring the company of his anime-based dolls to any real girls; this preference exhibits itself most strongly (besides his constant exclamations to that effect) by him \|\|having delusions of his favorite anime waifu talking to him and acting as a companion/influence of sorts, talking to him virtually all the time\|\|. Ironically enough, it turns out that \|\|Takumi himself is a delusion-made-real, answering the age-old question, "Can dreams dream?" with a very emphatic "Yes." Evidently, the trouble is getting them to stop.\|\| - Danganronpa: - Hifumi Yamada from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is the "Ultimate Doujin Writer" (or "Fanboy", in some translations). He's a fat teenaged artist whose work sells in the tens of thousands, disavows any interest in 3D women and aims to become a famous sculptor (of anime figures, of course). His dialogues are liberally peppered with references to anime and video games. - Tsumugi Shirogane in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is the "Ultimate Cosplayer". Like Hifumi before her, she makes frequent references to anime and video games that the others don't understand. As part of her talent, she's also an excellent seamstress. However, Tsumugi doesn't exactly like having people look at her, and as such prefers having people model her costumes rather than wearing them herself. - Daru from Steins;Gate frequently uses terms such as "waifu" and "tsundere." In the English dub of the anime, he uses catchphrases such as "unreadable code is unreadable" and talks about his 2-D harem. Throughout the anime, he can be seen playing visual novels and eroge. - Sal Manella from the game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a stereotypical otaku, whose Japanese name is Uzai Takuya which literally translates into "annoying otaku". - Kaine in A Profile is an anime and dating sim otaku, and quite open about it. Despite this, he's even more popular than the main character. - Koujirou Frau, one of the main characters from Robotics;Notes is a fujoshi who frequently uses terms like "DQNs" and "tsunderes" along with memes like "What eroge is this?!" and "But I refuse!" She has a collection of thin books and is very similar to her otaku predecessors Takumi and Daru from previous games in their shared Science Adventure series. - In Spirit Hunter: NG, multiple characters are big fans of the Idol Singer Momo Kuruse (who is secretly Kaoru Hazuki, one of the main characters). Of note are Maruhashi, one of the main group who's unaware of Momo's true identity, and Kagawa, an officer worker whose password relates to the idol CDs he owns. - ATTACK on MIKA: - Akira is a sympathetic example of one. His parents ignore him in favor of his sister Nagi, and they even refer to him as "scum" for being an otaku. - Abram, a minor character, is a stereotypical depiction, on top of making pig noises and turning out to be \|\|a masochist after the antagonist Mina cusses out the boys who fought over who gets to save her from drowning.\|\| - Mani Mani People: Yuto was an anime and video game otaku. He was bullied for it. When the bullies forced him to go to a matchmaking party, he met Kaede who is nerdy and into the same things as him and they began to date each other even when they are revealed to be the yakuza and mafia children respectively. - Lamar of Meta Runner is primarily a anime/manga otaku. He's most noted for his collection of body pillows, whom he has a Companion Cube relationship with. He'd qualify as a gaming otaku too if gaming wasn't the big-name thing in the Meta Runner world. - RWBY's protagonist Ruby Rose is a weapon otaku, especially regarding the Swiss Army Weapons common to the World of Remnant. When she first arrives at Beacon Academy, she promptly goes ga-ga over all the cool gear new classmates are carrying around and has to get pulled back to reality by her Cool Big Sis Yang. - Parodied with Teen Girl Squad's "Japanese Culture Greg", who constantly shouts out random Gratuitous Japanese and makes Animesque faces. - In El Goonish Shive, Greg, to the point that he once watched 168 hours straight of anime. - Furry Experience: Cat loves anime and manga to the point of getting up at three in the morning on Saturdays to watch them , and sometimes explains certain aspects of them to Ronnie and Dawn. Extends to live-action shows as well, such as knowing why the Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon equivalent show has a hand-puppet for the Luna-style character. She also decides to do her art research paper on Japanese comics. - Piro and Largo from Megatokyo. The first is a rather straight Western anime otaku, while the second is a videogame otaku with a feeble grasp on reality. - My Impossible Soulmate centers on Chiaki, an otaku who is sent to another world. She is very fond of anime, manga, and especially video games. Chiaki was often bullied in her world for her interests but her friend, and also crush, Fumiko tells people off to stop them from picking on her. - Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki, which frequently parodies anime and manga tropes had an otaku as a recurring antagonist in several holiday specials. - Ronnie of Whomp!, to the point that he once called his roommate Aegrias "baka!" because she wouldn't understand a more nuanced term that he'd picked up. - Phil from Yosh!, to the point of being able to quote a specific panel from a given manga. - Sarah the ice cream girl from The Amazing World of Gumball describes herself as one. One episode has her write fanfiction involving the citizens of Elmore. - Jellystone!: Peter Potamus is depicted here as one. He owns various anime figures, mentions watching OVAs, tries to run like Naruto, owns a dakimakura, and even shows up to a wrestling competition as a samurai. Per the stereotype, he's also shown to have No Social Skills. - Interestingly, there's a minor character on The Legend of Korra whose name is Otaku, due to his great love of Air Nomad culture. - Luz Noceda from The Owl House loves making fan fiction, fan art, and anime music videos, considers shipping to be Serious Business, and has made a self-insert character for The Good Witch Azura, an in-universe book series that she's a big fan of. - The Powerpuff Girls (1998) episode "Collect Her" features a negative example in the from of Lenny Baxter, a fan who spent much of his spare time collecting Powerpuff memorabilia. When Lenny finds out he has obtained every known piece of merchandise, he goes insane at the prospect of not being able to add more items to his collection, leading him to steal the girls' personal belongings and, eventually, kidnapping the girls themselves. - Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. - Ronaldo Fryman from Steven Universe mentions weird fictional anime he likes note : such as Koala Princess, Beautiful Girlfriend Satan, and I Can't Believe My Stepdad's My Sword frequently on his Character Blog Keep Beach City Weird and occasionally on the show itself, calls his girlfriend his "ohime-sama" in the episode "Restaurant Wars", has worn samurai armor on multiple occasions (including to a wedding), and brags about owning a $300 replica sword even though it's not even sharp enough to cut through a juice box. - Panda from We Bare Bears. He has a tendency to draw nothing but generic Animesque caricatures, he owns a body pillow with a cute anime girl he calls "Miki-Chan", and a glimpse at his laptop in "Everyday Bears" reveals that not only does he have an entire folder titled "manga" on his computer, but his banner on the social media site he uses is an assortment of random anime characters, also possibly drawn by him. - Perri Rhoades, the author of SpectralShadows was an Otaku at one point in their lives. This can be seen by visiting years older submissions on their Live Journal page. - Shoko Nakagawa, famous blogger, cosplayer, and TV personality in Japan. You may know her for singing the opening and insert song for Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. - "Seito Sakakibara" (his real identity is sealed) was a fourteen-year old Serial Killer and otaku. In his late twenties today, he's most famous for decapitating a mentally handicapped ten year-old and spiking the child's head to his school gate. "Sakakibara" contributed a lot to the moral panic that otaku were mentally unhealthy. - Tsutomu Miyazaki, also known as the Otaku Killer, was a Serial Killer and an anime and horror film otaku who preyed on little girls. There's a lot of debate on whether or not he liked anime at all. The horror movie collection is true, though. - The Great-O-Khan from the power stable The United Empire in New Japan Pro-Wrestling is proud to be an otaku and a huge fan of Subaru Oozora from hololive. In fact, one of his attacks is named as the "Oozora Subaru Sheepicide" due to one of the hololive - Holo no Graffiti shorts has Subaru pull this move on Tsunomaki Watame, which turned out to be an original move.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Otaku
Patient Childhood Love Interest - TV Tropes "I decided to map out a strategy. I decided I'd be best friends with Zaheera and stay friends with her long enough to ask her to the matric dance, what we call senior prom. Mind you, we were in grade nine at this point. The matric dance was three years away. But I decided to play the long game. I was like, 'Yep, I'm just gonna take my time.' Because that's what happens in the movies, right? I'd seen my American high school movies. You hang around long enough as the friendly good guy, and the girl dates a bunch of handsome jerks, and then one day she turns around and goes, 'Oh, it's you. It was always you. You're the guy I was supposed to be with all along.' That was my plan. It was foolproof." This is a character type that shows up frequently in Harem Anime and Visual Novels. It is usually a girl, who grew up together with the main character, practically since infancy, and has been always in love with him, but instead of taking the initiative to become his girlfriend, she decided to take it slowly, developing a Like Brother and Sister relationship with him. In the most stereotypical examples, this trope is usually first demonstrated by a scene of her routinely visiting him in the morning, waking him up, walking to school with him, and giving him a box bento that she made just for him. To the uninitiated observer, it'll seem like they're already dating, and even those who know better, like their parents or best friends, expect that they eventually will. At this point, the Harem plot or Love Triangle starts, and in face of the new rivals she realizes that it's time to get serious. Hilarity Ensues, sometimes involving fights over her earlier "privileges" like feeding the protagonist, or as a trump card, bringing up some sort of Childhood Marriage Promise. Often the Girl Next Door, even more literally than that trope describes, living close to the protagonist. In terms of personality, she tends to be either a Yamato Nadeshiko in training, as evidenced by their cooking skills, serene patience, and the serving, yet guiding the boy at the same time, or the long friendship turns her into One of the Boys, a Tsundere who seems to be Vitriolic Best Buds with the boy. Truth in Television, but only to an extent. There's a theory (the evidence for which is quite shaky) known as the Westermarck Effect that claims that people who grew up together before the age of 6 are likely to become hardwired to think about each other Like Brother and Sister. So, the characters wouldn't be able to fall in love if they'd really known each other since infancy. Subtrope of Childhood Friends. See also Childhood Friend Romance for the more generic trope about people who knew each other since childhood falling in love. ## Examples: - Both Yayoi Aoba and Sanae Nakazawa are this to Tsubasa in Captain Tsubasa. Yayoi moves on and stays Just Friends with him \|\|and might end up with his friend Misugi instead\|\|, while Sanae eventually switches to Victorious Childhood Friend when she and Tsubasa are teenagers \|\|and they end up married\|\|. - Almost all of the main love interests in Case Closed, especially Shinichi and Ran, Kaito and Aoko and Heiji and Kazuha. Shinichi and Ran are already a couple now (sort of), but the other two are just too stubborn to admit they're in love. \|\|Though it looks like Kazuha and Heiji are surely going that way.\|\| - Ami Kurimoto is this to Junta Momonari in DNA², and it's actually a huge plot point: as his childhood friend, Ami has come to know Junta so well... that she is completely immune to his Mega Playboy side and, even more, is disgusted by that persona. This means she loves the real Junta, awkward and childish and all, rather than him as the super suave and seductive Mega Playboy. - Isana from Dream Eater Merry. Clearly has very strong feelings for Yumeji, and apparently has had them for some time. - Girls Bravo: Subverted in Kirie's case. While she does have feelings for Yukinari, she quickly decides to call it quits and just remain friends with him after the fourth episode, where her first and only real attempt to upgrade her relationship fails due to unforeseen circumstances and she realizes trying to compete with both Lisa and Miharu could prove to be an impossible battle. The manga even has a one-shot epilogue that touches upon her feelings after he and \|\|Miharu\|\| get together, trying to figure out what to do with herself now that she's officially lost her chance. - Sohara in Heaven's Lost Property. She's Tomoki's childhood friend, lives next door from him, often goes to his house in the morning to wake him up and despite regularly beating him up for his lecherous behavior, she very obviously loves him and is always looking after him. - Highschool of the Dead zigzags the trope with Takashi and Rei, who both fill the role at different points in the series: - They used to date back in middle-school, but broke up after Rei was forced to repeat her junior year. During that time, Takashi began to ignore her since she wouldn't talk to him about it, causing her to think he had abandoned her. So she began dating Takashi's best friend, Hisashi, because he provided her with the emotional support she needed. - Despite the above, Rei still harbored feelings for Takashi, while Takashi tried to hide his resentment over Hisashi's relationship with her. But Hisashi was bitten during the outbreak and briefly became one of "them", which forced Takashi to kill him. Rei was left conflicted by her resentment towards Takashi over Hisashi's death and her lingering feelings for him. She soon decided on the latter and now hopes to rekindle what they once had. - However, the anime version complicates the issue with additional amounts of Ship Tease between Takashi and Saeko, which wasn't seen in the manga. Leaving Rei in the unenviable position of having to compete with Saeko for Takashi's affections. Though in episode 11, \|\|she and Takashi hook up again\|\|. - Subverted with Iroha from I Dont Like You at All, Big Brother!!, for she is VERY Clingy. - Kaoru Shimizu of Major meets Goro as early as the 4th grade of elementary school, and despite starting off on the wrong foot, she signs up for his baseball team just to be close to him. When he moves out of town without saying goodbye to her, she locks herself in her room to cry for days, and the first thing she does upon meeting him again when he comes back during junior high is to punch him. When they're about to graduate, she intends to follow him to Kaido Academy despite it not having a softball team, and he convinces her otherwise because, while she started playing just to be with him, she came to love playing the sport, and she reluctantly complies, until he ends up coming to Seisshu High to start his own baseball team after he left Kaido halfway through the second year. They get separated again after he leaves for the U.S.A. to go pro, but she promises she'll be waiting for his return. Once he does, it's not until Goro accidentally stands her up for a date that her younger brother Taiga berates him for not noticing her feelings for him, and he realizes that he never saw her as a woman. The two eventually get married during the final season, and the series ends with her giving birth to their first child. - A possible interpretation of Koyuki's feelings for Ginta in MÄR. This attitude is \|\|carried over into Snow as well, even though she didn't grow up with Ginta. The anime ends with Koyuki and Snow merging into one person to be with Ginta followed by a rather touching moment as they walk home together, their arms locked.\|\| - Fujioka and Kana from Minami-ke have been friends for awhile and he has a longstanding crush on her. She's so Oblivious to Love though that one starts to wonder if he should just give up. Given how popular he is with the ladies though, he'll probably catch his break once she hits puberty. - Frau Bow from Mobile Suit Gundam, whose name actually translates to "wife". There's a lot of focus on how much she cares for and supports the protagonist, her best friend Amuro. He seems like an Ungrateful Bastard a lot of the time, but he does \|\|finally call her "boku no suki na Frau" = "my sweet Frau" at the end\|\|. No, their relationship isn't any less complicated in the sequel. - Emily from Mobile Suit Gundam AGE, who's an Expy of Frau. \|\|She wins and marries Flit but at a very high price: knowing that she won mostly because the other girl in the "Love Triangle", Yurin, died\|\|. - Naruto: - Hinata with Naruto. She's been in love with him since they were children after he protected her from three bullies, and both Naruto's flashback◊ in Chapter 538 and Masashi Kishimoto in this 2015 New York Comic Con interview confirm that she was the very first person to acknowledge him for the way he is. However, she never once pushes to be with him. Instead, she establishes a strong friendship with him in Part I, and she becomes determined to stand by his side as his equal in Part II, which she accomplishes in Chapter 615. In the canon movie The Last, Hinata's patience is finally rewarded, as Naruto realizes he's in love with her and reciprocates her feelings. At the end of the movie and in the manga's epilogue, they're Happily Married with two children. - Jiraiya with Tsunade. He loved her since childhood but never took the initiative, and she continues to love Dan even after his death. Even after Jiraiya himself dies, Tsunade remains in love with Dan, as shown in her interactions with the reincarnated Dan via Edo Tensei and her Infinite Tsukuyomi dream. - Asuka is this in one of Shinji's dream sequences in the last episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion and the "Angelic Days" manga. - Omamori Himari starts with Rinko in the role, but it turns out Yuuto had an Arranged Marriage and Childhood Marriage Promise with Kuesu before his memories were sealed and lets not forget Himari herself. - Pokémon the Series: XY: Serena knew Ash back when they were very young and it took a while to even bring up the first time they met (which Ash had forgotten), and is often patient and helpful towards her love interest, all while blushing and waiting for him to acknowledge her. Unfortunately for her, Ash is one of the most famous characters to ever be Oblivious to Love. \|\|Though at least she gets the chance to give him what looks suspiciously like a kiss.\|\| - In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Sayaka quietly stood by Kyousuke's side through his Career-Ending Injury-induced depression, but he proved remarkably Oblivious to Love. Eventually, Sayaka makes a contract to become a Magical Girl in exchange for Kyousuke getting healed. However, Mami specifically asks if this is really a Selfless Wish, or if Sayaka just wants to feel like Kyousuke "owes" her now. Eventually, Kyousuke \|\|hooks up with Hitomi, who unlike Sayaka, actually confessed her feelings\|\|. This, paired with Sayaka's huge and complex issues, goes very badly. - RahXephon has Haruka Shitow... \|\|or at least had, until she and Ayato were separated when Tokyo Jupier was formed. When they met again, Ayato stayed young and Haruka had grown up, plus he lost his memories of her for very complicated reasons.\|\| - So, I Can't Play H!: Mina has nursed an unrequited crush on her neighbor, Ryosuke, since they were kids. But she's so shy, that she was unable to work up the courage to tell him until they were in middle school. In episode 11, he explains that he doesn't reciprocate specifically because she's his friend. \|\|Were it not for that, he would've said "yes" and even married her\|\|. - Philuffy in Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle is this to Lux. When they were children, she supported him when his family was thrown out of the palace and hsi mother died. In the present, she's the least aggressive out of all the girls — for example, when Lux has to go on a date with her and two other girls in the same day, her date consists of letting Lux sleep and recover from the day's work. - Hak from Yona of the Dawn resolved from very early on to stay on the sidelines to allow Yona to pursue Su-won. \|\|It...didn't work out well.\|\| After which he does actually attempt to pursue her in earnest for a while, but soon decides to give up when she asks him to stop "joking" with her. \|\|It takes about a hundred chapters, but she does eventually come to develop and realize she has feelings for him.\|\| - Tsubaki from Your Lie in April has liked Kousei since childhood, but their relationship has always been sibling-like. She's fine with it until Kousei begins to become closer to Kaori. - Yu-Gi-Oh!: - Kotori from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL has been in love with Yuma ever since they were kids, and loves to spend her time with him, making him food, getting jealous over Cathy and Anna, and being his Cloudcuckoolander's Minder. She never made a move until the end of the series where she was able to tell her Love Confession, although his reaction is somewhat ambiguous. - Yuzu from Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V has had feelings for Yuya for some time, getting violently jealous when other girls hit on him despite never making a move herself. - Chiyo of Despair's Last Resort fell in love with a boy from her childhood and decided to wait until they were older to confess. \|\|She never gets the chance. He dies of a terminal illness before she can.\|\| - Deconstruction in the Homestuck fic I Will Not Let This Consume Me. Eridan is too afraid of rejection to confess his feelings. He ends up resenting his friendship with Feferi and pushing her away. Eridan: I can't tell her, okay? I don't want to mess things up. What if I weird her out and she doesn't want me around anymore? What would I do then, Kar? No. I just need to think about it...clear my mind...think of the best way to approach this. Wait for the right moment. Karkat: What moment exactly? The one when she'll randomly reveal to you that she's been longing to touch you indiscreetly all along? Or the one when she'll finally notice you and fall for the red solicitations you're not even making because you're too scared? Answer me that. Because I can't even tell if you believe the rubbish that comes out of your mouth anymore. Eridan: What the fuck, Kar? I don't need this kind of bullshit from you. Karkat: Okay, sorry. But if you're waiting for me to tell you what you want to hear, you're talking to the wrong troll. Listen, dude, I get that it's pretty fucked up and complicated. But what's your plan? Wait your own feelings out? Wait for things to magically solve themselves? - The Search for the Sublime: For Chelsea, Raven, her best friend since toddlerhood, was her first love, but she never made her feelings known growing up. Eventually, Raven fell for Devon and Chelsea fell for Garret. As adults, both women divorced their husbands, moved in together with their kids, and eventually became a couple. - Much like in canon, Hinata from Son of the Sannin has had a crush on Naruto ever since the day they met when they were very young. Unlike in canon, Shizune catches her watching him from afar and encourages her to befriend him, leading to them growing up as Childhood Friends. The two would confess their feelings for each other and start dating during the afterparty for the Chunnin exams. - In The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Norval and Trudy are childhood friends and at one point Norval confesses that he was always in love with her but couldn't spit it out all this time. - In Preacher's Kid, Wynton has been patiently waiting on Angie for years, but she sees him as nothing more than a friend, and her father refused to grant permission to date her because she's too busy with the Lord's work. - A variation in ½ Prince. Since Zhou moved away 8 years before the events of the story he found Lan in an online game and became her husband there, at least until she looses interest and goes on to a new game. When he finds her again in both the real world and the new MMORPG she switches to she's developed to the point of no longer wanting to hide behind a man, and he has to adopt a more aggressive strategy to win her over. \|\|He can't, and ends up losing her to Gui.\|\| - In Earth's Children, Joplaya fell in love with Jondalar when he came to live with the Lanzadonii in his early teens and has been waiting for him to notice her for several years, even when he moved back to the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii and left to go on a long journey around Europe. In spite of the fact Jondalar never seems to notice her affections, she still clings to the hope that someday he will. It doesn't work out...though that's probably for the best given Joplaya and Jondalar are unwittingly paternal half-siblings. - Eva Luna: Eva Luna had strong feelings and slight whiffs of the trope for Huberto Naranjo, the local Street Urchin and Jerk with a Heart of Gold, ever since they met as kids no older than 10. As a pre-teen, she felt it strongly, and was frustrated because he told her "You're just a kid" many times which was an act since he always held a torch for Eva but didn't want to admit it. When they did get together, they only saw each other counted times yet she patiently waited for him. Unusually for the trope, Eva is critisized for it by her Cool Big Sis Mimi, who also knows Huberto from childhood and loudly wonders "What Does She See in Him?". In the end, they break up amiably and she gets together with Intrepid Reporter Rolf instead. - In The Good Student Nic acts like this to Dizzy. After they are separated he works his butt off to get accepted into the prestigious academy she intends. The plot unfurls from there. - There are two notable examples in Harry Potter: - Ginny Weasley is this for Harry himself. She has had a huge crush on him ever since she was ten years old, but she was so shy around him she could barely be in the same room as him, while Harry found this rather awkward and didn't know what to do with it. Harry finally starts to notice Ginny romantically in his sixth year, but by this point she's dating other boys. However, it then turns out that Ginny never actually stopped loving Harry and they get together after she breaks up with her boyfriend; she explains to Harry that on Hermione's recommendation she tried to loosen up and be herself more around Harry and also tried dating other people until he noticed her, and she was always very loyal and emotionally supportive to him. \|\|By the end, they're Happily Married with three kids\|\|. - \|\|Severus Snape\|\| is a Deconstruction example to Lily Evans. He loved her ever since they were children, but was never able to tell her how he really felt even though they were best friends for several years; it's unclear if she even knew he loved her as more than a friend. They eventually started to grow apart due to his fascination with Dark magic and closeness to future Death Eaters, which Lily greatly disapproved of (as they looked down on her). The final straw was when Lily attempted to defend him from bullies and in a fit of anger and humiliation he \|\|called a Mudblood\|\|, prompting her to break their friendship (he apologized, but continued to hang out with the same blood purist crowd). She ended up marrying James Potter instead but \|\|Snape\|\| never stopped loving Lily, to the point that he defected from the Death Eaters to try and protect her, then spent over a decade acting as a Double Agent and protecting her son in her memory. That being said, it's massively controversial as to whether he actually loved her or whether it was Loving a Shadow, not helped by the fact that in the films, Snape is much more sympathetic than he is in the books (where it's all but explicitly stated that he didn't give a damn about her son, only her). - Hetty Feather: Jem waited for Hetty to come home to her childhood cottage to reciprocate what he felt, despite being apart for at least 9 years and only trading letters. When Hetty tells him she doesn't feel the same way, he rationalizes her reluctance to inexperience and youth, telling her that he would wait for her, no matter how long it took. - In Night World, Poppy is this to James. For years, she's remained his best friend and put up with him dating numerous other girls, biding her time until he notices her. She is convinced they will inevitably end up together and she just needs to wait. However, she's started to realize she may have to be more proactive about her feelings if she wants to win him over. \|\|She upgrades to being a Victorious Childhood Friend towards the end of Secret Vampire\|\|. - Tommyand Tuppence: Initially, Tommy Beresford to Tuppence Cowley, who remained somewhat oblivious and insisted that she and Tommy were just good mates until the Love Epiphany hit. For his part, Tommy treats Tuppence as a friend and does not make the full extent of his feelings known even to the reader until \|\|she is believed dead and he launches into a "The Reason You Suck" Speech on a lesser suitor who claims to mourn her deeply despite having known her for a matter of days.\|\| - Starflight from Wings of Fire is this to Sunny. According to Glory, Starflight had been in love with Sunny since they were little. However, when he confesses, Sunny is unsure of how she feels. She ultimately decides that they're Like Brother and Sister, and that their relationship is too familial, since they were raised together from birth despite not being actual siblings. It's implied that Starflight is now in love with Fatespeaker, but it's unknown whether he moved on. - Willow is this to Xander in the first seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They have been friends since they were at least five years old, but Xander never seems to notice that Willow likes him romantically while Willow herself is too shy to tell him, despite Buffy recommending she should speak up if she wants him. It ends up being Played for Drama in Season 2, as Xander finally figures out how Willow feels when she catches him making out with Cordelia and sobs that he'd rather be with someone he supposedly hates than with her. Luckily, they make up and eventually move on with other people while remaining best friends. - The Devil Judge: Soo-hyun, Ga-on's childhood friend, has confessed to him five times since kindergarten and even though he rejected her every time, she's still content just staying by his side till the day he reciprocates her feelings. \|\|They get a Relationship Upgrade in episode 13.\|\| - During the run of the 11th Doctor on Doctor Who we find out that Rory was essentially like patiently waiting for Amy Pond. They spent their childhood as friends, and as soon as they were old enough Rory fell hard for her and never even showed interest in anyone else. It was Amy that always had doubts and occasional longings for others, until they actually get married. - The Flash (2014): Barry Allen has been in love with his best friend Iris West practically all his life, before he even knew what love was. He waited years for her to notice his feelings, but after she got herself a steady boyfriend, decided that he couldn't keep lying to her and confessed. Unlike most examples, Barry did try to move on from Iris — but none of his attempts ever stuck (mostly due to his own hang-ups). It takes a while, but he and Iris finally get together in Season 3. - In Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia, Shurelia's cosmosphere has Aurica as this. At one point, she confesses her love to Lyner. He has to reject her in order to advance the plot of the cosmosphere. If he accepts, Shurelia will complain and force him to redo the level. - In the first entry of the SNK Dating Sims Days of Memories, Boku to Kanojo no Atsui Natsu Athena Asamiya is both this and the local Idol Singer. (Not in the others, however.) - Elements of this are played with both Cloud and Tifa from Final Fantasy VII. While the former's interest in Tifa isn't revealed until later into the game, the latter is the more obvious one being Cloud's staple childhood friend who has feelings for him, but it's subverted in that Tifa never really noticed him until he was right about to leave their village to join SOLDIER. Not to mention Tifa makes Cloud promise to rescue her when he become SOLDIER. - This is Shana's attitude towards her love for Dart in The Legend of Dragoon. It takes the rest of the party talking some sense into Dart before he finally reciprocates. - The Legend of Zelda: - Ocarina of Time has a few characters that fit this trope. Those being Saria (Link's only friend in the Kokiri Forest, with Mido being jealous over their bond), Ruto (who made Link promise to marry her in exchange for the Zora Sapphire and still considers herself his fiancée after the seven-year Time Skip), and — to a lesser extent — Malon (whose romantic interest in Link is only implied via one of the Gossip Stone). - The Minish Cap has Zelda as Link's close childhood friend, right down to waking him up at the beginning of the game. - Twilight Princess has characters treat Link and Ilia's relationship in this manner. - Skyward Sword once again has Zelda herself, who, living on a tiny floating island, naturally has known Link all her life. The game starts with her sending a letter via her Loftwing to wake him up for his graduation ceremony, and the duo's Leitmotif when flying is outright called "Romance." Depending on how you go about a sidequest with another female character, Link will either return Zelda's affections or just see her as their best friend (in which case, your sword companion will strongly advise you to not mention your new girlfriend when reuniting). - Breath of the Wild has Mipha, with her planning to gift Link hand-crafted Zora Armor as part of a love declaration. She never got the chance to do so before her death, however. - Tia from Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals shows that this does not work; Selan, Maxim's destined love interest, beats her into a confession. The man doesn't even notice her feeling for him. - Sakura Amamiya, from Sakura Wars (2019), made a promise to marry her childhood friend Seijuuro Kamiyama back when they were still kids. Whether they actually become an item depends on the player. - Yandere Simulator is set to feature one of these as Yandere-chan's first rival for Senpai's affections. For bonus points, her name is Osana Najimi. - Brass Restoration has a rare twist on this where the childhood friend, Minori, is a Cloudcuckoo Lander. Much humor is milked from the way she seems to follow many of the traits in the trope description, in the worst ways possible, such as making lunch for Ryo...except it's all rice. - In CROSSCHANNEL, the Genre Savvy Taichi comments that Nanaka's personality fits this trope, so it must be a flaw in the plot that she isn't really his childhood friend. \|\|She's actually his mother.\|\| - Da Capo has Sakura Yoshino, who's actually the protagonist's cousin but often called such by him. His adopted sister Nemu has more of the stereotypical characteristics of this trope, though - waking him up in the morning, going to school, long standing love, etc. - Sayaka Maizono from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc seems to be headed to this direction, even when she and Naegi knew each other mostly in passing. \|\|Subverted in that Sayaka had decided to frame him for murder in the Hope's Peak murderous atmosphere... but then she was killed instead.\|\| - Kei Shindou in ef - a fairy tale of the two. is a classic Tsundere variation. - Isabella had a crush on the protagonist of Melody when they were younger, and she finally tries to jump his bones when they both have breakups around the same time. - Muv-Luv: Sumika to Takeru. She's content with their masochism tango until the very aggressive Meiya came into the picture. Meiya herself may also count even though she wasn't with him for most of her life. - Mizuka Nagamori from One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e is probably as straight as an example as it gets, possibly even exaggerated, considering the extent to which she takes care of protagonist Kouhei Orihara, who is a troublesome combination of a Jerkass and Cloudcuckoo Lander. - Mashiro and Yuuri in Root Double: Before Crime After Days, towards Natsuhiko. \|\|A young Yuuri even told Natsuhiko she wanted to be his bride. However, the two girls are close enough Childhood Friends that they can have a friendly rivalry once they both realise they have a chance.\|\| - Mashiro, while initially having a One of the Boys relationship with Natsuhiko, falls in love with him \|\|while watching over his delusional state after Yuuri's apparent death\|\| and even does his cooking. \|\|Yuuri sacrifices her ultimate freedom for Natsuhiko's and can only see him once a year while he is unconscious, preventing her from furthering her relationship with him.\|\| - Subverted with Otome Katou from School Days, who triples as none other than Alpha Bitch and Jerkass. - Kaede from SHUFFLE!. Sia and Nerine are childhood friends too, but Kaede's the one who fits the definition to a T. - Akari from To Heart, who contributed to the popularization of this archetype, especially the waking him up in the morning part. - Tokimeki Memorial 4* has Miyako Okura, the boy's best friend and Info Woman. \|\|She can be unlocked as a Love Interest, but...\|\| - Mikae Morikawa from True Love Junai Monogatari. Very cute, a tsundere, and the main guy's childhood friend. \|\|And she has never forgotten the Childhood Marriage Promise they made.\|\| - RWBY: Nora and Ren have been together since being orphaned at a very young age. Nora has loved Ren for years, but had no idea for a long time if he reciprocated; it also initially felt weird to her to fall for her best friend. Although they're mistaken for being a couple, they do start becoming much closer after Volume 4 helps Ren gain closure on how his parents died. \|\|After a Big Damn Kiss in Volume 7, they don't immediately get together because Ren first needs to come to terms with their enemy being an Invincible Villain. Nora begins realising she's been too invested in Ren to be her own person, so when they finally discuss their relationship in Volume 8, Ren is content to patiently wait for Nora to first figure out who she is before they upgrade their relationship.\|\|	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Osananajimi
Serendipitous Symphony - TV Tropes "Is making nice tune, no?" A character is left alone, and the soundtrack falls silent. Completely silent... that is, unless you count the dripping faucet in the corner. Oh, and there's that chirping cricket on the windowsill. Then a shishi-odoshi comes in at measure 12... In short, a sequence where natural background ambient sounds are woven together into a coherent musical piece. Can sometimes be used as nature's equivalent of the Unguided Lab Tour. This trope can be usually seen in particularly creative advertisements. In Real Life, this kind of music is called an Ostinato, though it doesn't HAVE to be just background noises; any repetition can do ("The Mysterious Ticking Noise", for example, also is an Ostinato). See also Everything Is an Instrument. May result in a Trash-Can Band. ## Examples: - KitKat commercials do this with the sounds of opening, eating, and humming enjoyment of the candy bar to the "Give me a break" theme. - One of Nike's most famous ads involves a bunch of NBA players creating a Serendipitous Symphony with their shoes, the ball, and the net. In fact, it was so famous, it was even parodied in Scary Movie 2. - Another ad, for Levi's, featured sounds in an ER gradually forming "Tainted Love," with the patient and eventually the entire staff singing along. - A classic ad for Maxwell House Coffee involved a percolator brewing, and as it heated up, the pumping noise it made became the Maxwell House jingle. The jingle continued to be used well into the 90's, several decades after percolators had mostly gone out in favor of automatic drip coffee makers. - An ad for Greek fast food chain Goody's Burger House and the 2004 MAD VMA stars a Goody's customer, who starts hearing the sounds of a soda fountain machine, silverware, a sauce dispenser and others, in a musical pattern. - Multiple times in Pinocchio with the cuckoo clocks and the music boxes. - "Little April Showers" from Bambi starts out with, of course, some raindrops. - "Trashing the Camp" from Tarzan is basically a Stomp number with gorillas and an elephant. - Disney's 1937 short "The Old Mill". The wind, cattails slapping on a fence, etc. - Carry On Behind: The roof of the caravan in which Professors Roland Crump and Anna Vooshka are sleeping leaks during a rainstorm. Professor Crump places saucepans and trays down to catch the drips, which fall in rhythm, causing Professor Vooskha to smile and click her fingers in time to it. - In Delicatessen, Clapet and Mademoiselle Plusse's rhythmically creaking bedsprings are joined by Julie's cello playing, Madame Tapioca's rug-beating, Robert and Roger's shop work, and Marcel's bicycle pumping in unconscious synchronization. As the creaking becomes more frantic, the other noises speed up accordingly. - In Chicago, the Cell Block Tango starts as a chorus of water droplets, footsteps, and fingernails, and then evolves into an actual musical number. - August Rush has this a lot. It's used to indicate that August is so highly musical that either he only hears what fits the rhythm he's thinking about, or the world itself rhythmizes around him. - The musical numbers in Dancer in the Dark all start this way, with machinery, trains, footsteps, etc. - The sounds of New York City form the backdrop to the opening credits of Annie (2014), with a jackhammer serving as percussion. - In Little House on Rocky Ridge, as Laura, Almanzo and Rose pass through some city or another on their way to their new home, they get stuck in traffic with a herd of cows with bells around their necks. Rose notices that the bells play "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay," which she had gotten her parents to sing over and over again when they first set out. - The Song of the Cloud Forest from The Jim Henson Hour features one a little bit after the opening. - Tyres from the Brit Com Spaced is a such a raver, he hears random enviromental noises as rave music, resulting at one point in him dancing to the beeping of a pedestrian crossing. On another occasion, he starts building up a Serendipitous Symphony, but Tim deliberately gets rid of the noises to stop him so he'll get on with making an urgent delivery. - Nickelodeon used to run a series of shorts called The Space Between Mr. Frear's Ears, which consisted entirely of this trope. These segments were done by Stomp. And is arguably their entire act. (Suppose that makes this Truth in Television then.) - Roseanne had an end credits segment where the guys were sitting around in the kitchen, making random noises... Which they turned into a melody... And then busted out into a full-on rendition of The Beverly Hillbillies theme song. This was probably done more for the enjoyment of the audience, rather than meant to be in-character, though (and that's not how it happened at all anyway). - Flight of the Conchords does something like this on the song "Leggy Blonde". While it's an actual song with guitars and shit, the rhythm section is made up of various office supplies (staplers, printers, tape etc.). - In Scrubs, JD once stalled for time while thinking of something special to do for Dr. Cox. As he tapped his pencil, thinking, the events around him converged into a a serendipitous symphony, which Cox assumed JD had planned out. - In another episode, JD came to work wearing headphones and musing on how things seemed to go together with his music, including Doug trying to revive someone he'd killed, nurses handing clipboards back and forth, and the janitor sweeping, up to Dr. Kelso pulling his headphones off while asking the question that was the last words of the song, "Are you having a good time?" and yelling at him some for daydreaming. As JD walks away, the Janitor is singing the same song to himself. - The Cheers gang burst into a spontaneous rendition of "We Will Rock You" by Queen as a result of Norm tapping his pencil. - Wings has a moment where everybody is bored because the airport is fogged in. Antonio is clinking his spoon in a coffee mug, Joe is noodling on a guitar, and Brian is flipping through a magazine. Then Lowell starts sanding the door frame nearby. His rhythmic sanding coincides with Antonio's clinking beat. Suddenly Brian starts scatting, and they're doing a full-on Bossanova number. They eventually realize what's happened and pause before continuing right on with the music. - Happened in a 10th-season episode of Top Gear (UK), when the crew start comparing the various noises given off by their British Leyland cars. The various squeaks, rattles and clunks soon turn into a musical number... - Sesame Street had a song in The '80s that was reminiscent in description of the Toxic Audio example below, entitled "Body Full of Rhythm". - The Muppet Show: One sketch features a library full of Muppets who make different types of noise—coughing, chewing gum, flipping the pages of a newspaper, and the like. After Zelda Rose, playing the librarian, fails to get them to shush, she instead directs them to make the noises in a particular order, and soon they're playing the "Blue Danube" waltz (complete with Wayne and Wanda dancing by). - The A Cappella group, Toxic Audio, does a cover of Harry Nilsson's "Coconut." It starts with someone sporadically coughing. Then another member starts clearing their throat. The soprano starts sneezing in time. And suddenly the whole range of ailments becomes the background beat for "Coconut." - SpongeBob SquarePants did this when luring party animal jellyfish out of his house. It starts with Gary's eyestalks clacking together, and builds up from there. - Phineas and Ferb: - In the episode "Dude, We're Getting The Band Back Together!", one of these in a library, of all places, kicks off the number "Ain't Got Rhythm". - Our heroes try to start one of these while cleaning a bathroom with toothbrushes in "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted", but then the Drill Sergeant Nasty yells "And no funky rhythms!" - The Simpsons: - In the episode "Hurricane Neddy", a hurricane blows into a harmonica shop, creating a pleasing melody. The same thing then occurs with an adjacent harpsichord shop, resulting only in a discordant thunk. - In "Homey The Clown", Homer rides his unicycle along a bar, with wine glasses striking his head. The notes produced by these glasses form the opening bars of the Godfather theme. - In the Popeye cartoon "Me Musical Nephews", Popeye's nephews are bored until they decide to make music with various objects in their room. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has started off two musical numbers like this: "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" with the sounds of the eponymous machine; and "Apples to the Core" with rattling pans and bumps in the road, in a clear reference to "On the Open Road" above. - In the library in the Adventure Time episode "The Real You", Finn and Jake are so inspired by the rhythm of books being opened and closed and their own Squeaky Eyes that they start a jam session so loud it gets them kicked out. - Industrial processes tend to be quite prone to this, as the cyclical operations of a machine are inherently rhythmic in nature.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ostinato
Romance Game - TV Tropes Romance games, known in Japanese as ren'ai (romantic love) games, are a category of video game that covers several mechanics and demographics. The distinguishing factor of these games is that the primary goal of the game is to establish a romantic relationship between the Player Character and one or more of the NPCs. Although the genre originates in Japan, they are also made elsewhere, particularly in the form of "doujin-soft" (noncommerical fanmade games). Most ren'ai games are Visual Novels (a type of Interactive Fiction) or Dating Sims (a type of Simulation Game), although many are hybrids, such as Role-Playing Game / Dating Sim or Action Game / Visual Novel. Many ren'ai games contain some erotic content; those where this is a major feature may be classified as eroge (short for "erotic games"). See also Romance Sidequest for games where the romance isn't the main focus. See also "Reborn as Villainess" Story for a (mainly Light Novel) genre that emerged in The New '10s which combines this with Isekai to turn the genre's (alleged) tropes on their head. In Japan, the term "Bishoujo (beautiful girl) game" covers any game for men that offers pictures or animation of attractive girls, regardless of gameplay style or narrative content (see Bishoujo Genre). In the West, the term is generally used to cover ren'ai games aimed at a male audience. Otome (maiden) games cover any game aimed at a female audience that is not a Boys' Love game; the majority are Visual Novels with romantic elements. Many are made by departments or subsidiaries of bishoujo game companies; for example, Tokimeki Memorial has an otome game spinoff, Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side. Not to be confused with otoge, which is Japanese slang for Rhythm Game. Games aimed at a female audience that feature male-male romance. Like otome games, most are Visual Novels and many are made by departments or subsidiaries of bishoujo game companies; for example, Togainu no Chi was made by Nitro+ CHiRAL, a subsidiary of nitro+ . Games which feature female-female romance. Unlike the other genres on this page, the term "yuri" does not imply a particular target audience; games aimed at a male audience and games aimed at a female audience are both included under the "yuri" label. Games which don't fall into any of the above categories. Some of the titles on this list include games focused on male/male pairings that are aimed at a queer male audience as opposed to the typically female audience of BL, while others include games with customizable player character genders and/or mixed-gender love interest options note : Games in the latter category that take genre cues from otome games are sometimes referred to as amare games. This term originated from disputes within the Western ren'ai community about whether the otome genre should expand its definition to include queer romances, with "amare" being coined as a compromise between both sides of the debate .	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtomeGame
One True Threesome - TV Tropes First Guy: Tomoko... I love you. Tomoko: I... I... Second Guy: But Tomoko, I also love you. First Guy: But now two of us love you. Who will you choose? Tomoko: ...Why don't we all just... fuck each other? You know, just... one big fuck pile. [Beat] Second Guy: ...Yeah okay. First Guy: Sounds good to me. In any given fandom, if there is any Shipping going on at all, there will usually be a particular couple substantially supported by both the Canon events of the series or story, and the general consensus of the fandom regarding Fanon. Even if some parts of the fandom aren't thrilled about the nature of the relationship, it's generally agreed that the relationship does exist and cannot be easily ignored. These unbreakable couples usually (but not always) consist of The Protagonist and their Love Interests, though they're often seen among villain groups as well. What makes this relationship unique can really only be decided by the individual viewer, and they are called OTP: One True Pairing. In some cases, love rivals may compete for a single love interest, and the fandom is wholly divided over which one most deserves to get the girl or guy, with large fandoms developing into factions devoted to one relationship over another. Or it may just be a matter of a standard Love Triangle or a particular corner of a Love Dodecahedron where, because romantic relationships usually consist of exactly two people, one of the competing parties is eventually going to be disappointed. And sometimes, because of Fan Dumb, this can go overboard and cause Ship-to-Ship Combat. In a display of Take a Third Option, some fans adopt the concept of the OT3: the One True Threesome. It's just like One True Pairing, except that there are three characters involved; most often this means the Hero, the Love Interest, and one of their best friends with whom they've both had homoerotic subtext at some point. That way everybody's happy, the sex is kinkier, and no matter who's involved, there's always a little homoeroticism happening. It's like Give Peace a Chance, only instead of Peace, it's Three-Way Sex. While these groupings are most often the result of combining two other disputed couples, there are some examples of characters who simply group together in this way without the fandom splitting them into pairs; Power Trios are especially ripe for OT3ing. OT3s are a part of shipping. The in-universe subtext that fuels said shipping goes under Threesome Subtext. If they're in a canon relationship, you're looking at Polyamory. As a philosophy, polyamory may be present in shipping as well. Note that, while not necessarily covered by this exact trope, sometimes fans will go even further and have an OT4, OT5, etc. Not under any circumstances to be confused with the most notorious part of the Church of Happyology. ## Examples <!—index—> <!—/index—> - Harpie Lady Sisters, Queen's/King's/Jack's Knight, Dark Magician/Dark Magician Girl/Dark Magician of Chaos (feel free to substitute with other magicians), pretty much anything remotely human in Yu-Gi-Oh! that comes in threes. - Some fans of Peanuts have suggested this as a way to resolve the Marcie/Charlie Brown/Peppermint Patty triangle. - The Book of Life: - Joaquin/Maria/Manolo (better known as Tres Leches) is pretty popular since all three are great people who remain good friends even after the whole Triangle thing gets resolved. Even Jorge has admitted to loving◊ the ship, occasionally posts pictures on his Tumblr, encouraged stories for it at least one, and joked about it being his original intent! - Joaquin and The Adelita twins too, due to the twins showing a lot of interest in him near the film's end, mixed a bit with Pair the Spares. - In Corpse Bride, Victor ends up learning to love Emily enough to want to join her in the Afterlife after believing his chances with Victoria are over. And Emily loves Victor enough to step aside and push him back to Victoria (who dearly loved Victor to begin with). ...Oh well, there's always the Afterlife. - Frozen: - Kristoff/Anna/Elsa (or "Kristelsanna" as it's called). Most Elsa/Anna fans like Kristoff too much to bash him much, so he's either made into Anna's platonic best friend or added into the Elsanna action. More rare is Anna/Kristoff/Elsa, which doesn't involve incest. - Due to their cameo, Rapunzel and Eugene from Tangled get shipped in various threesomes and foursomes with Frozen characters. Much of it is Kissing Cousins due to the fanon that Rapunzel is Anna and Elsa's first cousin. - In Inside Out, Fear, Anger, and Disgust are all shipped together by some fans, especially after the absence of Joy and Sadness from Headquarters in the film caused the three emotions to have to work together to try and help Riley. - While the Luca fandom is still picking up speed, no one can deny that Alberto/Luca/Guilia would work as a ship given that all three of them have wonderful chemistry on a platonic level. - The Princess and the Frog has Naveen/Tiana/Charlotte for those who think Tiana and Charlotte would make a cute couple but don't want to tear apart the Official Couple. It helps that both Charlotte/Tiana and Charlotte/Naveen tie up Charlotte's plot-thread about wanting to marry royalty. - From The Road to El Dorado, Chel/Tulio/Miguel for those that like the Miguel/Tulio paring but don't hate Chel. It helps that both Tulio and Miguel go slack jawed when around her, or that Chel flirts with both about equally, and of course there is Miguel and Tulio's relationship. Considering the ending, it's almost-sorta-kinda canon! - Toy Story: - In Toy Story 3 after \|\|Bo Peep got Put on a Bus\|\|, Woody/Buzz/Jessie became quite popular. \|\|It was implied to be canon in "Spanish Mode"\|\|. - Woody/Bo/Buzz/Jessie has also picked up in popularity. Toy Story 4 gave it a large boost after Bo Peep was reintroduced. - Turning Red: Some fans do consider Miriam/Mei/Tyler to be a valid option instead of Mei/Miriam or Mei/Tyler. - Descendants has a few possible options. - Pre-series stories sometimes have the core V Ks involved with each other. This can evolve into their canon love interests (primarily Ben, Doug and Jane since they appear and were confirmed in the final film) being brought into the relationship. - Ben/Mal/Uma and Mal/Ben/Audrey have followings though more the former. - Jay/Carlos/Jane. Lonnie may be thrown in here as well. - Ben/Mal/Evie/Doug, mostly due to the girls' chemistry with each other and the actors behind Ben and Doug having a great bromance. - The series "Package Deal" explores a relationship developing between Mal, Ben and Evie, as Mal and Evie were girlfriends back on the Isle of the Lost and Mal asks Ben if he would be willing to 'share' her with Evie as she can't give either of them up. The subsequent series explores how Ben and Evie become involved with each other beyond their existing bond with Mal, Mal affirming in a talk with the Fairy Godmother that, in contrast to the idea that fairies can only have one true love, she considers Ben and Evie to be her only partners rather than consider one 'above' the other. - Uma/Gil/Harry. - The Devil Wears Prada has Miranda/Andy/Emily as the most popular threesome pairing. It covers two very popular pairings, that of Miranda/Andy and Emily/Andy. It has also been known to sometimes become a foursome, and include Serena. It has the most fanfics of any threesome on Archive of Our Own. It's also very popular on YouTube to make a video about the three. If you are more into crossover pairings, there's Miranda/Andy/Cruella de Vil, which is surprisingly popular. - Do Revenge: While Eleanor/Gabbi make up a fairly popular Official Couple and Eleanor/Drea are the Fan-Preferred Couple with plenty of Homoerotic Subtext, a lot of fans ship Drea/Eleanor/Gabbi together rather than shipping Eleanor with either on their own as a way to avoid Ship-to-Ship Combat. It helps that Gabbi defends Drea following her and Eleanor's fight and Drea helps Eleanor win Gabbi back, making it easy for fans to assume Gabbi and Drea get along with each other. - Ferris Bueller's Day Off: Ferris is dating Sloane. Ferris has Ho Yay with Cameron. Cameron has Ship Tease subtext with Sloane. All three actors have wonderful chemistry, and it's clear that all three characters love and care for one another above all else — even Ferris, who is extremely selfish, obviously cares a lot about Cameron, and swears he'll marry Sloane. Of course these three get shipped together. - Inception: - Arthur/Ariadne/Eames is quite popular. As is Arthur/Ariadne/Cobb. - Cobb/Mal/anyone isn't the most popular combination, but it makes a lot of sense, metaphorically speaking, as \|\|Mal exists only inside Cobb's head at this point.\|\| - The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) has Napoleon/Gaby/Illya, fueled by their chemistry as co-protagonists, the Napoleon/Illya Ho Yay, Illya and Gaby's canonical attraction, and Napoleon's flirtiness. - Marvel Cinematic Universe: - The Avengers: Having unexpectedly copious amounts of Tony Stark/Bruce Banner Ho Yay, along with expectedly copious amounts of Steve Rogers/Tony Stark Ho Yay, some fans have resolved this with an OT3 that's worth it for the Portmanteau Couple Name alone: Stark Spangled Banner. - Similarly, those wanting to run with the Steve/Tony Ho Yay but not wanting to break up Tony/Pepper go with Pepper/Steve/Tony and those who want Tony/Bruce go with Tony/Bruce/Pepper. - With the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, this expanded to include any combination of the foursome Steve/Bucky/Sam/Natasha, and any variant combinations with the pairings above. - As the two loves of Steve's life, Steve/Bucky/Peggy is also popular. - Since the release of Captain America: Civil War, many fans have happily rolled Stucky, Steve/Sam, and Sam/Bucky together into one big Steve/Sam/Bucky OT3. - And with the two biggest pairings in the fandom being Steve/Bucky (Stucky) and Steve/Tony (Stony), some fans Take a Third Option in this shipping conflict and ship Steve/Bucky/Tony (Stuckony). - What do you do when you can't decide between Clint/Natasha and Clint/Coulson? Why, you ship Strike Team Delta, aka Clint/Coulson/Natasha! - Peter Parker has two within the fandom as well. Peter/MJ/Ned and Peter1/Peter2/Peter3. - More recent fics such as "Tingle" and Spider-Man: Finding Home have introduced the new pairing of Peter, Yelena Belova and Kate Bishop, exploiting Kate and Yelena's obvious connection and their likely bonds with Peter as spiders and street-level heroes. - Others solve the problem by the simple expedient of letting the entire cast of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have a wild orgy. - Patchwork ends with Jennifer and Ellie 'killing' Madeline's personality and then having Garrett brought back to life, creating the possibility for them to have this kind of relationship as Jennifer and Ellie remain active in their shared body and each appear fond of Garrett at least. - Pirates of the Caribbean: - Red Notice: Hartley and Booth have lots of Ho Yay, but Hartley and Sarah also have some good relationship subtext going on \|\|and are actually lovers\|\|, and all three of their actors have great chemistry with each other. Most fans' solution to this is just to ship all three of them together. - Since the Holmes/Watson/Mary love triangle is pretty much canon in Sherlock Holmes (2009), it's no surprise some fans have taken to OT3ing them. The three of them do seem quite cozily domestic with each other in that last scene... Irene is sometimes added to the mix as well. - The fandom of Singin' in the Rain loooooooves Don/Kathy/Cosmo. Don and Kathy are the Official Couple, and have great chemistry, but Don and Cosmo's bromance is also pretty Ho Yay-heavy, and rather than evolving into a Friend Versus Lover situation, Kathy and Cosmo get along great. In particular, there's one really cute scene that the fandom has latched onto with shipping goggles, where Cosmo and Don share a Man Hug, followed by Don kissing Kathy... which is then followed by her pecking Cosmo on the cheek, who gets so embarrassed he falls over. So a lot of fanfic authors make them a triad — everyone wins! - In Skyfall James Bond seduces Severine, the villain's kept woman. The villain Silva caresses Bond while he has him tied to a chair. Later, when Severine enters the picture again, Silva greets her by saying, "Darling, your lover s are here." This has led to not a few fics positing a ménage à trois in the event of Bond joining or being forced to stay with Silva. - Sky High (2005) has a surprising amount of Will/Layla/Warren fics, given the amount of Die for Our Ship going on in the fandom. - Star Trek (2009): - Kirk/Spock/Uhura. McCoy often becomes a part of this arrangement too. - Supported by Paul Gadzikowski's fan comic The Hero of Three Faces (story arc starting here). - Star Trek Into Darkness adds more fuel, marketing them as the main Power Trio. In the 2009 movie, Kirk's interaction with Uhura consisted of her clearly rebuffing his attempts to hit on her. Now they're on decent enough terms to discuss her relationship with Spock, and one scene is described elsewhere on this wiki as "a three-way lover's spat". - The sequel resulted in a lot of threesomes involving John Harrison \|\|aka Khan\|\|, mostly John/Kirk/Spock. - Star Wars: As a trilogy of trilogies, each about a trio, this is no surprise. - The original trilogy: Luke/Han/Leia, before... you know. Though that hasn't stopped a lot of fans from continuing to ship that particular OT3. And the incest can always be muffled a little with Han serving as the vortex, and a buffer. - The prequel trilogy: Obi-Wan/Anakin/Padmé (Obianidala) totally. The Novelization of Revenge of the Sith almost makes it canon, with Palpatine explicitly stating that Anakin's choice isn't between the Jedi and the Sith, but whether or not he loves Padmé more than Obi-Wan. - The sequel trilogy: Poe/Finn/Rey (Jedistormpilot). Between Finn's Love at First Sight with Rey and the instant bromance that forms between him and Poe, this pairing took off faster than the Falcon making the Kessel Run. - For a Foe Yay Shipping example, there is also Rey/Kylo/Hux (sometimes abbreviated as Reylux), since Rey/Kylo is pretty much the closest thing the sequel trilogy has to an Official Couple, while Kylo/Hux bitter rivalry is seen by their shippers as a form of Belligerent Sexual Tension, and Rey/Hux is surprisingly quite popular, presumably due to their actors' chemistry. - Flynn/Lora/Alan is a Running Gag in TRON fandom, backed up by the fact Lora dated Flynn before marrying Alan. However, few are actually brave enough to write it. - Venom (2018) has Eddie/Anne/Venom, thanks to the canonical Eddie/Anne relationship and the copious amounts of Ho Yay between Eddie and Venom, \|\|culminating in a scene where a Venom-possessed Anne makes out with Eddie to transfer the symbiote back to him.\|\| Anne's fiancé Dan will occasionally get thrown in to make it a foursome, given how well he and Eddie get along. - Almost Night uses this to solve the conflict between Ed and Bocaj. - For The Chronicles of Narnia, Peter/Susan/Caspian and Edmund/Lucy/Caspian are fairly popular, particularly because of the movies. There is also Susan/Caspian/Lucy, although it's rarer. - In Deltora Quest theres Lief/Barda/Jasmine. - The Eagle of the Ninth has Marcus/Cottia/Esca. - Guenevere/Arthur/Lancelot in The Fionavar Tapestry and probably plenty of others. - The GONE series has the Devils trinity, which consists of Drake/Caine/Diana. This ship is popular, mainly because these three characters have many conflicting (and popular) ships, like Cake (Drake/Caine), Caina (Caine/Diana, actually canon) and Driana (Drake/Diana). - It might well have solved some fairly major problems if the setting of Gone with the Wind had been one in which an Ashley/Melanie/Scarlett One True Threesome had been a possible option. - Harry Potter: - Harry/Ron/Hermione, the three main characters. - Harry/Ginny/Luna is a popular pairing, even being named Flaming Nargles. - James/Lily — being kind of important as a couple — are often paired with Lupin, Severus, Sirius, or occasionally Regulus depending on the author's favorite '70s era student. - When it comes to Marauders shipping, Fan-Preferred Couple Sirius/Lupin might be joined by either James or Tonks, with the added bonus that Sirius and Tonks are cousins. - Lunar Harmony (Harry/Hermione/Luna) has a relatively small but dedicated fanbase. - Ginny/Hermione/Luna also has some fans. - Harry/Hermione/Draco combines three of the most popular ships (Harmony, Drarry, Dramione) - DGB (Draco/Ginny/Blaise) has a popular following, and Hermione/Draco/Blaise has become mildly popular in smutfics. - Hermione/Snape/Lucius and Hermione/Snape/Lupin are popular for those who like older men. - Some other themed OT3s are Bellatrix/Lucius/Narcissa (Death Eaters) and Katie/Alicia/Angelina (Gryffindor Quidditch Team). - For the Hurog duology, Tisala/Ward/Oreg is very, very popular. To the point that there are almost no fanfics about other pairings. The Ho Yay between Ward and Oreg is just that obvious. And as Tisala is the most badass woman of appropriate age, there is no serious competition for her. - The Infernal Devices has Tessa/Will/Jem. - Very nearly canon in The Lions of Al-Rassan with Ammar/Jehane/Rodrigo. - The Lord of the Rings: - There's Arwen/Aragorn may be joined by either Boromir or Éowyn. Throw Faramir in the mess for extra points. - Éomer/Aragorn/Faramir, or Legolas/Aragorn/Arwen, or even Aragorn/Arwen/Frodo. - Legolas/Aragorn/Éomer, Aragorn/Faramir/Boromir and OT4 Sam/Frodo/Merry/Pippin. - Rosie/Sam/Frodo isn't as popular, probably because Rosie barely appears in either the books or movies, but it's out there. Considering that \|\|Rosie and Sam kept taking care of Frodo after they got married\|\|, this one works really nicely. - Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli has its fans. They manage to stick together through practically the entire journey. - The Maze Runner has Thomas/Newt/Minho as its most popular threesome pairing, with tons of fanfics for it. The three are the most popular characters, share lots of Ho Yay all around, and have great chemistry with each other. It is made up of three popular ships: Thomas/Newt, Thomas/Minho, and Newt/Minho, and helps to avoid any shipping wars. Fans have also been known to either throw Teresa in or have her replace Minho. - In Les Misérables fandom, there is the technically canon threesome of Joly/Musichetta/Bossuet, and in some fanfics the main love triangle is solved by shipping Cosette/Marius/Éponine. - The Moomins: Moomintroll/Snufkin/Snorkmaiden is a very popular three-way ship. Moomintroll's canon Love Interest is Snorkmaiden, but Snufkin also gets a ton of Ho Yay with him, to the point where it's debated whether it's actually intentional Homoerotic Subtext note : Supported by how the author of The Moomins, Tove Jansson, was bisexual and sometimes included subtle queer themes in her stories and making Moomintroll/Snufkin the Fan-Preferred Couple. Those who can't decide which pairing they like best often just do both at the same time. The liberal atmosphere of Moominvalley also makes it easy to imagine that the characters would be accepting of polyamory. - Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Percy/Nico/Annabeth has its followers in the fandom. - A Song of Ice and Fire: - Theon/Jon/Robb (abbrev: THEJOBB) seems to be popular. Jon and Robb are close; Robb and Theon are close; Jon thinks Theon is an asshole, and we know what that means... - Jon/Tyrion/Dany has its followers. Considering that Jorah told Dany she needs 2 husbands, it's not out of the question. - Jon/Robb/Sansa is also popular, as is Daenerys/Jon/Sansa (which has the bonus of resolving a lot of Ship-to-Ship Combat). It helps that Jon, Robb, Sansa, Theon and Dany are all Launchers of a Thousand Ships. - For those who believe Lyanna and Rhaegar to be Jon's parents it is not unheard of to find Rhaegar's wife Elia Martell being not just okay with it, but involved as well. - The Star Wars Expanded Universe gives us Jaina/Zekk/Jag, which almost became canon in the Dark Nest Trilogy. Ben/Taryn/Trista (hinted at), Zekk/Taryn/Trista (also hinted at), Ben/Jacen/Tahiri (we could ship... on Ship!), Luke/Corran/Mirax (Luke even hinted as such in I, Jedi.), Luke/Corran/Mara (more Stackpole subtext, which is not very subtextual unless it's Ho Yay but a lot more subtextual than his spiritual heir Troy Denning), Ahsoka/a clone/another clone. - some The Stormlight Archive fans have decided to find their own ending to the love triangle with Kaladin/Shallan/Adolin, or even Shallan/Adolin/Kaladin. - In Further Tales of the City, Anna Madrigal jokes that Mary Ann, Brian, and Michael are her favorite couple. The trio really don't mind this notion at all. - Laurence/Granby/Tharkay in Temeraire is quite popular. Meanwhile fanfic that only pairs Laurence with one person tends to have shades of this anyway, since Temeraire must be taken into account. - The Truth has the Newspaper OT3 of William/Sacharissa/Otto. - The Twilight Saga: - Obviously enough, Edward/Jacob/Bella. Even in the first book, there's Ho Yay between Edward and Jacob. Then Breaking Dawn gave us Edward telling Bella she could have as many kids as she wanted with Jacob. - The relatively popular Alice/Bella/Edward, Alice/Edward/Jasper and Edward/Bella/Carlisle. - Its weird that there isn't more Edward/Bella/Rosalie, given that Carlisle and Esme initially hoped to set Edward up with her, and the way Rosalie and Bella get quite close in Breaking Dawn. - From the wolves the most popular ones are Jacob/Embry/Quil and Jacob/Seth/Leah. - Warrior Cats: - The Love Dodecahedron practically asks for this. Firestar + Sandstorm + Spottedleaf neatly solves all the drama caused by Firestar's love for both she-cats. Although Spottedleaf being Sandstorm's aunt might squick some shippers. - Crowfeather + Feathertail + Leafpool is nearly the exact same situation as above, with Crowfeather having first loved one she-cat, then another after the first died. - Squirrelflight + Ashfur + Brambleclaw could make Squirrelflight not have to choose between the two toms. - Squirrelflight/Brambleclaw/Stormfur works quite well, as both toms were interested in her in the second series, and were also close with each other during their journey. Stormfur even joined ThunderClan for a while. - Graystripe + Silverstream + Millie has its problems (the two she-cats never met) but both love Graystripe a lot and what with all three of them inevitably sharing StarClan together, it's less crazy than it sounds. - Hollyleaf + Ivypool + Blossomfall became reasonably popular on sites like Tumblr. - Water for Elephants: August/Marlena/Jacob definitely has some appeal. This will really take off once the movie comes out, since it stars Robert Pattinson, Christoph Waltz and Reese Witherspoon. Curiously similar to Sophie's Choice, since both \|\|older males have volatile tempers due to mental health problems, both younger men are sort of 'adopted' into an established marriage and both younger men end up sleeping with the woman.\|\| - Wings of Fire: Moonwatcher/Qibli/Winter is a fairly popular solution to their Love Triangle in the second story arc. - On Archive of Our Own, The Shield (Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns) is the OT3 for both WWE and professional wrestling in general. Combinations of any of the two is the One True Pairing. - The Undisputed Era was originally a trio - Adam Cole, Kyle O'Reilly, and Bobby Fish - and were very, very close, constantly hanging all over each other. It became a true Power Stable and foursome with the addition of Roderick Strong. Cole himself dubbed he, Bobby, and Kyle "the OT3" in a promo once, and while he is One of Us, he likely meant that in a platonic manner. Maybe. - The Bible: - David/Jonathan/Michal. - Some churches will outright state that God is a third party in any sanctified marriage, although it is not intended to imply anything sexual. - Classical Mythology: Achilles/Patroclus/Briseis, Hercules/Iolaus/Alcmene, Zeus/Hera/Ganymede, and Persephone/Adonis/Aphrodite. Hades (Persephone's husband) can also be thrown into that last one. - The Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh/Enkidu/Shamhat. - Maybe Loki/Sigyn/Angrboða from Norse Mythology relationship is this. - The basic idea behind the "Two Ladies" number in Cabaret. - The ending of A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder seems to at least imply this, as the Love Triangle between Monty, Phoebe, and Sibella never really gets resolved. - The Phantom of the Opera: - While Christine is almost unanimously shipped with the Phantom, some ask why she couldn't have chosen both her Victorious Childhood Friend and her Stalker with a Crush. (Hell, the Phantom probably would've taken anything he could get...) - Additionally, Phantom/Christine/Meg in the fanfic/fandom zone. Two girls? Joys of the flesh indeed. I don't hear the Phantom protesting too hard... - In Wicked, a great deal of the tragedy that unfolded could have been avoided if Elphaba/Fiyero/G(a)linda had become a threesome. Considering Fiyero was with both Elphaba and Glinda at different points in the story, and Elphaba and Glinda's strong bond with each other is by far the most important relationship in the play, it's not too hard to scrounge up enough evidence to make a case for it. - Sometimes in opera, the usual "tenor and baritone fight over the girl" plot can be spiced up with a bit of Ho Yay, making this this ideal outcome (if only everyone survived). The Metropolitan's 2016 productions of Les Pecheurs de Perles and Roberto Devereaux stand out as examples—and, coincidentally, they featured the same tenor and baritone. - Ace Attorney: - Danganronpa: - The "Trial Point Getters" from the first two games seem to be this. The first game has Makoto/Kyoko/Byakuya while the second game has Hajime/Chiaki/Nagito. - Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: - Chihiro/Ishimaru/Mondo, charmingly called Chishimondo. There is also a canon example in the case of \|\|Naegi/Aoi/Hagakure/possibly Togami\|\|, in the bad ending at least, but it's rare to see that in fandom. - Makoto/Kyoko/Hina is occasionally seen as well, especially after Danganronpa 3 did some Ship Tease both ways. - Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair has a love triangle between Sonia Nevermind, Kazuichi Souda, and Gundham Tanaka. So, of course, some fans like to ship all three together. - Keeping up the theme of The Protagonist, The Love Interest, and The Rival, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony gives us Kaede/Shuichi/Kokichi. V3 also adds a new one in the form of Shuichi being paired with Kaito and Maki, affectionately called the "Training Trio". - Strongly implied canon for one of the endings of Date Warp with Janet/Linds/Rafael. - Higurashi: When They Cry: - Mion/Keiichi/Rena is without a doubt the most popular. They're close friends and it helps fix their love triangle. Keiichi canonically likes either one depending on the arc as well, so it makes sense he could love both at once. Mion and Rena get along well as well, so it's easy to ship them together. - Shion/Mion/Keiichi usually happens when people enjoy the twincest subtext between Mion and Shion but also ship Keiichi/Mion. Shion/Keiichi/Mion is also popular because Keiichi is very similar to Shion's canon love interest, Satoshi \|\|who is in a coma throughout the franchise and presumed dead\|\|. - Rika and Satoko have a close Homoerotic Subtext filled relationship while Hanyuu probably knows Rika better than anyone else. Obviously Satoko/Rika/Hanyuu is a thing. - Katawa Shoujo: - Lilly/Hisao/Hanako, or, in some fictions, Lilly/Hanako/Hisao or Hanako/Lilly/Hisao, is the most popular OT3. Lilly and Hanako are noted to be extremely close, both appearing frequently in the other one's route, and it's even reflected in how you get onto their routes — most walkthroughs lump the two together, as the paths to the two routes are identical up until the final choice before the route lock. - Hisao/Shizune/Misha have their shippers, coming in second. \|\|It helps that it's a canon love triangle as Misha is in love with Shizune.\|\| - Emi/Hisao/Rin, while rarely seen in fanfiction, is pretty popular in art pieces, due to people enjoying their interactions. - Fanfiction "pseudo-routes" about pairing Hisao with background students Miki or Suzu originated a somewhat popular shipping for Miki/Hisao/Suzu, or even Hisao/Miki/Suzu or Hisao/Suzu/Miki and its own set of fics. - Nasuverse: - Tsukihime: Shiki/Arcueid/Ciel and Shiki/Hisui/Kohaku are the most common. Both somehow supported even canonically. First in Ciel Good End where Arcueid and Ciel effectively and begrudgingly "share" Shiki. There is much teased at, but unconfirmed attraction between the two of them. Second is the main theme of Kagetsu Tohya's sidestory Flower of Thanatos in which Shiki together with humble servants Hisui and Kohaku lives in the isolated Tohno Mansion, where Shiki practically can do with both maids whatever he wants, and Kohaku is very enthusiastic when they both serve him at the same time \|\|(including sexual desires, or periodic rapes) although it's not so simple as it seems and Shiki begins to have regrets\|\|. - With Melty Blood there is also Shiki/Akiha/Sion, notable as Sion is probably the only girl interested in Shiki Akiha gets along with. Or Satsuki/Sion/Riesbyfe as the Back Alley Alliance. - Fate/stay night: There are Shirou/Saber/Rin and Shirou/Sakura/Rider or Shirou/Sakura/Rin. Both are expanded at various levels in Fate/hollow ataraxia and many other associated works or materials, and are very popular in fandom. - Shirou/Saber/Rin is based on the Unlimited Blade Works route where \|\|in the Good End of this route\|\|, some fans believe that this is what was going on behind the scenes (doesn't hurt that Rin discovered that she is bisexual in the original Fate route while sleeping with Shirou and Saber). - Shirou/Sakura/Rider is based on the Heaven's Feel route, where Shirou \|\|is mind-raped by Rider disguised as Rin in the original game. Rider also stays with Sakura in the endings, and leaves it ambiguous whether she needs to replenish her mana without Sakura's knowledge, while it's openly stated that Shirou depends on Sakura to live his life.\|\| It's most evident in Fate/hollow ataraxia Eclipse story's The backside of Kibisis, \|\|in which they have a hot threesome scene, and although this turns out to be actually just Rider's illusion, it's clear how things are\|\|. - Shirou/Sakura/Rin is based on \|\|Shirou being with Sakura in the True End of Heaven's Feel, while Rin still has feelings for Shirou, even after she leaves for London alone. Interestingly while not confirmed, there are even hints of this occurring in the Normal End of Fate.\|\| - The protagonists of Zero Time Dilemma are conveniently divided into trios during the Decision Game, but one of these groups includes a kid and another turns out to be \|\|a woman and her parents\|\|, so Team C (Carlos/Akane/Junpei) naturally became the most popular threesome pairing. It's fueled by the fact that, in-universe, Carlos is really determined to get Akane and Junpei together, despite only knowing them for a few days, and often asks questions about their relationship. - City of Reality is a literal, and Deconstructed utopia, to the point where, when a person catches their spouse cheating, the natural and normal reaction is to join in. - Collar 6 gives us the canon couple of Sixx/Laura/Ginger. Made possible as all the girls were already into polyamory beforehand. - Dumbing of Age fans wasted no time in shipping Amber/Danny/Ethan once Danny was confirmed to be bisexual and attracted to them both. - There appears to be a number of El Goonish Shive fans that ship Sarah with one of the Official Couples of the comic, Tedd/Grace. She has received some Ship Tease with both of them, but she is \|\|or rather, was\|\| part of another Official Couple. \|\|However, given certain developments in the comic, she is now free to fulfill the wishes of the fans.\|\| - Given some additional traction by this (probably) non-canon "Sketchbook" page. And further Ship Tease when a Q&A claimed to be "out of space" to discuss it and a "Wrong Answers Only" Q&A wasn't prepared to give a solid "yes" in case it wasn't a wrong answer. And the NP story "Blanket" appears to be an extended riff on there being Only One Couch. - Girl Genius fandom has strong (although not exclusive) support for Agatha×Gil×Tarvek. While Gil's the more traditional Designated Love Interest and proposed to Agatha even before he knew her background, as Violetta points out, Tarvek is equally devoted to Agatha and would be a much less politically troublesome match. The Cinderella parody done in one of the interludes ending with Agatha-as-Cinderella marrying both Gil and Tarvek indicates that the writers think it's a perfectly reasonable resolution to the romantic plotlines. In-universe, it's been acknowledged as a possible outcome by several characters. The in-universe betting pool has Gil at 2-1, Tarvek 3-1, and Both at 5-1, showing just how likely some find it. - Gunnerkrigg Court: - Jack/Zimmy/Gamma has popped up among certain fans after a revelation or two in the comic. Mostly for laughs, but a few not so much. - When Jack is introduced with a girlfriend, Jenny, who refers to Annie with "my love," Jack/Jenny/Annie cropped up in response. note : She's from The West Country, and that's just how people talk there, but still... - Homestuck It's pretty common to see some love triangles resolved this way, creating pairings like Dave/Terezi/Karkat or Eridan/Feferi/Sollux. More unusually, because trolls in Homestuck canonically have four different kinds of romance and usually desire to fulfill all of them, it's common for OT3s to involve multiple different relationship types. (It doesn't help that one of said relationship types inherently requires a threesome.) Using the earlier example, it's not unusual to see people shipping Eridan, Feferi, and Sollux all in red relationship (that is, a normal human romantic one), but it's arguably even more common for people to ship Eridan and Sollux both in a red relationship with Feferi but in a black relationship with each other. Needless to say, fics with lots of different pairings and multiple quadrants for each character can get very... complicated. - John's Dad/Rose's Mom/Dave's Bro was at least popular in the fandom's early days (it didn't hurt that Mom/Dad was an Official Couple and Mom and Bro were Dave and Rose's biological parents). Things became complicated after \|\|the Scratch, wherein alternate versions of Mom (Roxy) and Bro (Dirk) swapped roles with Rose and Dave while Dad stayed the same\|\|. - The Law of Purple's Lette/Blue/Synn is pretty much canon. - Magick Chicks: When Faith tells Tiffany that she loves her, Tiffany counters by bringing up Faith's habit of sleeping around. So Faith said she'd agree to stop seeing other girls, if Tiffany asked her to. Tiffany considers it for a moment, then asks about Faith's boyfriend, Ash, which is where Faith drew the line and proposed they form a threesome instead. - Ménage à 3: According to some fans, Gary/Yuki/Zii (because Yuki is crazy-jealous respecting both Gary and Zii, and both Zii and Gary have expressed interest in each other at certain points, it seems like the relationship might actually be stable). - Questionable Content: - Siren's Lament: Lyra/Shon may be the official couple with Ian as the unlucky suitor for Lyra but the ship of Ian/Lyra/Shon set sail quite early on due to Ian proposing it. Ian trying to join in on a hug between the two before they started dating helped kick things off, and was reinforced by Shon carrying Ian bridal style when Ian nearly passed out and Ian's habit of flirting with Shon to annoy him, and Shon on at least two occasions responding in kind. - SomethingPositive: Davan/Vanessa/PeeJee, anyone? Vanessa has even stated that she would not be averse to such a set up... the author, on the other hand, is. Davan and Peejee will never be a canon item. - Camp Camp has a few possible triads, some popular and others not. They include - Max/Neil/Nikki - Max/Preston/Space Kid - Nerris/Harrison/Preston - Nerris/Ered/Nikki - Harrison/Preston/Max - Harrison/Neil/Max - Snake/Neil/Max - Tabbi/Erin/Sasha - Gwen/David/\|\| Jasper\|\|, albeit only possible in AUs. - Crossovers with Xray And Vav* can feature Gwen/David/Mogar and Hilda/Gwen/David/Mogar. - Helluva Boss: - While Moxxie and Millie are already an Official Couple that fans adore seeing express their love, there are a decent number of fans that like adding Blitzo to the mix, as not only does Blitzo express both familial and sexual interest in the duo (he outright shows in "Loo Loo Land" that he wants to have a three-way with them), the trio often act like a group of dysfunctional but caring parents towards Loona, who Blitzo is already the adoptive father of. - Some Blitzo/Stolas shippers threw Verosika into the mix after "Spring Broken", noting that she and Blitzo may not be completely over each other and that Verosika, being a succubus, may not care about Blitzo sleeping with other people. Meanwhile, even though Stolas and Verosika have yet to interact onscreen at the time of this writing, the subtle but unmistakable parallels between them have led a lot of these shippers to assume they'd get along like a house on fire. Not to mention the logic and appeal inherent in shipping two of the biggest perverts on the show with a succubus... - Not long after their debut, plenty of fans who like C.H.E.R.U.B took to shipping all members of the trio together, since whenever they show their true colors, their conflicting interactions provide prime Belligerent Sexual Tension bait. There are a few that go the Fan-Preferred Couple route with Keenie and Collin since her frequent aggression towards him makes for a good Tsundere dynamic, along with them both being sheep-angels, but Cletus acts as a good mediator for the two, along with how the show effectively dares the fanbase to ship them by having Blitzo call him a sheep-fucker. - Mystery Skulls Animated: Arthur is jealous of Lewis and Vivi's relationship, but the series is ambigous as to how; the fandom solves this by shipping the three together, though whether it's a complete or partial triangle depends on the writer. - Off the Page and into Life: - Henry loves Gail, Gail loves Henry, Terrence loves Henry, Terrence and Henry have a lot of Ho Yay, and Terrence and Gail sometimes veer into Foe Romance Subtext. Naturally, many people (both In-Universe and out) have pointed out that a threesome would solve a lot of problems. Gail, Terrence and Henry did not agree. (Ironically, all three muns for those characters have said they liked the idea.) - Gail's entangled in another OT3 with her best friend Meg and her boyfriend Morpheus. And with Jackson and Tim. And Sam and Henry. Gail gets shipped with everyone. - To a lesser extent, Frederick with his ex-girlfriend Gloria and Gloria's new girlfriend Emily. - ProZD's suggests this trope should happen when it comes to anime love triangles. Currently the page quote. - In the Red vs. Blue fandom, portraying Agents North Dakota, New York, and Washington as lovers is fairly popular. Being three of the nicest characters in a series full of clueless, bitter jerkasses probably has something to do with it. note : Of course, \|\|North and York being dead\|\| means that these tend to be either fix fics, occur \|\|before Project Freelancer fell apart\|\|, or take place in an alternate universe. - RWBY: - Blake had ship tease in the show with both Sun and Yang across the first five volumes. One solution to the fandom shipping wars between Blake/Sun (Black Sun) and Blake/Yang (Bumblebee) was to create the fairly popular ship Sunny Bees, consisting of all three characters together. - Once Volume 5 confirmed that Ilia used to be in love with Blake, threesome ships of Ilia/Blake/Sun and Ilia/Blake/Yang exist. However, the big solution, given the already existing Sunny Bees threesome, was to simply add Ilia into the mix and make it a One True Foursome. - Taiyang has two daughters by two different mothers who are two years apart in age. Both of their mothers were in Taiyang's team in school. Instead of arguing about whether Taiyang/Raven or Taiyang/Summer is the better ship, fans went for the threesome. This generated the meme "Entire Team, Qrow" due to there being no hint that Qrow was ever a likely love interest for Taiyang; the joke is that, as the only member left out of the ship, Taiyang must be determined to land Qrow and score the entire team. - Ruby Rose is most commonly shipped with Weiss Schnee, her Defrosting Ice Queen partner, and Penny Polendina, a Robot Girl to whom she is the first friend. After a moment in the Volume 7 finale where both Ruby and Weiss cuddle up to Penny at the same time to comfort her, Ruby/Penny/Weiss has become a common ship. - That Guy with the Glasses: - In Welcome to Night Vale there was clearly some sort of romance between Childhood Friends Cecil and Scoutmaster Earl, even if it was only one-sided. Earl apparently died in the episode he was introduced, but it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for him to come back and for their relationship to blossom. Except, Cecil's now in a committed and frankly adorable relationship with Carlos the scientist. This was the only logical conclusion for many. - Whateley Universe fandom has the triangles of Thunderbird/Chaka/Riptide and Stalwart/Fey/Bugs and Molly/Chou/Dorjee resolved this way (the latter was resolved by canon Polyamory). - Xray And Vav has Ash/Xray/Vav. "And so anime was solved forever!"	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OT3
Thrown Down a Well - TV Tropes "It's a place you put people... to forget about 'em!" A character gets rid of another character by physically or magically trapping them within some uncomfortable location so remote it will be impossible for them to escape by themselves. This is a way to do the death/resurrection plot without cheapening death, since the trapped character is always brought back. A fun word for a prison of this type is "oubliette" where a prisoner would be thrown to be literally forgotten about (from French oublier = "to forget"). Related to Prison Dimension, Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Put on a Bus and Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere. Compare And I Must Scream and Anti-Interference Lock Up. Not related to Timmy in a Well, although they can both involve someone in a well. ## Examples: - Excel♡Saga: The titular character is temporarily held prisoner in a deep well when she accidentally stumbles onto a military group, where she finds the Man in the Iron Mask at the bottom and slowly loses her sanity over the course of a few hours before finally escaping. - One Piece: Impel Down officially has only five levels. Level 6, the Eternal Hell, is the prison for the most dangerous and heinous criminals whose only sentences are life imprisonment or execution. Just as the floor doesn't exist, prisoners sentenced to this floor are considered to no longer exist. - Ranma ½: This is how Soun Tendo and Genma Saotome get rid of Happosai the first time: they tie him up, put him in a barrel, seal the barrel, tie it in seals, tie it up again, then throw it in a cave, dynamite said cave, and sealed the entrance. It kept him away for about a decade before lightning re-opened the cave. - Sailor Moon: In DiC's dub first season finale, the Doom and Gloom girls trap each of the Sailor Scouts, except for Sailor Moon, when they enter the Negaverse. Sailor Moon's magic frees them all and wipes their memories in the next episode. In the original however the DD Girls (rather graphically for a show aimed a young girls) killed every Sailor Senshi except for Sailor Moon in the first season penultimate episode, with Moon's dying wish in the next episode, made on a Power Crystal whose magic is Cast From HP, resurrecting everyone (herself included.) Japanese kids apparently got sick watching the original, so it is not that bad it was censored. - Yu-Gi-Oh!: \|\|Yugi\|\| is trapped this way in mid-season 4. Different in that it's not done specifically to trap him, but as part of a bigger plan. - In Star Wars Tales #5, Yaddle's Tale: The One Below, the title character was imprisoned in a well by a tyrannical dictator after he killed her master as a potential bargaining chip. The wardens and villagers kept taking care of her well after the dictator forgot her and she was able to use the isolation to strengthen her connection to the Force. An earthquake ends up providing her an escape and she helps the villagers defeat the dictator's son when he comes to collect the planet as his inheritance. - Superman: - In Starfire's Revenge, the titular crimelord throws - a supposedly depowered - Supergirl and her own minion down in a pit built in the deepest basement of an abandoned castle. - In Reign of Doomsday, Lex Luthor traps the Superman Family in a dimensional maze located inside an invisible abandoned spaceship located on the far side of the Sun. Luthor also throws into his trap a bunch of Doomsday clones so the Supers are being permanently hunted down. However, Supergirl throws one Doomsday down an endless tunnel, and it does not return. Superman ponders it may be a way to get rid of the Doomsdays. - Ultimate X-Men: Wolverine catches Cyclops as he's just about to fall down a chasm (depth unknown) whilst they're in Genosha, fighting some machine monster. Wolverine decides this is the best time to get rid of the competition for Jean Grey and chucks him down. Luckily for Cyke but not really for Wolvie, Cyke survives, and after various hijinks (being rescued by the badguys) eventually confronts Wolverine a few weeks later. Wolverine goes "I was a twat. Do what you have to." What Cyke "had to" do was ZORT him with a single high-power blast, leaving him naked, scorched, and knocked the FUCK out in an Alaskan terrain. Scott leaves him there, saying that he's off the team. He does think better of it later, as much to prove that he can forgive as to bury the hatchet between them so that they don't end up like Xavier and Magneto. - In Power Girl fanfic A Force of Four, Superman imprisoned Mala, Kizo and U-Ban in a Kryptonite globe which he left drifting about the edge of the solar system. Decades passed before Badra released them. In the reaches of outer space, a green-glowing globe floated, undisturbed for 31 years. The three beings inside it were numb, in suspended animation, as they had been for almost all of their imprisonment. - In Kara of Rokyn, villain Blackflame is arrested and banished to the Phantom Zone forever after her final attempt on Kara's life fails. - Averted in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World. To keep Paul from causing problems, \|\|the Circle\|\| planned to teleport him to a remote island far away from any potential rescue. However, their two attempts to immobilize him and take him there failed miserably. - In Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, Iago decides to ditch Jafar by dropping his lamp down a well, with the obligatory bad pun "Hope all goes well". However, the lamp landed in the bucket, and when the villain Abis Mal hoists it up to wash his head he finds the lamp, He sets Jafar loose unexpectedly when he decides to shine the lamp up to sell. - In Coco, the villain has Miguel and Hector thrown down a cenote (a sinkhole filled with water). They are saved by \|\|Dante, Mama Imelda and her alebrije\|\|. - Coraline. The hand of the Other Mother is smashed and thrown into a deep well when it escapes to the real world which doubles as a Karmic End for her, after she did the same by trapping Coraline's real parents inside a snowglobe and Coraline herself inside the mirror. - Just before the final battle in My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Rainbow Rocks, the Rainbooms and Sunset are thrown down a stage trap into a locked room, where \|\|their tensions that have been building throughout the film come to a boil, fueling the Dazzlings with enough negative emotional energy to reach full power. Fortunately, Sunset is able to resolve their argument, and Spike, who avoided the trapdoor, fetched DJ Pon-3 to rescue them\|\|. - In Enchanted, Narissa does this to Giselle after telling her it's a wishing well. - In First Knight, Malagant, the errant knight of the Round Table, stashes Guenevere in one, to lure Arthur and the other knights into a trap. - John and the Hole: John drugs his family and drags them into a remote hole in the forest of their rural home. They try to climb out but can't. \|\|He eventually returns to let them out.\|\| - In Labyrinth, Sarah falls into an oubliette, where she would've stayed if Hoggle hadn't rescued her. - Subverted in that Hoggle was supposed to be there to rescue her and lead her back to the beginning to break her spirit. Jareth failed to take The Power of Friendship into account though and Hoggle did a classic HeelFace Turn. - In The Pit and the Pendulum, Nicholas ties up, gags and places his wife Elizabeth in an Iron Maiden (though it is one without spikes, which eventually makes her situation worse) in a Torture Cellar. After he is killed while trying to murder several other people, Elizabeth watches helplessly as they (not knowing she is there) exit the dungeon proclaiming that "No one will ever enter this room again". - In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Belloq leaves Indiana Jones trapped inside the Well of Souls, the underground temple where the Ark was hidden. He taunts Indy thusly: "You're about to become a permanent addition to this archaeological find. Who knows? In a thousand years, even you may be worth something." - The Ring: - Samara is tossed in a well by her mother. - The book has it that Sadako was tossed in by a guy she threatened to kill. - Sadako's father in the movies. - In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Khan leaves Kirk and company trapped inside the Regula planetoid, "...marooned for all eternity, in the centre of a dead planet...buried alive." - In The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Nathaniel threatens to do this to Bartimaeus if Bartimaeus gets him killed... although in this case it also invokes the Genie in a Bottle trope. - Joseph (of the Dreamcoat) gets thrown in a pit by his brothers in The Bible (Book of Genesis). OK, they pull him out and sell him as a slave, but that was the original plan. - The prophet Jeremiah gets lowered down an (almost) dried-up well, with the implied intention that he starve to death there. Fortunately some friends in high places spoke up for him and he got pulled out. - Another prophet (Daniel) was thrown into a well with hungry lions. He was pulled back out when he was just fine the next morning. - In Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King, Dolores leads her drunk husband on a wild goose chase to make sure he falls into the well, then she throws a rock on his head to make sure he died. - King uses the trope to Nightmare Fuel effect in the short story "A Very Tight Place," as well. The titular "place" is, rather than a well, a Port-O-Potty. - Discussed in Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption, in terms of older prison methods in the state of Maine. Rather than a well, Red describes a hellish fate called gaol, used to punish minor offenses such as leaving the house without a handkerchief on Sundays. - The literal fate of \|\|Miss Taylor\|\| in John Harding's Florence and Giles, thanks to an assist from \|\|our narrator, Florence.\|\| - Joe Pickett: In Endangered, Liv is kidnapped by the Cates clan and held prisoner in an old cellar on their property. When they decide they no longer need her, they intend to murder her by filling the cellar with sewage. - In Lyonesse: Suldrun's Garden by Jack Vance, Aillas is thrown into an oubliette by the king. He discovers a number of skeletons all sitting against the walls as if in a conference, with a message scrawled on the wall, "Welcome to our brotherhood." Aillas manages to escape with his sanity more or less intact. - In Vulkan Lives, Vulkan is imprisoned in one of these. \|\|He escapes by climbing the subtle imperfections in the walls\|\|. - In Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the narrator is thrown down a well in a somewhat symbolic episode. Actually, the author has a bit of a thing for wells. - One of the defining moments of Grant Ward's childhood in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was his younger brother Thomas being stuck in the well. \|\|Grant blamed his older brother Christian for the incident, but a discussion with Thomas himself in the third season revealed that it was Grant who threw Thomas down the well.\|\| - A memorable storyline on All My Children in 1991 involved crazy Janet throwing her sister Natalie down a well in order to take her place. - In Angel, \|\|his son\|\| trapped the title character in a box and then tossed the box into the ocean. - Charmed stuck Leo in a giant block of ice for most of the last season (referred to by many as "The Doltsicle") before bringing him back for the series finale. (After the show's budget got slashed they couldn't afford the actor, but didn't want to kill Leo and Piper's near series-long marriage.) - In a segment of Da Ali G Show, Borat went to the southern U.S. to learn about country music. When he tries to sing a supposedly real Kazakh song translated to English, it turns out to be about throwing "transport", Jews, and finally his own family down a well. - In the game show Fort Boyard: if the team do not have enough keys to open the treasure room door, one of their number can be sent to the "oubliette": a dark chamber under a barred trapdoor, where they remain for the rest of the game. - In Heroes, Hiro Nakamura disposes of \|\|Adam Monroe/Takezo Kensei\|\| in this way. - Another Heroes example, with an interesting twist: in season 3, \|\|Future-Peter\|\| gets \|\|Present-Peter\|\| out of the way by \|\|shoving him into someone else's body\|\|. - Jessie: The titular character was pushed down a well by her stepsister Darla. - Discussed on The Millers. Debbie figures they can't afford to pay for Tom to live in a nursing home, so she tells him "We're going to have to throw you down a well." - Stargate SG-1 has a clever variation using artificial gravity. Baal has O'Neill thrown into long cell with no door. Artificial Gravity then kicks in and causes the back wall to become the new floor. What was a corridor is now a deep pit with absolutely smooth walls. This leads to some fun interactions with guards and visitors, as the door is now a hole in the "ceiling", and those outside the cell seemingly standing on the wall. - Happened to Callisto on most of her appearances on Xena: Warrior Princess, until it was time to bring her back for another episode. \|\|This was especially true once she became immortal.\|\| - The main conflict and the fate of the titular character of Sound Horizon's Märchen. - In Planescape, the Lady of Pain is well known for getting rid of those who displease her by banishing them to one of her Mazes, which are magical prisons removed from the rest of the Planes. There's always a way out, but it's practically impossible to find it. - In Banjo-Kazooie, Gruntilda is defeated by being thrown from her tower and being buried below a giant rock. Naturally, she's rescued in the next game by her sisters, but being buried for 2 years left her as a living skeleton. - In Crusader Kings II, you can throw prisoners into an oubliette if you want them to hurry up and die but can't or won't execute them yourself for whatever reason. - Die Young starts with Daphne having been thrown down a well and left for dead. \|\|Escaping the well is the first Trial for vetting those who are worthy of a place in the Community.\|\| - You have the option to do this to someone during a quest in The Elder Scrolls Online. After helping an Adventurer Archaeologist through two tombs you get to what was supposed to be a Treasure Room but is now empty. Off to one side of it is a well. When you talk with the archeologist to complete the quest you can trick him into thinking that perhaps all of the treasure is down the well. When he walks over and looks down you can then push him in. - Fallen London has Mr. Eaten who was apparently thrown down a well among other things in the game's backstory. Although it might have been metaphorical. Unfortunately, it didn't really work and what's left of him is now out for revenge. A reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely. - This can be one of the fates in store for the courier in Fallout: New Vegas add-on "Dead Money". Should the player reach the vault at the bottom of the Sierra Madre, they have a choice to read a message on the computer nearby. Doing so will seal the room, immediately forcing an ending for the player and killing them, as the courier ends up accidentally getting permanently trapped in a death trap left for \|\|Dean Domino\|\| that the courier unknowingly activated. Additionally, this can be done to \|\|Father Elijah\|\|. By performing specific speech checks, he can end up stuck in the vault, and the ending even states that the only inevitable fate in that room is eventual death by dehydration and starvation. Once \|\|Elijah\|\| dies, the Sierra Madre will make a new hologram in his likeness that will patrol around the hotel much like the previous ones you've encountered. While it implies the possibility of him living forever as a hologram, the holograms that have been seen up to this point simply act as guard dogs and fire on any potential intruders, once again locking him in a state of never being able to leave, the hotel itself becoming his new oubliette. - The plot of Furi, almost in its entirety, consists of The Stranger attempting to escape this fate. - Ghost of a Tale implies this was the fate of Captain Otto Powderkeg, after you find a rat skeleton with a pirate hat in one of the cells. \|\|Turns out, he's just been Faking the Dead, and is very much alive - and indeed, isn't even imprisoned.\|\| - In the bad ending of the Marathon scenario Gemini Station, you are convicted of Jack Melville's murder and sent to an oubliette where you are forced to kill yourself with a Descending Ceiling trap. - Done in Metroid Prime: Hunters on a Cosmic Horror Story scale: The resident Eldritch Abomination, Gorea, is sealed away in the Seal Sphere, which is then sealed away in the Oubliette, which, in turn, is sealed away in a rift between dimensions known as the Infinity Void. \|\|He comes back by tricking the Hunters into freeing him.\|\| - Romancing Saga 3 has the Dead Man's Well dungeon. According to the game, during the time the world was ruled by the Archfiend and the Four Sinistrals, the sick and old were thrown into the well located in Mazos until it became a mass grave. - In Silent Hill 2, when entering the Historical Society, James jumps into a well with no apparent way out, until you examine the loose bricks, which can be broken with a board or pipe. - This is the driving force in the plot in Vanish. You're thrown into a sewer filled with birdmen and have to escape. - This happens to Adol a few times in the Ys series, and Dogi or another character usually has to smash the wall for him to escape. - In Looking for Group, Richard was sent to an empty white space he dubbed "The Plane of Suck" for several pages before being put on trial. - In Sluggy Freelance, in the Harry Potter parody "Torg Potter and the Sorcerer's Nuts", Torg puts a sleeping Ralfoy Malfoy in a trunk and has him sent to Antarctica. He's later shown trying to escape by bungee jumping (???). Of course, in the next installment he's back without any particular explanation. - THE MONUMENT MYTHOS has an episode dedicated to the idea that the President of the United States can choose any one person to seal inside a dark space behind a mask of Abraham Lincoln for the years until their presidential term or terms are over, simply because they don't like that person. It isn't until some time after 1980 that a tourist finally discovers the 'Lincolnlookers' as they're called were trapped inside the Lincoln Memorial all along. - This very wiki has the Permanent Red Link Club.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Oubliette
Otherness Tropes - TV Tropes All about how to construct otherness and personhood in a setting, such as aliens, fantasy races, robots and other sentient creatures.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OthernessTropes
One True Threesome - TV Tropes First Guy: Tomoko... I love you. Tomoko: I... I... Second Guy: But Tomoko, I also love you. First Guy: But now two of us love you. Who will you choose? Tomoko: ...Why don't we all just... fuck each other? You know, just... one big fuck pile. [Beat] Second Guy: ...Yeah okay. First Guy: Sounds good to me. In any given fandom, if there is any Shipping going on at all, there will usually be a particular couple substantially supported by both the Canon events of the series or story, and the general consensus of the fandom regarding Fanon. Even if some parts of the fandom aren't thrilled about the nature of the relationship, it's generally agreed that the relationship does exist and cannot be easily ignored. These unbreakable couples usually (but not always) consist of The Protagonist and their Love Interests, though they're often seen among villain groups as well. What makes this relationship unique can really only be decided by the individual viewer, and they are called OTP: One True Pairing. In some cases, love rivals may compete for a single love interest, and the fandom is wholly divided over which one most deserves to get the girl or guy, with large fandoms developing into factions devoted to one relationship over another. Or it may just be a matter of a standard Love Triangle or a particular corner of a Love Dodecahedron where, because romantic relationships usually consist of exactly two people, one of the competing parties is eventually going to be disappointed. And sometimes, because of Fan Dumb, this can go overboard and cause Ship-to-Ship Combat. In a display of Take a Third Option, some fans adopt the concept of the OT3: the One True Threesome. It's just like One True Pairing, except that there are three characters involved; most often this means the Hero, the Love Interest, and one of their best friends with whom they've both had homoerotic subtext at some point. That way everybody's happy, the sex is kinkier, and no matter who's involved, there's always a little homoeroticism happening. It's like Give Peace a Chance, only instead of Peace, it's Three-Way Sex. While these groupings are most often the result of combining two other disputed couples, there are some examples of characters who simply group together in this way without the fandom splitting them into pairs; Power Trios are especially ripe for OT3ing. OT3s are a part of shipping. The in-universe subtext that fuels said shipping goes under Threesome Subtext. If they're in a canon relationship, you're looking at Polyamory. As a philosophy, polyamory may be present in shipping as well. Note that, while not necessarily covered by this exact trope, sometimes fans will go even further and have an OT4, OT5, etc. Not under any circumstances to be confused with the most notorious part of the Church of Happyology. ## Examples <!—index—> <!—/index—> - Harpie Lady Sisters, Queen's/King's/Jack's Knight, Dark Magician/Dark Magician Girl/Dark Magician of Chaos (feel free to substitute with other magicians), pretty much anything remotely human in Yu-Gi-Oh! that comes in threes. - Some fans of Peanuts have suggested this as a way to resolve the Marcie/Charlie Brown/Peppermint Patty triangle. - The Book of Life: - Joaquin/Maria/Manolo (better known as Tres Leches) is pretty popular since all three are great people who remain good friends even after the whole Triangle thing gets resolved. Even Jorge has admitted to loving◊ the ship, occasionally posts pictures on his Tumblr, encouraged stories for it at least one, and joked about it being his original intent! - Joaquin and The Adelita twins too, due to the twins showing a lot of interest in him near the film's end, mixed a bit with Pair the Spares. - In Corpse Bride, Victor ends up learning to love Emily enough to want to join her in the Afterlife after believing his chances with Victoria are over. And Emily loves Victor enough to step aside and push him back to Victoria (who dearly loved Victor to begin with). ...Oh well, there's always the Afterlife. - Frozen: - Kristoff/Anna/Elsa (or "Kristelsanna" as it's called). Most Elsa/Anna fans like Kristoff too much to bash him much, so he's either made into Anna's platonic best friend or added into the Elsanna action. More rare is Anna/Kristoff/Elsa, which doesn't involve incest. - Due to their cameo, Rapunzel and Eugene from Tangled get shipped in various threesomes and foursomes with Frozen characters. Much of it is Kissing Cousins due to the fanon that Rapunzel is Anna and Elsa's first cousin. - In Inside Out, Fear, Anger, and Disgust are all shipped together by some fans, especially after the absence of Joy and Sadness from Headquarters in the film caused the three emotions to have to work together to try and help Riley. - While the Luca fandom is still picking up speed, no one can deny that Alberto/Luca/Guilia would work as a ship given that all three of them have wonderful chemistry on a platonic level. - The Princess and the Frog has Naveen/Tiana/Charlotte for those who think Tiana and Charlotte would make a cute couple but don't want to tear apart the Official Couple. It helps that both Charlotte/Tiana and Charlotte/Naveen tie up Charlotte's plot-thread about wanting to marry royalty. - From The Road to El Dorado, Chel/Tulio/Miguel for those that like the Miguel/Tulio paring but don't hate Chel. It helps that both Tulio and Miguel go slack jawed when around her, or that Chel flirts with both about equally, and of course there is Miguel and Tulio's relationship. Considering the ending, it's almost-sorta-kinda canon! - Toy Story: - In Toy Story 3 after \|\|Bo Peep got Put on a Bus\|\|, Woody/Buzz/Jessie became quite popular. \|\|It was implied to be canon in "Spanish Mode"\|\|. - Woody/Bo/Buzz/Jessie has also picked up in popularity. Toy Story 4 gave it a large boost after Bo Peep was reintroduced. - Turning Red: Some fans do consider Miriam/Mei/Tyler to be a valid option instead of Mei/Miriam or Mei/Tyler. - Descendants has a few possible options. - Pre-series stories sometimes have the core V Ks involved with each other. This can evolve into their canon love interests (primarily Ben, Doug and Jane since they appear and were confirmed in the final film) being brought into the relationship. - Ben/Mal/Uma and Mal/Ben/Audrey have followings though more the former. - Jay/Carlos/Jane. Lonnie may be thrown in here as well. - Ben/Mal/Evie/Doug, mostly due to the girls' chemistry with each other and the actors behind Ben and Doug having a great bromance. - The series "Package Deal" explores a relationship developing between Mal, Ben and Evie, as Mal and Evie were girlfriends back on the Isle of the Lost and Mal asks Ben if he would be willing to 'share' her with Evie as she can't give either of them up. The subsequent series explores how Ben and Evie become involved with each other beyond their existing bond with Mal, Mal affirming in a talk with the Fairy Godmother that, in contrast to the idea that fairies can only have one true love, she considers Ben and Evie to be her only partners rather than consider one 'above' the other. - Uma/Gil/Harry. - The Devil Wears Prada has Miranda/Andy/Emily as the most popular threesome pairing. It covers two very popular pairings, that of Miranda/Andy and Emily/Andy. It has also been known to sometimes become a foursome, and include Serena. It has the most fanfics of any threesome on Archive of Our Own. It's also very popular on YouTube to make a video about the three. If you are more into crossover pairings, there's Miranda/Andy/Cruella de Vil, which is surprisingly popular. - Do Revenge: While Eleanor/Gabbi make up a fairly popular Official Couple and Eleanor/Drea are the Fan-Preferred Couple with plenty of Homoerotic Subtext, a lot of fans ship Drea/Eleanor/Gabbi together rather than shipping Eleanor with either on their own as a way to avoid Ship-to-Ship Combat. It helps that Gabbi defends Drea following her and Eleanor's fight and Drea helps Eleanor win Gabbi back, making it easy for fans to assume Gabbi and Drea get along with each other. - Ferris Bueller's Day Off: Ferris is dating Sloane. Ferris has Ho Yay with Cameron. Cameron has Ship Tease subtext with Sloane. All three actors have wonderful chemistry, and it's clear that all three characters love and care for one another above all else — even Ferris, who is extremely selfish, obviously cares a lot about Cameron, and swears he'll marry Sloane. Of course these three get shipped together. - Inception: - Arthur/Ariadne/Eames is quite popular. As is Arthur/Ariadne/Cobb. - Cobb/Mal/anyone isn't the most popular combination, but it makes a lot of sense, metaphorically speaking, as \|\|Mal exists only inside Cobb's head at this point.\|\| - The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) has Napoleon/Gaby/Illya, fueled by their chemistry as co-protagonists, the Napoleon/Illya Ho Yay, Illya and Gaby's canonical attraction, and Napoleon's flirtiness. - Marvel Cinematic Universe: - The Avengers: Having unexpectedly copious amounts of Tony Stark/Bruce Banner Ho Yay, along with expectedly copious amounts of Steve Rogers/Tony Stark Ho Yay, some fans have resolved this with an OT3 that's worth it for the Portmanteau Couple Name alone: Stark Spangled Banner. - Similarly, those wanting to run with the Steve/Tony Ho Yay but not wanting to break up Tony/Pepper go with Pepper/Steve/Tony and those who want Tony/Bruce go with Tony/Bruce/Pepper. - With the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, this expanded to include any combination of the foursome Steve/Bucky/Sam/Natasha, and any variant combinations with the pairings above. - As the two loves of Steve's life, Steve/Bucky/Peggy is also popular. - Since the release of Captain America: Civil War, many fans have happily rolled Stucky, Steve/Sam, and Sam/Bucky together into one big Steve/Sam/Bucky OT3. - And with the two biggest pairings in the fandom being Steve/Bucky (Stucky) and Steve/Tony (Stony), some fans Take a Third Option in this shipping conflict and ship Steve/Bucky/Tony (Stuckony). - What do you do when you can't decide between Clint/Natasha and Clint/Coulson? Why, you ship Strike Team Delta, aka Clint/Coulson/Natasha! - Peter Parker has two within the fandom as well. Peter/MJ/Ned and Peter1/Peter2/Peter3. - More recent fics such as "Tingle" and Spider-Man: Finding Home have introduced the new pairing of Peter, Yelena Belova and Kate Bishop, exploiting Kate and Yelena's obvious connection and their likely bonds with Peter as spiders and street-level heroes. - Others solve the problem by the simple expedient of letting the entire cast of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have a wild orgy. - Patchwork ends with Jennifer and Ellie 'killing' Madeline's personality and then having Garrett brought back to life, creating the possibility for them to have this kind of relationship as Jennifer and Ellie remain active in their shared body and each appear fond of Garrett at least. - Pirates of the Caribbean: - Red Notice: Hartley and Booth have lots of Ho Yay, but Hartley and Sarah also have some good relationship subtext going on \|\|and are actually lovers\|\|, and all three of their actors have great chemistry with each other. Most fans' solution to this is just to ship all three of them together. - Since the Holmes/Watson/Mary love triangle is pretty much canon in Sherlock Holmes (2009), it's no surprise some fans have taken to OT3ing them. The three of them do seem quite cozily domestic with each other in that last scene... Irene is sometimes added to the mix as well. - The fandom of Singin' in the Rain loooooooves Don/Kathy/Cosmo. Don and Kathy are the Official Couple, and have great chemistry, but Don and Cosmo's bromance is also pretty Ho Yay-heavy, and rather than evolving into a Friend Versus Lover situation, Kathy and Cosmo get along great. In particular, there's one really cute scene that the fandom has latched onto with shipping goggles, where Cosmo and Don share a Man Hug, followed by Don kissing Kathy... which is then followed by her pecking Cosmo on the cheek, who gets so embarrassed he falls over. So a lot of fanfic authors make them a triad — everyone wins! - In Skyfall James Bond seduces Severine, the villain's kept woman. The villain Silva caresses Bond while he has him tied to a chair. Later, when Severine enters the picture again, Silva greets her by saying, "Darling, your lover s are here." This has led to not a few fics positing a ménage à trois in the event of Bond joining or being forced to stay with Silva. - Sky High (2005) has a surprising amount of Will/Layla/Warren fics, given the amount of Die for Our Ship going on in the fandom. - Star Trek (2009): - Kirk/Spock/Uhura. McCoy often becomes a part of this arrangement too. - Supported by Paul Gadzikowski's fan comic The Hero of Three Faces (story arc starting here). - Star Trek Into Darkness adds more fuel, marketing them as the main Power Trio. In the 2009 movie, Kirk's interaction with Uhura consisted of her clearly rebuffing his attempts to hit on her. Now they're on decent enough terms to discuss her relationship with Spock, and one scene is described elsewhere on this wiki as "a three-way lover's spat". - The sequel resulted in a lot of threesomes involving John Harrison \|\|aka Khan\|\|, mostly John/Kirk/Spock. - Star Wars: As a trilogy of trilogies, each about a trio, this is no surprise. - The original trilogy: Luke/Han/Leia, before... you know. Though that hasn't stopped a lot of fans from continuing to ship that particular OT3. And the incest can always be muffled a little with Han serving as the vortex, and a buffer. - The prequel trilogy: Obi-Wan/Anakin/Padmé (Obianidala) totally. The Novelization of Revenge of the Sith almost makes it canon, with Palpatine explicitly stating that Anakin's choice isn't between the Jedi and the Sith, but whether or not he loves Padmé more than Obi-Wan. - The sequel trilogy: Poe/Finn/Rey (Jedistormpilot). Between Finn's Love at First Sight with Rey and the instant bromance that forms between him and Poe, this pairing took off faster than the Falcon making the Kessel Run. - For a Foe Yay Shipping example, there is also Rey/Kylo/Hux (sometimes abbreviated as Reylux), since Rey/Kylo is pretty much the closest thing the sequel trilogy has to an Official Couple, while Kylo/Hux bitter rivalry is seen by their shippers as a form of Belligerent Sexual Tension, and Rey/Hux is surprisingly quite popular, presumably due to their actors' chemistry. - Flynn/Lora/Alan is a Running Gag in TRON fandom, backed up by the fact Lora dated Flynn before marrying Alan. However, few are actually brave enough to write it. - Venom (2018) has Eddie/Anne/Venom, thanks to the canonical Eddie/Anne relationship and the copious amounts of Ho Yay between Eddie and Venom, \|\|culminating in a scene where a Venom-possessed Anne makes out with Eddie to transfer the symbiote back to him.\|\| Anne's fiancé Dan will occasionally get thrown in to make it a foursome, given how well he and Eddie get along. - Almost Night uses this to solve the conflict between Ed and Bocaj. - For The Chronicles of Narnia, Peter/Susan/Caspian and Edmund/Lucy/Caspian are fairly popular, particularly because of the movies. There is also Susan/Caspian/Lucy, although it's rarer. - In Deltora Quest theres Lief/Barda/Jasmine. - The Eagle of the Ninth has Marcus/Cottia/Esca. - Guenevere/Arthur/Lancelot in The Fionavar Tapestry and probably plenty of others. - The GONE series has the Devils trinity, which consists of Drake/Caine/Diana. This ship is popular, mainly because these three characters have many conflicting (and popular) ships, like Cake (Drake/Caine), Caina (Caine/Diana, actually canon) and Driana (Drake/Diana). - It might well have solved some fairly major problems if the setting of Gone with the Wind had been one in which an Ashley/Melanie/Scarlett One True Threesome had been a possible option. - Harry Potter: - Harry/Ron/Hermione, the three main characters. - Harry/Ginny/Luna is a popular pairing, even being named Flaming Nargles. - James/Lily — being kind of important as a couple — are often paired with Lupin, Severus, Sirius, or occasionally Regulus depending on the author's favorite '70s era student. - When it comes to Marauders shipping, Fan-Preferred Couple Sirius/Lupin might be joined by either James or Tonks, with the added bonus that Sirius and Tonks are cousins. - Lunar Harmony (Harry/Hermione/Luna) has a relatively small but dedicated fanbase. - Ginny/Hermione/Luna also has some fans. - Harry/Hermione/Draco combines three of the most popular ships (Harmony, Drarry, Dramione) - DGB (Draco/Ginny/Blaise) has a popular following, and Hermione/Draco/Blaise has become mildly popular in smutfics. - Hermione/Snape/Lucius and Hermione/Snape/Lupin are popular for those who like older men. - Some other themed OT3s are Bellatrix/Lucius/Narcissa (Death Eaters) and Katie/Alicia/Angelina (Gryffindor Quidditch Team). - For the Hurog duology, Tisala/Ward/Oreg is very, very popular. To the point that there are almost no fanfics about other pairings. The Ho Yay between Ward and Oreg is just that obvious. And as Tisala is the most badass woman of appropriate age, there is no serious competition for her. - The Infernal Devices has Tessa/Will/Jem. - Very nearly canon in The Lions of Al-Rassan with Ammar/Jehane/Rodrigo. - The Lord of the Rings: - There's Arwen/Aragorn may be joined by either Boromir or Éowyn. Throw Faramir in the mess for extra points. - Éomer/Aragorn/Faramir, or Legolas/Aragorn/Arwen, or even Aragorn/Arwen/Frodo. - Legolas/Aragorn/Éomer, Aragorn/Faramir/Boromir and OT4 Sam/Frodo/Merry/Pippin. - Rosie/Sam/Frodo isn't as popular, probably because Rosie barely appears in either the books or movies, but it's out there. Considering that \|\|Rosie and Sam kept taking care of Frodo after they got married\|\|, this one works really nicely. - Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli has its fans. They manage to stick together through practically the entire journey. - The Maze Runner has Thomas/Newt/Minho as its most popular threesome pairing, with tons of fanfics for it. The three are the most popular characters, share lots of Ho Yay all around, and have great chemistry with each other. It is made up of three popular ships: Thomas/Newt, Thomas/Minho, and Newt/Minho, and helps to avoid any shipping wars. Fans have also been known to either throw Teresa in or have her replace Minho. - In Les Misérables fandom, there is the technically canon threesome of Joly/Musichetta/Bossuet, and in some fanfics the main love triangle is solved by shipping Cosette/Marius/Éponine. - The Moomins: Moomintroll/Snufkin/Snorkmaiden is a very popular three-way ship. Moomintroll's canon Love Interest is Snorkmaiden, but Snufkin also gets a ton of Ho Yay with him, to the point where it's debated whether it's actually intentional Homoerotic Subtext note : Supported by how the author of The Moomins, Tove Jansson, was bisexual and sometimes included subtle queer themes in her stories and making Moomintroll/Snufkin the Fan-Preferred Couple. Those who can't decide which pairing they like best often just do both at the same time. The liberal atmosphere of Moominvalley also makes it easy to imagine that the characters would be accepting of polyamory. - Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Percy/Nico/Annabeth has its followers in the fandom. - A Song of Ice and Fire: - Theon/Jon/Robb (abbrev: THEJOBB) seems to be popular. Jon and Robb are close; Robb and Theon are close; Jon thinks Theon is an asshole, and we know what that means... - Jon/Tyrion/Dany has its followers. Considering that Jorah told Dany she needs 2 husbands, it's not out of the question. - Jon/Robb/Sansa is also popular, as is Daenerys/Jon/Sansa (which has the bonus of resolving a lot of Ship-to-Ship Combat). It helps that Jon, Robb, Sansa, Theon and Dany are all Launchers of a Thousand Ships. - For those who believe Lyanna and Rhaegar to be Jon's parents it is not unheard of to find Rhaegar's wife Elia Martell being not just okay with it, but involved as well. - The Star Wars Expanded Universe gives us Jaina/Zekk/Jag, which almost became canon in the Dark Nest Trilogy. Ben/Taryn/Trista (hinted at), Zekk/Taryn/Trista (also hinted at), Ben/Jacen/Tahiri (we could ship... on Ship!), Luke/Corran/Mirax (Luke even hinted as such in I, Jedi.), Luke/Corran/Mara (more Stackpole subtext, which is not very subtextual unless it's Ho Yay but a lot more subtextual than his spiritual heir Troy Denning), Ahsoka/a clone/another clone. - some The Stormlight Archive fans have decided to find their own ending to the love triangle with Kaladin/Shallan/Adolin, or even Shallan/Adolin/Kaladin. - In Further Tales of the City, Anna Madrigal jokes that Mary Ann, Brian, and Michael are her favorite couple. The trio really don't mind this notion at all. - Laurence/Granby/Tharkay in Temeraire is quite popular. Meanwhile fanfic that only pairs Laurence with one person tends to have shades of this anyway, since Temeraire must be taken into account. - The Truth has the Newspaper OT3 of William/Sacharissa/Otto. - The Twilight Saga: - Obviously enough, Edward/Jacob/Bella. Even in the first book, there's Ho Yay between Edward and Jacob. Then Breaking Dawn gave us Edward telling Bella she could have as many kids as she wanted with Jacob. - The relatively popular Alice/Bella/Edward, Alice/Edward/Jasper and Edward/Bella/Carlisle. - Its weird that there isn't more Edward/Bella/Rosalie, given that Carlisle and Esme initially hoped to set Edward up with her, and the way Rosalie and Bella get quite close in Breaking Dawn. - From the wolves the most popular ones are Jacob/Embry/Quil and Jacob/Seth/Leah. - Warrior Cats: - The Love Dodecahedron practically asks for this. Firestar + Sandstorm + Spottedleaf neatly solves all the drama caused by Firestar's love for both she-cats. Although Spottedleaf being Sandstorm's aunt might squick some shippers. - Crowfeather + Feathertail + Leafpool is nearly the exact same situation as above, with Crowfeather having first loved one she-cat, then another after the first died. - Squirrelflight + Ashfur + Brambleclaw could make Squirrelflight not have to choose between the two toms. - Squirrelflight/Brambleclaw/Stormfur works quite well, as both toms were interested in her in the second series, and were also close with each other during their journey. Stormfur even joined ThunderClan for a while. - Graystripe + Silverstream + Millie has its problems (the two she-cats never met) but both love Graystripe a lot and what with all three of them inevitably sharing StarClan together, it's less crazy than it sounds. - Hollyleaf + Ivypool + Blossomfall became reasonably popular on sites like Tumblr. - Water for Elephants: August/Marlena/Jacob definitely has some appeal. This will really take off once the movie comes out, since it stars Robert Pattinson, Christoph Waltz and Reese Witherspoon. Curiously similar to Sophie's Choice, since both \|\|older males have volatile tempers due to mental health problems, both younger men are sort of 'adopted' into an established marriage and both younger men end up sleeping with the woman.\|\| - Wings of Fire: Moonwatcher/Qibli/Winter is a fairly popular solution to their Love Triangle in the second story arc. - On Archive of Our Own, The Shield (Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns) is the OT3 for both WWE and professional wrestling in general. Combinations of any of the two is the One True Pairing. - The Undisputed Era was originally a trio - Adam Cole, Kyle O'Reilly, and Bobby Fish - and were very, very close, constantly hanging all over each other. It became a true Power Stable and foursome with the addition of Roderick Strong. Cole himself dubbed he, Bobby, and Kyle "the OT3" in a promo once, and while he is One of Us, he likely meant that in a platonic manner. Maybe. - The Bible: - David/Jonathan/Michal. - Some churches will outright state that God is a third party in any sanctified marriage, although it is not intended to imply anything sexual. - Classical Mythology: Achilles/Patroclus/Briseis, Hercules/Iolaus/Alcmene, Zeus/Hera/Ganymede, and Persephone/Adonis/Aphrodite. Hades (Persephone's husband) can also be thrown into that last one. - The Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh/Enkidu/Shamhat. - Maybe Loki/Sigyn/Angrboða from Norse Mythology relationship is this. - The basic idea behind the "Two Ladies" number in Cabaret. - The ending of A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder seems to at least imply this, as the Love Triangle between Monty, Phoebe, and Sibella never really gets resolved. - The Phantom of the Opera: - While Christine is almost unanimously shipped with the Phantom, some ask why she couldn't have chosen both her Victorious Childhood Friend and her Stalker with a Crush. (Hell, the Phantom probably would've taken anything he could get...) - Additionally, Phantom/Christine/Meg in the fanfic/fandom zone. Two girls? Joys of the flesh indeed. I don't hear the Phantom protesting too hard... - In Wicked, a great deal of the tragedy that unfolded could have been avoided if Elphaba/Fiyero/G(a)linda had become a threesome. Considering Fiyero was with both Elphaba and Glinda at different points in the story, and Elphaba and Glinda's strong bond with each other is by far the most important relationship in the play, it's not too hard to scrounge up enough evidence to make a case for it. - Sometimes in opera, the usual "tenor and baritone fight over the girl" plot can be spiced up with a bit of Ho Yay, making this this ideal outcome (if only everyone survived). The Metropolitan's 2016 productions of Les Pecheurs de Perles and Roberto Devereaux stand out as examples—and, coincidentally, they featured the same tenor and baritone. - Ace Attorney: - Danganronpa: - The "Trial Point Getters" from the first two games seem to be this. The first game has Makoto/Kyoko/Byakuya while the second game has Hajime/Chiaki/Nagito. - Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: - Chihiro/Ishimaru/Mondo, charmingly called Chishimondo. There is also a canon example in the case of \|\|Naegi/Aoi/Hagakure/possibly Togami\|\|, in the bad ending at least, but it's rare to see that in fandom. - Makoto/Kyoko/Hina is occasionally seen as well, especially after Danganronpa 3 did some Ship Tease both ways. - Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair has a love triangle between Sonia Nevermind, Kazuichi Souda, and Gundham Tanaka. So, of course, some fans like to ship all three together. - Keeping up the theme of The Protagonist, The Love Interest, and The Rival, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony gives us Kaede/Shuichi/Kokichi. V3 also adds a new one in the form of Shuichi being paired with Kaito and Maki, affectionately called the "Training Trio". - Strongly implied canon for one of the endings of Date Warp with Janet/Linds/Rafael. - Higurashi: When They Cry: - Mion/Keiichi/Rena is without a doubt the most popular. They're close friends and it helps fix their love triangle. Keiichi canonically likes either one depending on the arc as well, so it makes sense he could love both at once. Mion and Rena get along well as well, so it's easy to ship them together. - Shion/Mion/Keiichi usually happens when people enjoy the twincest subtext between Mion and Shion but also ship Keiichi/Mion. Shion/Keiichi/Mion is also popular because Keiichi is very similar to Shion's canon love interest, Satoshi \|\|who is in a coma throughout the franchise and presumed dead\|\|. - Rika and Satoko have a close Homoerotic Subtext filled relationship while Hanyuu probably knows Rika better than anyone else. Obviously Satoko/Rika/Hanyuu is a thing. - Katawa Shoujo: - Lilly/Hisao/Hanako, or, in some fictions, Lilly/Hanako/Hisao or Hanako/Lilly/Hisao, is the most popular OT3. Lilly and Hanako are noted to be extremely close, both appearing frequently in the other one's route, and it's even reflected in how you get onto their routes — most walkthroughs lump the two together, as the paths to the two routes are identical up until the final choice before the route lock. - Hisao/Shizune/Misha have their shippers, coming in second. \|\|It helps that it's a canon love triangle as Misha is in love with Shizune.\|\| - Emi/Hisao/Rin, while rarely seen in fanfiction, is pretty popular in art pieces, due to people enjoying their interactions. - Fanfiction "pseudo-routes" about pairing Hisao with background students Miki or Suzu originated a somewhat popular shipping for Miki/Hisao/Suzu, or even Hisao/Miki/Suzu or Hisao/Suzu/Miki and its own set of fics. - Nasuverse: - Tsukihime: Shiki/Arcueid/Ciel and Shiki/Hisui/Kohaku are the most common. Both somehow supported even canonically. First in Ciel Good End where Arcueid and Ciel effectively and begrudgingly "share" Shiki. There is much teased at, but unconfirmed attraction between the two of them. Second is the main theme of Kagetsu Tohya's sidestory Flower of Thanatos in which Shiki together with humble servants Hisui and Kohaku lives in the isolated Tohno Mansion, where Shiki practically can do with both maids whatever he wants, and Kohaku is very enthusiastic when they both serve him at the same time \|\|(including sexual desires, or periodic rapes) although it's not so simple as it seems and Shiki begins to have regrets\|\|. - With Melty Blood there is also Shiki/Akiha/Sion, notable as Sion is probably the only girl interested in Shiki Akiha gets along with. Or Satsuki/Sion/Riesbyfe as the Back Alley Alliance. - Fate/stay night: There are Shirou/Saber/Rin and Shirou/Sakura/Rider or Shirou/Sakura/Rin. Both are expanded at various levels in Fate/hollow ataraxia and many other associated works or materials, and are very popular in fandom. - Shirou/Saber/Rin is based on the Unlimited Blade Works route where \|\|in the Good End of this route\|\|, some fans believe that this is what was going on behind the scenes (doesn't hurt that Rin discovered that she is bisexual in the original Fate route while sleeping with Shirou and Saber). - Shirou/Sakura/Rider is based on the Heaven's Feel route, where Shirou \|\|is mind-raped by Rider disguised as Rin in the original game. Rider also stays with Sakura in the endings, and leaves it ambiguous whether she needs to replenish her mana without Sakura's knowledge, while it's openly stated that Shirou depends on Sakura to live his life.\|\| It's most evident in Fate/hollow ataraxia Eclipse story's The backside of Kibisis, \|\|in which they have a hot threesome scene, and although this turns out to be actually just Rider's illusion, it's clear how things are\|\|. - Shirou/Sakura/Rin is based on \|\|Shirou being with Sakura in the True End of Heaven's Feel, while Rin still has feelings for Shirou, even after she leaves for London alone. Interestingly while not confirmed, there are even hints of this occurring in the Normal End of Fate.\|\| - The protagonists of Zero Time Dilemma are conveniently divided into trios during the Decision Game, but one of these groups includes a kid and another turns out to be \|\|a woman and her parents\|\|, so Team C (Carlos/Akane/Junpei) naturally became the most popular threesome pairing. It's fueled by the fact that, in-universe, Carlos is really determined to get Akane and Junpei together, despite only knowing them for a few days, and often asks questions about their relationship. - City of Reality is a literal, and Deconstructed utopia, to the point where, when a person catches their spouse cheating, the natural and normal reaction is to join in. - Collar 6 gives us the canon couple of Sixx/Laura/Ginger. Made possible as all the girls were already into polyamory beforehand. - Dumbing of Age fans wasted no time in shipping Amber/Danny/Ethan once Danny was confirmed to be bisexual and attracted to them both. - There appears to be a number of El Goonish Shive fans that ship Sarah with one of the Official Couples of the comic, Tedd/Grace. She has received some Ship Tease with both of them, but she is \|\|or rather, was\|\| part of another Official Couple. \|\|However, given certain developments in the comic, she is now free to fulfill the wishes of the fans.\|\| - Given some additional traction by this (probably) non-canon "Sketchbook" page. And further Ship Tease when a Q&A claimed to be "out of space" to discuss it and a "Wrong Answers Only" Q&A wasn't prepared to give a solid "yes" in case it wasn't a wrong answer. And the NP story "Blanket" appears to be an extended riff on there being Only One Couch. - Girl Genius fandom has strong (although not exclusive) support for Agatha×Gil×Tarvek. While Gil's the more traditional Designated Love Interest and proposed to Agatha even before he knew her background, as Violetta points out, Tarvek is equally devoted to Agatha and would be a much less politically troublesome match. The Cinderella parody done in one of the interludes ending with Agatha-as-Cinderella marrying both Gil and Tarvek indicates that the writers think it's a perfectly reasonable resolution to the romantic plotlines. In-universe, it's been acknowledged as a possible outcome by several characters. The in-universe betting pool has Gil at 2-1, Tarvek 3-1, and Both at 5-1, showing just how likely some find it. - Gunnerkrigg Court: - Jack/Zimmy/Gamma has popped up among certain fans after a revelation or two in the comic. Mostly for laughs, but a few not so much. - When Jack is introduced with a girlfriend, Jenny, who refers to Annie with "my love," Jack/Jenny/Annie cropped up in response. note : She's from The West Country, and that's just how people talk there, but still... - Homestuck It's pretty common to see some love triangles resolved this way, creating pairings like Dave/Terezi/Karkat or Eridan/Feferi/Sollux. More unusually, because trolls in Homestuck canonically have four different kinds of romance and usually desire to fulfill all of them, it's common for OT3s to involve multiple different relationship types. (It doesn't help that one of said relationship types inherently requires a threesome.) Using the earlier example, it's not unusual to see people shipping Eridan, Feferi, and Sollux all in red relationship (that is, a normal human romantic one), but it's arguably even more common for people to ship Eridan and Sollux both in a red relationship with Feferi but in a black relationship with each other. Needless to say, fics with lots of different pairings and multiple quadrants for each character can get very... complicated. - John's Dad/Rose's Mom/Dave's Bro was at least popular in the fandom's early days (it didn't hurt that Mom/Dad was an Official Couple and Mom and Bro were Dave and Rose's biological parents). Things became complicated after \|\|the Scratch, wherein alternate versions of Mom (Roxy) and Bro (Dirk) swapped roles with Rose and Dave while Dad stayed the same\|\|. - The Law of Purple's Lette/Blue/Synn is pretty much canon. - Magick Chicks: When Faith tells Tiffany that she loves her, Tiffany counters by bringing up Faith's habit of sleeping around. So Faith said she'd agree to stop seeing other girls, if Tiffany asked her to. Tiffany considers it for a moment, then asks about Faith's boyfriend, Ash, which is where Faith drew the line and proposed they form a threesome instead. - Ménage à 3: According to some fans, Gary/Yuki/Zii (because Yuki is crazy-jealous respecting both Gary and Zii, and both Zii and Gary have expressed interest in each other at certain points, it seems like the relationship might actually be stable). - Questionable Content: - Siren's Lament: Lyra/Shon may be the official couple with Ian as the unlucky suitor for Lyra but the ship of Ian/Lyra/Shon set sail quite early on due to Ian proposing it. Ian trying to join in on a hug between the two before they started dating helped kick things off, and was reinforced by Shon carrying Ian bridal style when Ian nearly passed out and Ian's habit of flirting with Shon to annoy him, and Shon on at least two occasions responding in kind. - SomethingPositive: Davan/Vanessa/PeeJee, anyone? Vanessa has even stated that she would not be averse to such a set up... the author, on the other hand, is. Davan and Peejee will never be a canon item. - Camp Camp has a few possible triads, some popular and others not. They include - Max/Neil/Nikki - Max/Preston/Space Kid - Nerris/Harrison/Preston - Nerris/Ered/Nikki - Harrison/Preston/Max - Harrison/Neil/Max - Snake/Neil/Max - Tabbi/Erin/Sasha - Gwen/David/\|\| Jasper\|\|, albeit only possible in AUs. - Crossovers with Xray And Vav* can feature Gwen/David/Mogar and Hilda/Gwen/David/Mogar. - Helluva Boss: - While Moxxie and Millie are already an Official Couple that fans adore seeing express their love, there are a decent number of fans that like adding Blitzo to the mix, as not only does Blitzo express both familial and sexual interest in the duo (he outright shows in "Loo Loo Land" that he wants to have a three-way with them), the trio often act like a group of dysfunctional but caring parents towards Loona, who Blitzo is already the adoptive father of. - Some Blitzo/Stolas shippers threw Verosika into the mix after "Spring Broken", noting that she and Blitzo may not be completely over each other and that Verosika, being a succubus, may not care about Blitzo sleeping with other people. Meanwhile, even though Stolas and Verosika have yet to interact onscreen at the time of this writing, the subtle but unmistakable parallels between them have led a lot of these shippers to assume they'd get along like a house on fire. Not to mention the logic and appeal inherent in shipping two of the biggest perverts on the show with a succubus... - Not long after their debut, plenty of fans who like C.H.E.R.U.B took to shipping all members of the trio together, since whenever they show their true colors, their conflicting interactions provide prime Belligerent Sexual Tension bait. There are a few that go the Fan-Preferred Couple route with Keenie and Collin since her frequent aggression towards him makes for a good Tsundere dynamic, along with them both being sheep-angels, but Cletus acts as a good mediator for the two, along with how the show effectively dares the fanbase to ship them by having Blitzo call him a sheep-fucker. - Mystery Skulls Animated: Arthur is jealous of Lewis and Vivi's relationship, but the series is ambigous as to how; the fandom solves this by shipping the three together, though whether it's a complete or partial triangle depends on the writer. - Off the Page and into Life: - Henry loves Gail, Gail loves Henry, Terrence loves Henry, Terrence and Henry have a lot of Ho Yay, and Terrence and Gail sometimes veer into Foe Romance Subtext. Naturally, many people (both In-Universe and out) have pointed out that a threesome would solve a lot of problems. Gail, Terrence and Henry did not agree. (Ironically, all three muns for those characters have said they liked the idea.) - Gail's entangled in another OT3 with her best friend Meg and her boyfriend Morpheus. And with Jackson and Tim. And Sam and Henry. Gail gets shipped with everyone. - To a lesser extent, Frederick with his ex-girlfriend Gloria and Gloria's new girlfriend Emily. - ProZD's suggests this trope should happen when it comes to anime love triangles. Currently the page quote. - In the Red vs. Blue fandom, portraying Agents North Dakota, New York, and Washington as lovers is fairly popular. Being three of the nicest characters in a series full of clueless, bitter jerkasses probably has something to do with it. note : Of course, \|\|North and York being dead\|\| means that these tend to be either fix fics, occur \|\|before Project Freelancer fell apart\|\|, or take place in an alternate universe. - RWBY: - Blake had ship tease in the show with both Sun and Yang across the first five volumes. One solution to the fandom shipping wars between Blake/Sun (Black Sun) and Blake/Yang (Bumblebee) was to create the fairly popular ship Sunny Bees, consisting of all three characters together. - Once Volume 5 confirmed that Ilia used to be in love with Blake, threesome ships of Ilia/Blake/Sun and Ilia/Blake/Yang exist. However, the big solution, given the already existing Sunny Bees threesome, was to simply add Ilia into the mix and make it a One True Foursome. - Taiyang has two daughters by two different mothers who are two years apart in age. Both of their mothers were in Taiyang's team in school. Instead of arguing about whether Taiyang/Raven or Taiyang/Summer is the better ship, fans went for the threesome. This generated the meme "Entire Team, Qrow" due to there being no hint that Qrow was ever a likely love interest for Taiyang; the joke is that, as the only member left out of the ship, Taiyang must be determined to land Qrow and score the entire team. - Ruby Rose is most commonly shipped with Weiss Schnee, her Defrosting Ice Queen partner, and Penny Polendina, a Robot Girl to whom she is the first friend. After a moment in the Volume 7 finale where both Ruby and Weiss cuddle up to Penny at the same time to comfort her, Ruby/Penny/Weiss has become a common ship. - That Guy with the Glasses: - In Welcome to Night Vale there was clearly some sort of romance between Childhood Friends Cecil and Scoutmaster Earl, even if it was only one-sided. Earl apparently died in the episode he was introduced, but it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for him to come back and for their relationship to blossom. Except, Cecil's now in a committed and frankly adorable relationship with Carlos the scientist. This was the only logical conclusion for many. - Whateley Universe fandom has the triangles of Thunderbird/Chaka/Riptide and Stalwart/Fey/Bugs and Molly/Chou/Dorjee resolved this way (the latter was resolved by canon Polyamory). - Xray And Vav has Ash/Xray/Vav. "And so anime was solved forever!"	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OTThree
Otherworld - TV Tropes A link to something about "Otherworld" sent you to this page. The context of the link should help you figure out which page you want.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Otherworld
Other Common Music Video Concepts - TV Tropes Many Music Video Tropes are recycled and repeated, some more than others. This is a list of some less common but still recyclable concepts, motifs, visual flourishes, sight gags and camera tricks. Showing what goes on behind the scenes at a concert or similar live performance. Particularly popular among hard rock acts. - Def Leppard, "Pour Some Sugar On Me" - Bon Jovi, "Livin' On A Prayer" - Phil Collins and Philip Bailey, "Easy Lover": shows the two preparing for an appearance on an Ed Sullivan-type television show. - Foo Fighters, "Big Me", from Foo Fighters (Album), overlapping with Mundania as a parody of 90s Mentos commercials. - Danger Mouse, "The Grey Video": a video for the song Encore off of Danger Mouse's Grey Album. - Morningwood, "Best of Me" - Disturbed, "Down with the Sickness", at least partially. - J. Cole featuring Drake, "In the Morning", also partially a Performance Video. - The Veronicas, "Revolution" - Amanda Palmer, "Do It With A Rockstar" features several non-fans reluctantly attending a Grand Theft Orchestra concert, and ending up in bed with the band. - Dream Theater, "Wither" - D12's "My Band" follows the band as they squabble backstage, while their pompous breakout member Slim Shady lives it up with Glam Rap clichés. All or portions of the video are done in reverse . Usually, although not always, makes use of how strange setting things on fire, getting really dirty, or smashing your guitar look when played backwards. Sometimes the singer will lip synch backwards , still others try to mime playing their instruments backwards as well, which looks totally wrong more often than not. - Mute Math, "Typical" - Jack Johnson, "Sitting, Waiting, Wishing" - The Matches, "Chain Me Free" - Remy Zero, "Save Me" (yes, the Smallville theme song) - Coldplay, "The Scientist" - The ending of "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Amish Paradise" - The black & white version of Sheryl Crow's "A Change Would Do You Good" has a short one in the middle. - Nine Inch Nails, "Deep" - Theory of a Deadman, "Not Meant To Be" - Alt-J, "Breezeblocks" - Enigma, "Return to Innocence". It starts with an old man peacefully dying, with that being the only scene shown forwards - the backwards footage is supposed to be moments of the man's life, shown in reverse chronological order. - Linkin Park - "Bleed It Out" - "Breaking the Habit" - Embrace, "Ashes" - Elio e le Storie Tese, "Mio cuggino". They even acknowledge this in the beginning of the video, by saying it was filmed in "IndietroScope" ( indietro means "backwards" in Italian). It is also lip-synched backwards. - Epik High, "One Minute, One Second". - God Lives Underwater, "From Your Mouth": The entire video consists of reversed footage of one man eating vast quantities of food (and thus appearing to remove the food "from his mouth"). It's also The Oner - the man in question is hot dog eating champion Hirofumi Nakajima and he really did eat that much in four minutes. - The Pharcyde, "Drop". The group performs the entire song backwards, and shows what getting 100 gallons of water dumped on you looks like in reverse. - Lisa Hannigan does much the same thing as Pharcyde for her song "Undertow" (i.e. lip-synching backwards while getting water dumped on her in reverse). - David Cook, "Come Back To Me" - Cibo Matto's "Sugar Water" runs backwards AND forwards on opposite sides of the screen and briefly joins up in the middle. One side is flipped so it takes a while to work out what's happening. - Hammerfall, Any Means Neccesary is a clever variant. - Self, Could You Love Me Now: A pretty typical take on the concept, with Matt Mahaffey walking and lip synching backwards while doing things like pulling petals off a flower. One notable trick is that the video starts out with Matt wearing soaking wet clothes - halfway through, extras in football uniforms pour a cooler full of water on him in reverse, so after that point he's dry for the rest of the video. - The David Bowie videos "Let's Dance" and "China Girl" both have brief but significant segments involving this. - Def Leppard, "Two Steps Behind" - Nelson, "(Can't Live Without Your) Love and Affection" - Peter Bjorn and John, "Second Chance" - Keith Urban, "Days Go By" (bridge only) - Grouplove, "Tongue Tied" - They Might Be Giants held a fan video contest for their song "Can't Keep Johnny Down", with John Hodgman as the judge. The winner followed this trope. - Italian parody/satirical rapping act MC Cavallo's "Me li presti 2 kili di culo" is yet another example. It's also The Oner. - Lindsey Stirling "Mirage", a really surreal one in general, features backwards-shot scenes of ladies dancing with silk scarves. In clouds of flour. Like we said, surreal. - Pixie Lott, "Can't Make This Over" - The Happy Fits did this with the video for Go Dumb. - Peterpan's "Ada Apa Denganmu" is about wondering what makes the singer's lover angry, so its music video goes backwards from Peterpan's vocalist Ariel trying to calm down his girlfriend to the arguing that started the whole thing. The artist is inserted into a facsimile of mundane life, usually domestic. Hilarity Ensues . A common form of Lyrics/Video Mismatch , and usually an homage . - Def Leppard, "Me And My Wine" - Queen, "I Want To Break Free" (specifically an homage to Coronation Street) - Cyndi Lauper, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" - David Bowie - Both videos from 1999's hours... use this. In "Thursday's Child", he and his current lover are getting ready for bed when in the bathroom mirror he sees a reflection of his younger self and an old lover. In "Survive", he broods alone in a cluttered kitchen, presumably over the breakup described in the song — and then gravity goes askew. - In "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" ( The Next Day), Bowie and Tilda Swinton play a happy oldish married couple whose lives are jumbled when a troubled young celebrity couple moves in next door. In Stepford Suburbia , a Standard '50s Father tells his son off for listening to "that rock 'n' roll music" instead of doing his math homework. At this point, a group of leather-clad rockers with '80s Hair appear, spike the tea with booze, replace the bookshelf with a video game console, and start making out with the hot older sister. A safe way of appealing dangerous, it's probably the stereotypical Glam Metal video, to the extent that this was tongue-in-cheek to begin with, and most uses of it since have been outright parodic. Filmed in a dance studio, ball room, etc., with an appropriate corps of dancers snapping to the beat. - Fittingly: Wang Chung, "Dance Hall Days" - Paula Abdul, "Cold Hearted" - Peter Cetera/Amy Grant, "Next Time I Fall" - Kate Bush, "Rubberband Girl" - David Bowie, "Never Let Me Down" - OneRepublic, "All The Right Moves" - Def Leppard (again), "Hysteria" — although it's in a train station, people are dancing cheek-to-cheek - Nicola Roberts, "Beat of My Drum" - Beyoncé, "Love on Top" - Beyoncé, "Countdown" - Versailles, "MASQUERADE", for what should be obvious reasons. - Sophie Ellis-Bextor, "Murder On The Dancefloor" - Lenny Kravitz, "Fly Away" - Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings put a twist on it for "Stranger to My Happiness". The band is playing in a ballroom all right, but the crowd has already left — it appears to have been a wedding reception, and there are hints (an abandoned shoe, a half-eaten piece of cake, unfinished glasses of champagne) that it ended in some sort of disaster, which fits the lyrics of the song. The Music Video equivalent to Crowd Song features crowds of random people "spontaneously" stepping into a full dance routine with the artist (usually a solo female R&B singer) in such unlikely locations as an inner city street, a high school hallway, a car park, or even the middle of a gang war. Sometimes uses a Carnivale-style free-for-all approach; but more often than not, full and complex choreography is employed. Remember Dancing Is Serious Business . - Many, many videos by Janet Jackson. - Her brother Michael tweaked it a bit; his version featured dancing zombies. Not to mention that one with the gang war. - The end of Donna Summer's "She Works Hard For The Money" features this as a Dream Sequence. - Ironically, David Bowie and Mick Jagger's video for "Dancing In The Street" featured only the two of them. - Billy Joel's "A Matter Of Trust" uses the Carnivale approach. - Parodied in Marianas Trench's "Shaketramp", where the first half is the typical form of this in old musical style, but after getting hit in the head the lead singer is transported to a modern times version of the same street where the locals aren't as willing to join in. - Björk's "It's Oh So Quiet". - "Dr Love" by Bumblebeez, where the dancers are largely shirtless older men with elaborate magic marker tattoos. Reportedly the band recruited homeless people, who got money and a free meal for their efforts. - Lionel Richie's "All Night Long." Okay, the "street" was a stage set, but still. - Pat Benatar's "Love Is A Battlefield". What a great way to fight off a pimp! - Subverted in "Lucky Day" by Nicola Roberts. For most of the video, Nicola is prancing around New York with no real choreography to it, and then for a few inexplicable moments, two dancers pop out of nowhere and begin dancing with her. And then they leave again. - Feist's "Mushaboom" starts with Leslie Feist waking up in her apartment and singing along to the song itself playing on the radio as she prepares for her day (which may or may not raise the Celebrity Paradox question). Then her toast pops out of the toaster and flies out of the window, she flies out after it, and a parade of people start dancing along behind her as she sings and plays guitar. - Rod Stewart's "Young Turks". - LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem" combines this with a Zombie Apocalypse. - Most of Pharrell Williams' 24 hour music video for "Happy" involves dancing outside. note : The rest involves dancing inside. - Les Rhythmes Digitales' "Hey You (What's That Sound?)": Stuart Price walks down the street playing the song on a keytar. As he uses his keytar to zap people he encounters, their style of dress becomes more "eighties" and they start dancing while following him. For instance, a trio of young men dressed in a gangsta rap style are turned into "b-boys", who spend the rest of the video break-dancing behind him. This video shows the band using a "classic" rehearsal space such as a garage, warehouse, maybe even a spare bedroom. Real big with young or just-starting-out hard rock bands, or with older bands looking to reconnect to such times. - Metallica's "One", between clips from the movie Johnny Got His Gun, showed the band in a warehouse. An alternate version removed the film clips. - Trixter, "Give It To Me Good" - The Offspring, "Can't Repeat" - Orange, "No Rest For The Weekend" - Bowling for Soup's "1985" video is this with references to famous video tropes and bands. - Billy Talent, "River Below" - The Smithereens, "Blood & Roses" - No Doubt's "Don't Speak" alternates between this, the Performance Video and photo-session scenes. - Weezer, "Say It Ain't So" - My Chemical Romance did this in "I'm Not Okay" in between clips of high school shenanigans. - D, "Day by Day", also notable for being the band's only video where the members aren't in costume. Footage of the artist actually recording the song in a studio. Can be actual documentary-style footage, a re-enactment or a completely fictitious turn. - Aerosmith, "What It Takes" - The Alan Parsons Project's video for "Games People Play". - Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons "Who Loves You". - The Who for "Who Are You". - Def Leppard used a fantasy-like, stylized interpretation of this for "Love Bites". - After years of decrying trite video concepts, and after exactly three original videos of their own, Metallica quickly fell into this cliche with "Nothing Else Matters". - Kylie Minogue's video for "Locomotion" included a brief scene In The Studio. The video for "100 Degrees", a Christmas duet with her sister Dannii, is set entirely in the recording studio with the duo wearing Christmas-themed t-shirts. - Bon Jovi's "Born To Be My Baby", accentuated by manipulating the soundtrack to actually sound like a mixer changing and testing the various instruments' levels. - Audioslave's "Like a Stone" and "Revelations" - Nickelback's "If Everyone Cared" - Billy Joel's videos from the album 52nd Street ("Honesty", "My Life" and "Big Shot") are done like this. - Los Campesinos!'s "Death to Los Campesinos"— though with the absolutely awesome twist of the band being attacked by kittens, unicorns, rainbows and confetti during the recording session. Yes, I'm serious. - Rush's studio videos for "Limelight", "Vital Signs" and "Tom Sawyer". - Julian Lennon's "Valotte" and "Too Late for Goodbyes." Not only were they essentially the same video with minor variations, they were released one after the other, and they were both directed by Sam Peckinpah (his final works, as it turned out). - Blind Guardian's "Mirror Mirror" does this, combined with clips of the band members playing video games, getting into snowball fights, etc. - An early example: the promo film for "Lady Madonna" shows The Beatles in the studio, but we don't actually see them performing the song. That's because it was filmed while they were recording "Hey Bulldog." Several decades later Apple used the same footage and put together a video for "Hey Bulldog." - New Order, "The Perfect Kiss." Interesting because the band prefers their videos to be extremely strange and surreal. - Arctic Monkeys, "Teddy Picker" - Parodied in a scene in Ben Folds Five's "Rockin' The Suburbs", in which director "Weird Al" Yankovic adjusts the settings in post-production so that the song doesn't suck. (Literally. There's two sets of faders labeled "Suck" and "Rock".) - A Perfect Circle, "Judith" - Queen's "One Vision" - Hall & Oates, "Go Solo" - The Hold Steady's "Stuck Between Stations", though it seems to be set in a home recording studio. With bookends showing that apparently they've been re-recording the song over and over again for every cassette copy of it ("I don't understand why we can't just get these dubbed!"). - USA (United Support of Artists) for Africa in "We Are the World", showing the soloists assembling around microphones, and then on the chorus, together with the choir of other big names, all in the studio. Written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, it included such names as Diana Ross, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Dionne Warwick, Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon. The choir itself also featured the other Jacksons, the Pointer Sisters, and even Dan Aykroyd. - In the same vein, Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas." - And later Band Aid 20's version. - Eurythmics's "Sex Crime (1984)" - The videos for The Police's "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" and "Spirits Of The Material World" feature this. "Magic" does cut between "studio" shots and random shots of the band cavorting around Martinique, but everyone who's seen the video chuckles at the sequence in the studio with Andy Sumner mugging for the camera while Sting sings "Must I alllll-waaaaaaays beeeeee aaaaaaaa-LOOOOOOOOOONE...." - Eddie Murphy's "Party All The Time" - The basic plot of Matthew Sweet's "We're the Same" - Florence + the Machine's "What The Water Gave Me." - ABBA's "Gimme Gimme Gimme". - Shaggy in the video for "Gebt das Hanf frei!", the song he recorded with Stefan Raab. Justified as he had spontaneously agreed to contribute to the song and presumably didn't have much time. - How to Destroy Angels' "Keep It Together". - Ben Folds Fives's "Do It Anyway", in which the recording is disrupted by the characters of Fraggle Rock. Another one popular with the Hard Rock crowd, this setting seems dependent on the theme of disorganization or destruction (yes, even the construction sites). Often with random fires scattered about, usually at night. - Tesla, "No Way Out" - Britny Fox, "Long Way To Love" - The UK-only video for Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" featured a house being demolished — with the band inside. - Green Day, "Brainstew". - Testament, "Trial by Fire" - "Teutonic Terror" by Accept - Slipknot's "Psychosocial" - Versailles, "Philia" - Huey Lewis & The News, "Perfect World" - Joe Walsh, "Life Of Illusion" - Corrosion of Conformity, "Albatross" - Ciara, "Work" - The Australian video clip for Icehouse's "Crazy" shows lead singer Iva Davies (in a fantastic red raincoat and 80s mullet) walking around a disused power station in Sydney while all around him are stunt motorcyclists, explosions, martial artists, mysterious women, and a car crashing into a wall. Even more impressive was that the video was filmed in a single take. - Pentagon's 'Naughty Boy'. - Journey's "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)". Though, the unbearable nature of making this video, coupled with its poor reception, prompted the band to refuse to make any videos for their next album. Yet another popular one for hard rockers in the late 1980s was to film on top of a skyscraper overlooking a cityscape. And yes, it's usually night. - Guns N' Roses, "Don't Cry" - Great White, "The Angel Song" - Hilary Duff "Why Not?" - X Japan, "Jade" LIVE PV, is an example from The New '10s. There is a movie PV for the same song, but only small segments of it were released - most YouTube uploads of "Jade PV" are either the Hollywood and Highland center shoot (this trope) or that interspersed with the released movie segments. - Jonas Brothers, "L.A. Baby" - Most of the 2nd video for Hall & Oates' "Say It Isn't So", filmed in New York. - Hurricane, "Over The Edge" - D.T.R. provided an example of how NOT to do this early in The '90s, around 1994, in their PV for "Cybernetic Crime," as the video was so poorly shot (including excessive camera spin, little member focus, etc.) that it is arguably one of the worst Japanese rock videos ever made. - U2, "Where The Streets Have No Name" - Which they infamously filmed without permits. The LAPD were not amused. - Limp Bizkit, "Rollin'", though it was actually from atop one of the twin towers. Disturbingly, the band was sent a thank-you letter from the tower on September 10, 2001. - Toto, I'll Be Over You. Subverted at the end, \|\|when it starts raining\|\|. - Parodied in Simple Plan's "Perfect," which takes place on a rooftop...of a suburban home. - Icehouse's "Electric Blue" did one of these on a high-rise in Sydney. The video starts off during the daytime, but the sun sets during the saxophone break, and when we cut back to the band it's fully dark. - Oasis's "Supersonic". - Metric, "The Shade." - Puddle of Mudd, "Drift & Die." Notably, the setting does take place atop an actual skyscraper in Los Angeles, specifically the city's tallest building, the Library Tower (now the U.S. Bank Tower). Similar to In The Studio, this one is behind the scenes of the video itself. Most videos will tastefully limit this to a few scenes. - Genesis, "I Can't Dance" - Debbie Gibson, "Electric Youth" - Paula Abdul's "Forever Your Girl" - The Flaming Lips, "Sponge Bob & Patrick Confront The Psychic Wall Of Energy" - Parodied in Michael Jackson's "Liberian Girl": we are on the set of a video, but instead of Jackson in action a bunch of famous visiting folks (even Weird Al!) are trying to figure out where Michael actually is as the song plays. Turns out he's the one filming them. - Also parodied in Phil Collins's "Don't Lose My Number", where various possible concepts (and subsequent behind the scenes) for the song video clip are shown; some of them are parodies of well-known music videos and films. - Phil Collins had another one of these with Philip Bailey, "Easy Lover". - Another parody is Christine McVie's "Love Will Show Us How", where the director's hackneyed ideas go seriously awry. - Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie" is supposedly filmed during a break from the filming of a different music video. - Parodied in Wall of Voodoo's surreal video for "Mexican Radio". A brief long shot of the soundstage, just over two-thirds of the way through, shows the band continuing to play as the dissatisfied director calls 'cut' and orders the crew to break for lunch. - Cobra Starship's video for "Guilty Pleasure." - Aqua's Bumble Bees is another parody. The director with a thick French accent proposes three concepts: an Animated Music Video with Aqua as CG bugs (obviously inspired by A Bug's Life), a weird Hot for Teacher clip (with the faces of Aqua's male members creepily superimposed on kids' bodies), and Aqua in silly and extremely cheap bug costumes. - Parodied in Alan Jackson's "That'd Be Alright", where a crew decides to accept Alan's sarcastic suggestion to film a music video without him. Eventually, this leads to them trying to find look-a-likes, Syncro-Voxing previous Alan Jackson videos, and even secretly filming his personal life! A hard rock take on Dancing in the Street, this is a simple and intuitive Walking in Rhythm choreography wherein the band members stalk across the stage together, in time to the beat and in step with one another. - Van Halen, "Best Of Both Worlds" - Hurricane, "I'm Onto You" - The chorus of Genesis' "I Can't Dance". - Non-Music Video example: in The Breakfast Club, Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall and Emilio Estevez do this during the "rock out in the library" scene. - OK Go's "This Too Shall Pass" has a marching band music video, with a literal marching band. Even the music is replaced with marching band instruments. The artist (usually a solo singer) filmed against a featureless, all-white or all-black backdrop. If black, expect a spotlight to travel back and forth across the singer, illuminating her for a second and then plunging her back into darkness. Bonus points if the video is itself Deliberately Monochrome . - Paula Abdul uses both versions for "Straight Up". - Many of Jody Watley's videos. - Zig-zagged with Asia's video for "Only Time Will Tell". It featured gymnasts doing backflips and other acrobatics against a white backdrop, while the band appears only on TV sets. - An unreleased version of Queensrÿche's "Another Rainy Night (Without You)". - The Police's "Every Breath You Take", spiced up with multiple layers of photography. - Their video for "Roxanne" is arguably a variant — it's an all-RED backdrop. - Kiss in the video for "I Just Wanna". - James Blunt's "You're Beautiful", to some degree: the all-white backdrop is actually a cloudy sky, and James is sitting along a tall boardwalk with white floor. - Talking Heads, "Once In A Lifetime" (a Green Screen cornucopia) - Also, the Picture In Picture in "Road To Nowhere" - One version of the video for REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling" combines this with the "In The Studio" variant. - Two of the videos My Bloody Valentine made in support of Loveless use this trope note : by the way, the third one, for "Only Shallow", is just a Performance Video run through cheap processing, but without the featureless backdrop: - "To Here Knows When" is largely random blurry and heavily psychedelicized footage (including a person dancing, mirrored on both sides of the screen, lots of pink filters, and close-up shots of Kevin Shields' guitar), but does take place against a White Void Room backdrop. - "Soon" is a simple Performance Video, but once again thrown through a ton of blurry filters and taking place in a completely white setting. Also, random shot of Bilinda Butcher dancing. - And they later re-used this trope for the video for "Swallow", which is, once again, a white background with random blurry footage and lots of pink and other colours bleeding through the filters. - The official music video for Restart's Signature Song "Recomeçar" has mostly footage of the band performing in front of a white background. Their clothes are white as well, at least until the first chorus begins and the colors kick in. It also gets some Backwards Action (see above) near the end. - The music video for "Levo Comigo" uses this too, only there the background is black. - David Bowie did this twice in The '70s, using all-white voids in "Life on Mars?" and "Be My Wife". - Rick James' "Superfreak" uses this, with minimal set dressing. - Arctic Monkeys' "Cornerstone" features just the singer against a white background. - Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" - For most of both versions of Hall & Oates' "Say It Isn't So" videos. Also shortly seen in their video for "Your Imagination" and possibly used in "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)" and "You Make My Dreams" if you don't count instruments as props. - Extreme's "Rest in Peace" (the background also strobes between black and white) - Tyler, The Creator's Yonkers - "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell is pretty much just them standing around with scantily clad women dancing around them in front of a solid off-white background. This fact has made the video incredibly easy to parody. - Lorde's "Tennis Court". Prevalent in the 80s and 90s , movie tie-in music videos were songs from film soundtracks performed by an artist or band — plus members of a film's cast. This was different (but not mutually exclusive) than a Video Full of Film Clips in that most (or the entirety) of the video had a unique plot (that takes place before, during or after the film), and is intended to be part of the same movie universe or continuity. Although these types of videos were frequent in past years, they are a rarity in the 21st century. - Robert Englund has appeared in character as Freddy Krueger in several tie-in music videos, including Dokken's "Dream Warriors" from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (where he appears at the end explaining he just had a nightmare) and The Fat Boys' "Are You Ready For Freddy" (from A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master), where the band inherits a house owned by one of the member's deceased uncles, but it was originally Freddy Krueger's house. Robert Englund appears in character and stalks them around the house. He even raps at one point! - Michael Jackson's "Childhood" from Free Willy 2 features the child actors from the film singing the chorus to the song while Jackson sings in a forest. - Queen: - Back to the Future - "The Power Of Love" from Back to the Future, performed by Huey Lewis and The News. Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) makes a pit stop at a club to see the band, but someone takes the DeLorean on a joyride while he's watching the performance. - Back to the Future Part III has ZZ Top's "Doubleback," which features the hirsute trio "interacting" with scenes from the movie. Like Huey Lewis before, they have a musical cameo in the movie—they play an acoustic, Western-influenced version of their track. - "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" from Dumb and Dumber, performed by the Crash Test Dummies. Harry Dunne (Jeff Daniels) foils a robbery while on a trip in Toronto, Canada, and gets a pumpkin stuck on his head in the process. - Will Smith is a major proponent of this - almost every film he's starred in has an accompanying music video, in which he appears in-character (often with other members of the cast) and directly interacts with the singer (along with clips from the film). - In Diana King's "Shy Guy" video from Bad Boys (1995), Smith and Martin Lawrence appear as the two titular cops of the film, reacting to the singer's presence and trying (miserably) to dance to the music. - Wild Wild West from the 1999 remake of the same name. In the video, Jim West (Smith) pursues a Back from the Dead Dr. Loveless, who has once again kidnapped Rita Escobar (Salma Hayek). Although the music video premiered months before the film came out, it is a semi-sequel to the film, and ignores most of the movie's ending (namely, Rita has apparently left her doctor husband, and Loveless has appeared alive and well without explanation). - Speaking of Will Smith, his videos for the Men in Black franchise (the self-titled track from the original film and "Nod Ya Head (Black Suits Comin')" from the sequel) features him as J, doing a stage performance together with aliens. - Due to Mike Myers' role as the film's lead character, many of his appearances in the tie-in videos from the Austin Powers Trilogy fall under this: - Madonna's "Beautiful Stranger" (from The Spy Who Shagged Me) involves Austin going to a British club to see her perform, and driving her back to his place afterwards. - The music video for Dr. Evil's "Hard Knock Life" (from Goldmember) shows more of the duo's escape from prison. - Britney Spears' "Boys" involves Austin trying to dance with the pop singer at an exclusive party. - Another Britney Spears one is Crazy, in wich the main couple from the movie Drive Me Crazy -Melissa Joan Hart and Adrian Grenier- have many cameos. - MC Hammer's "Addams Family Groove" from The Addams Family, where the singer is tormented by Wednesday and Pugsley. Most of the cast of the film (including Raul Julia, Angelica Huston and Christina Ricci) appear. - Michael Jackson was working on a similar video for the sequel Addams Family Values ("Is It Scary") which featured cameos from Thing, Wednesday, and Pugsley, though most of the video was about him confronting a mob accusing him of being a freak. The project was forcibly dropped when he was first accused of child molestation in 1993, but he revived the project as Ghosts in 1997, this time without the Addams trappings. - In El Debarge's "Who's Johnny?" from Short Circuit, Stephanie Speck (played by Ally Sheedy) attends a courtroom trial for Johnny 5, who is busy wreaking havoc with his antics while a reel of footage from the film plays in the background. Steve Guttenberg evidently didn't want to take part in the video, because is represented (as a witness on the stand) by a cardboard cut-out. - Both Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II include music videos where members of the cast ham it up for the cameras. Ray Parker Jr.'s title theme song had a music video where the titular team dance in Times Square, while Bobby Brown's "On Our Own" (used in the sequel) had various actors (including Rick Moranis as Louis Tully) reacting to ghosts appearing in New York. - The end credits for Down Periscope include a music video for "In the Navy", with the Village People interacting with the movie's cast, interspersed with some footage from the movie. At various points, star Kelsey Grammer appears in most if not all of the Village People costumes. - Korn's video for the second Tomb Raider film, ''Did my time'', has Angelina Jolie all dress up in a Lara Croft style having a sort of mental battle with the members of the band. - A variant of this appears when a musician (or an actor who sings) who has a starring role in a film performs in a music video "in-character", which makes the video an extension of the film's backstory or plot: - Beyonce performing as Foxxy Cleopatra in "Work It Out" from Austin Powers in Goldmember. - Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks in the song "City of Crime" from 1987's Dragnet, as they reprise their roles as Joe Friday and Pep Streebeck. The duo interrogate criminals, explain the plot of the film through verse and perform ridiculous choreographed dance numbers! - The entire cast of There's Something About Mary starred in a music video for The Foundations' "Build Me Up, Buttercup". Various cast members lipsync the song in character and perform a grand medley together at the end of the video. - While he played the movie's villain and had top billing, David Bowie appears as himself in the two videos derived from Labyrinth and the interaction with characters seems to be the result of travel between the "real" world and movie world. In "Underground", his trip into a mysterious alley results in an encounter with Hoggle, the Junk Lady, and company. In "As the World Falls Down", Hoggle is witness to Bowie singing to a portrait of a woman who, elsewhere, falls for a photograph of him. - In a variant of this, the video for Rascal Flatts' "Life Is a Highway" (from the Cars soundtrack) features Cars footage mixed in with shots of the band singing. - Non-film example: the video for the Rembrandts' "I'll Be There For You" is a performance video that is crashed by the Friends cast. - Similarly, the video for the They Might Be Giants song "Boss Of Me" casts the band as dolls that undergo the tortures of being owned by Malcolm's family. - The Twilight movies have a bunch of examples - Muse's 'Neutron Star Collision' and Paramore's 'Decode' come to mind. - Since the "Lost In The Woods" sequence from Frozen II was styled after music videos to begin with, the video for Weezer's cover of it for the soundtrack album mainly replicates it in live action on a set made to look like a forest: Weezer's singer, Rivers Cuomo, plays Kristoff and Kristen Bell has a few cameos as Anna. - Eminem's "Lose Yourself" cuts between clips of 8 Mile and Eminem performing as himself. He later parodied this in the video for his later single "Just Lose It" by briefly reuniting the cast of 8 Mile for the middle eight. - Motörhead: Their version of "Hellraiser", which was featured in Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, has Lemmy playing poker with Pinhead. - Downplayed in Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Soul To Squeeze", which was originally a B-Side but was released as a single to promote the Coneheads soundtrack: An extra dressed as a Conehead appears, Chris Farley has a cameo but he's clearly playing a different character than he did in Coneheads, and overall the video has a traveling circus motif, with more references to Freaks than the movie it was ostensibly promoting. A music video that pays tribute to a popular movie or television show. Differs from the Movie Tie-in as the song isn't affiliated with the property, and is usually created years after. - Madonna's video for "Material Girl" recreates Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, while "Express Yourself" is inspired by Metropolis. - Weezer's video for "Buddy Holly" superimposes the band into Happy Days. - Joywave's "Obsession" goes overboard with this. The entire video consists of opening titles to various fictional movies, making homages to just about every genre and style of film that was popular at any point in the late 20th century. All in all, the video references more than sixty different classic films, none of which actually exist. - Tupac Shakur's video for "California Love" is based on Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. - Blur's "The Universal" is a Shout-Out to A Clockwork Orange. - Foo Fighters: - The Beastie Boys video for "Body Movin'" recreates Danger: Diabolik, while "Sabatage" is a tribute to a slew of 1970s crime dramas like The Streets of San Francisco and Starsky & Hutch. - Paula Abdul's ""Rush Rush" is Rebel Without a Cause. - "Everybody Hurts" by R.E.M.: 8½ - The Smashing Pumpkins video for "Tonight, Tonight" recreates A Trip to the Moon. - Oasis's "Sunday Morning Call": One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. - Destiny's Child recreate Sex and the City in their video for "Girl". - The Killers' "All These Things That I've Done": Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. - Rob Zombie's "Never Gonna Stop" is A Clockwork Orange. - Paris Hilton's video for "Nothing in This World" remakes The Girl Next Door (2004). - "The Ghost Of You" by My Chemical Romance: Saving Private Ryan - Kanye West's "Stronger": AKIRA. - Taking Back Sunday's "Cute Without The 'e'" is Fight Club. - Miles Fisher's video for "This Must Be The Place remakes American Psycho. - "12:51" by The Strokes: TRON - "Time Is Running Out" by Muse: Dr. Strangelove. - Beyoncé's video for "Countdown" is Funny Face. - Jennifer Lopez's "I'm Glad" remakes Flashdance. - Iggy Azelea's video for "Fancy" recreates several scenes from Clueless. - Shawn Mendes' video for "Lost in Japan" recreates Lost in Translation. - Jay-Z's video for "Moonlight" recreates several iconic scenes from Friends with an all-black cast. - Ariana Grande's video for "Thank U, Next" recreates scenes from a slew of Mean Girls, Legally Blonde, Bring It On, and 13 Going on 30. - Caparezza's "Abiura di me" is heavily inspired by TRON as well. - Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea's "Pretty Girls": Earth Girls Are Easy. - Faith No More's "Last Cup Of Sorrow" remakes Vertigo, with Mike Patton as Scottie, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Madeleine/Judy, and the rest of the band making humorous cameos. - Queen: - Barenaked Ladies' "One Week" pays homage to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. - Eminem: - Mariah Carey's video for "Honey" is a tribute to various James Bond films. Self-explanatory. Someone (not necessarily the artist) covertly sends messages to random people. Likely recipients are: Couples, someone who Cannot Spit It Out , a pensive/lonely person, and—if they're not the ones sending the messages—the artist themselves. Can be Anvilicious if laid on too thick, but otherwise a perfectly good concept. - Rob Thomas' "Ever the Same." The first video to use this concept—and very well. The messenger is a guy and his pigeons, and the recipients include a group of children, an old man, a suicide jumper played by Rob's wife, and Rob himself. Interestingly, the actual messages are never known; we just see the reactions to them. - Nickelback's "If Today Was Your Last Day." The title alone makes this one of the... less subtle versions. - Billy Joel's video for "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" is basically a mid-80's It's a Wonderful Life, with Billy trying to talk (or sing) a guy out of jumping off a bridge. Most common in heavy metal videos, this involves someone literally breaking through the wall of the set, usually the guitarist using his "axe" appropriately. - Accept's, "Balls to the Wall" fits this trope perfectly - Aerosmith, "Angel" - In Run DMC's remake of "Walk This Way", Steven Tyler pushed himself through a wall. - Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl" included a scene where he put his guitar through a bathroom vanity. The reason? He wanted the video to include "an action sequence". - Switchfoot's "Meant To Live" involved the band using power tools to destroy a room. Depending on how you see it, The Power of Rock may have caused a minor earthquake near the middle of the song to help them out. - In Motörhead's "Killed By Death," Lemmy drives a motorcycle through a wall. They then replay it... in slow motion. He leaves by breaking through the opposite wall. - In Dokken's "Dream Warriors", the guitarist breaks through a wall playing a blazing solo on a skeleton guitar. - At the end of "Into the Void" by Nine Inch Nails - A slight variant appears in the (sadly defunct) hardcore band Snapcase's "Typecast Modulator" video. - Scar Symmetry has this happen quite a bit in their video for "Morphogenesis." - The beginning of Quiet Riot's "Cum On Feel The Noize", with the bedroom walls giving way to the band performing on stage. Shows the artist travelling the world, using exotic locations as backdrops. Sometimes filmed on location (a potentially expensive proposition), sometimes utilizes rear-projected stock footage. A more budget-friendly option is to tour a specific city or similar region, taking in only local monuments. - Phil Collins, "Take Me Home" - Huey Lewis and the News, "Heart Of Rock And Roll" (various U.S. locations as called out in the lyrics) - Randy Newman, "I Love L.A." - The Killers, "Read My Mind" (various places in Japan, mostly Tokyo) - Part of Michael Jackson's "Black or White" is a variation where he's clearly on sets but gets down with various dancers of different ethnicities in an "It's a Small World" kind of way. - The Kooks, "She Moves in Her Own Way" - Echo & the Bunnymen, "Nothing Lasts Forever" (in and around Marrakech, Morocco) - Manic Street Preachers, "Motorcycle Emptiness" - Arctic Monkeys, "Fake Tales of San Francisco" - Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" was filmed on location in Sri Lanka by Russell Mulcahy, as was the video for Save A Prayer - Florence + the Machine's video for "Breaking Down" are Instagram-like footage of their tour in the United States. - Blur's "M.O.R.": filmed on-location in Sydney. - Tears for Fears's "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", filmed in Southern California, Japan, England, and the sand dunes of Saudi Arabia.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtherCommonMusicVideoConcepts
Otaku Surrogate - TV Tropes So that's where she gets her strange ideas... One aspect of Bishoujo Series, and the cause of many tropes such as the Unwanted Harem and an Improbably Female Cast, is that you really shouldn't have too many important male characters. However, the assumed male demographic supposedly has trouble relating to female characters. So instead, why not have a girl who likes the things that they do? You may not want to use a crossdressing girl or even a tomboy — just give her a Fan Boy personality. A lot of this depends on what the current stereotype of a fan is and finding a fandom that is noticeably gender-skewed (Moe and Humongous Mecha are popular targets) but the cast will still have only one character who is a fan of something stereotypically coded male, and especially for obscure older things the adult audience immediately recognizes. Another bonus to this is that the character's "masculine" characteristics are technically arbitrary, and easily tweaked to specific situations. Fans are very willing to put up with a lot of old tropes they wouldn't normally tolerate if the character was actually male. Contrast Cosplay Otaku Girl and Fan Girl. Often overlaps with Gamer Chick and is sometimes part of the Estrogen Brigade. ## Examples: - Yukari Tsukino from Ai Kora turns out to be a member of a doujinshi circle, and is also into cosplay and video games. - Kaoruko "Kaos" Moeta from Comic Girls is a high school girl, but her interests are more similar to that of adult male otaku. This is lampshaded when it's pointed out that her desk (which has figurines of female anime characters all over it) looks like it belongs to a 25-year-old man. - Gabriel White Tenma from Gabriel Dropout, once a perfect overachiever angel before she get drawn into online gaming addiction and became a full-out slacker otaku obsessed with an MMORPG. - The title character of Ganota no Onna, Ganota Utsuski, is a beautiful businesswoman and a major Gundam otaku, with a particular obsession with Zeon and Char. There are a lot of other Gundam fans around and the manga has a lot of Gundam references, like her boss being Zabi Degwin. - Gender-inverted in The High School Life of a Fudanshi, where the whole point is to showcase the Fudanshi section of Yaoi Fans, with each chapter showing how a guy like him deals with and reacts to Boys Love. - Umaru Doma from Himouto! Umaru-chan, who isn't just an otaku but also a Lazy Bum, who idles around her house every day gaming and snacking on junk food. Though she hides this side of herself from the public and maintains a good image to the outside world. - Lucky Star: - Konata is a complete over-the-top otaku, obsessed with anime and video games, mostly to allow for mentions of Haruhi Suzumiya, Galaxy Angel II, SHUFFLE!, Haruhi Suzumiya, Kanon, To Heart, Haruhi Suzumiya, and so forth... but very little of what most girls are expected to watch, save for a notable brush with Maria Watches Over Us (and a brief reference to Wedding Peach while the other girls talk about wedding dresses). This is lampshaded when Konata explains them as habits picked up to be closer to her father, although her friends then have more questions about her father's choice of habits... She also plays eroges. Y'know, the sort of videogame for men that features naked young girls. - And later on in the manga, we get \|\|Izumi Wakase, a closet otaku who has Konata's sports and home economics skills (average), Kagami's studying skill (average), is a class representative (Kou Yosaka's also one) but not flat and has an older brother complex\|\|. - Basically the whole point of Mangirl!: four girls are such hardcore manga fans that they create their own manga-zine. - Hikaru Amano of Martian Successor Nadesico: as big a Gekiganger fan as Akito. The English dub is even more specific: she writes Self-Insert Fic-type Slash Fic. - Kobayashi from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is an androgynous example, being a maid otaku and a Gamer Chick. - Hajime of New Game! is a tomboy (who also falls into Boyish Short Hair) that is a tokusatsu fan, and has a collection of model swords at her cubicle, including a lightsaber. - Tomoko Kuroki from No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular! is a downplayed example, since she likes anime and video games aimed at male otaku (though she has stated she detests Moe) but she also likes things aimed specifically at girls, like otome games. However, at the same time she's also an example of this gone horribly wrong; her knowledge of perverted media only makes her that much more unapproachable, and because she's so obsessed with that stuff she initially had no idea how to approach real life and real people. She's horribly antisocial and judgmental, and even her closest kin, her brother, is annoyed with her. Luckily over the course of the series, she starts to get better, but she's still the universe's Chew Toy. - Kaede Mizuno from Nyan Koi! loves anything yakuza-related. A subversion on her part, since we're led to believe she's a Moe girl. - Noah Izumi from Patlabor is a borderline example. She loves Mecha — but in a very different way from most otaku. Polishing her Labor, naming it Alphonse, writing "This Labor is Mine" on its leg at one point, smiting an enemy mecha with her robot's severed arm as yelling "ROCKETTO PAUNCH!"... - Morinas in Simoun is a total Simoun otaku, who makes plastic models in her spare time is even planning to be male after going to the Spring. - In Strawberry Marshmallow, Nobue is jokingly described by fans as the Otaku Surrogate of manga author Barasui, due to her much mellower personality and tendency to hug little girls. - Saiko Yonebayashi in Tokyo Ghoul:Re. Her bedroom is plastered with anime posters and figures, and she would rather spend her days playing video games or goofing off online than doing her job as a Ghoul Investigator. In an omake, her introduction to her new mentor was a speech bubble taking up the entire panel, listing off her various geek-related interests. As the resident Otaku, she is a constant source of Shout Outs. - Haganai: - Sena Kashiwazaki enjoys dating sims that are clearly aimed at straight men and is usually seen playing them in the club room, though she claims it's because she has no female friends in real life and gal games allow her to get close to female characters. - Rika is a more extreme case with her love for mecha porn doujin...though by "mecha porn," we literally mean porn involving mecha having sex. - Haruka of Haruka Nogizaka's Secret—beautiful, popular, and... an otaku (the eponymous secret). - Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! has two of them, the titular Nyarko being an Anime and Toku fangirl while Cuuko is a Gamer Girl; distracting them is as easy as luring them through an anime shop and waiting for them to spot a limited edition figure to fight over. - Kirino from Oreimo is a closet middle-schooler otaku and a popular fashion model. Kuroneko and Saori are these, too—little wonder they met in an online community called "Otaku Girls Unite". However, though Kirino is mainly into H-games that are obviously aimed at a male demographic, she's also a big fan of Show Within a Show Stardust Witch Meruru, which is a Magical Girl anime primarily aimed at young girls. - Beetleborgs: Josephine "Jo" McCormick is one of the three typical average kids who love to read comic strips. - Degrassi teacher Mr. Simpson says, "Toby Isaacs, meet Kendra Mason, my biggest anime fanatics." - Wendy Watson in The Middleman knows a great deal about sci-fi and comic books, especially years-old series with predominantly male fandoms. - 7th Heaven's Simon was going to get his first kiss from a pretty and experienced girl but when they were supposed to be kissing they started talking about comic books.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtakuSurrogate
Otaku O'Clock - TV Tropes Anime aired from around 11 p.m. until the wee hours of the morning, occasionally indicated by the odd-looking "22:00-27:00" notation. They are almost universally watched by older teens and young adults. This is common in Japan for several reasons, even if it seems like a weird time to broadcast a show that's trying to make money. - These shows tend to have a strong (if unusual) Merchandise-Driven bent, which allows them to pay for themselves; this means that production companies can buy these timeslots directly from the networks and sponsor their own shows. The fan base tends to be small, but dedicated, so it's usually worthwhile to do this. - Most TV in Japan is provided by the six free-to-air broadcast networks note : Or independent broadcast stations which are members of the JAITS (which, like many other large Japanese corporations, are practically government). If it's not on one of those networks, it's not likely to succeed, and because the landscape is so competitive, very few shows can draw the ratings needed to stay in prime time or on an after-school timeslot. Shows aired on cable or satellite channels account for only 10% of overall anime viewership in Japan. - Content concerns are a big deal, as in most other countries. Otaku O'Clock shows tend to be on the more violent and/or sexual side in terms of content. Such shows have been aired in prime time before, but not to universal acclaim; in particular, there was large public outcry in 1995 when Neon Genesis Evangelion aired in the dinner hour. In spite of the post-Watershed timing, though, many of these shows will still be censored or otherwise poorly executed, at least partly to convince the otaku to buy the DVD/Blu-ray. - And in this era of DVR technology and streaming services, it doesn't really matter when you air the program anyway; the fans will record it or stream it. Where the show isn't aired, fansubs will provide the show. The trope name refers to the odd way of noting when the shows start airing; it's common to see a show aired at 1:00 am listed at "25:00". This is largely done to align the schedule with that of the previous day; many Japanese TV networks still sign off in the middle of the night, and those who don't will only switch to "the next day"'s programming at 4 am or so. See also Watershed, Safe Harbor. ## Examples - Despite being a Shoujo series, the first season of Maria Watches Over Us's anime adaptation aired at this timeslot, while the second aired on a more intuitive Sunday morning timeslot. Aside from testing series potential, this was probably a safety device to see how far they were allowed to go and because the producers are well aware of the net created by its Periphery Demographic loyalty from adult male Yuri Fans. After a "third season" of OVAs, the fourth season again aired around this time. - Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry aired around midnight. - Macross Frontier was aired at 1:25 AM (rendered on Japanese TV as as 25:25) in spite of having a ridiculous amount of mainstream promotion. This is just one small part of the Noachian deluge of "25" references the series made to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Macross. - Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha originally showed somewhere around this time, which, considering the otherwise mostly tame content of the show, is the main clue it wasn't originally marketed for little girls. - Toumei Shoujo Ea was shown during this timeslot, although it is a live-action series (but based on a game). - Code Geass' first season aired at 25:25 (1:25 AM), which apparently allowed them to get away with bloody violence, swearing, \|\|a girl masturbating with a table corner, and the massacre of a stadium full of people\|\|. The fact that the second season aired at 5 PM on Sunday, a timeslot typically reserved for news programming, required them to drastically alter the plot. - Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba had its marketing strategist be very adamant in airing the animated adaptation late at night, in order to preserve the levels of violence present in the original manga, for it had become increasingly common for Shonen Jump animated shows to mildly, or severely, tone down violent and other suggestive content over the years; this decision proved to be one of the many reasons the Demon Slayer anime became a gigantic success. - Hayate the Combat Butler's first season was on a Sunday morning kids' show time slot, but the second season moved here, perhaps because of all the references and otaku nature of the show. - Last Exile was broadcast at around 1:00 AM during its first run in Japan. - Lucky Star discusses this trope, as Konata often laments the fact that shows airing in this slot on normal channels often don't air at all when sports broadcasts run long, in addition to shows airing earlier being bumped into it temporarily. The anime itself is also an example, being a very otaku-centric show that first aired late at night. - Ranking of Kings' anime adaptation airs after midnight in Japan on Fuji TV during their popular noitaminA block, meant for anime aimed at older audiences; all of that so the audience knows the art style is just a choice, not that it is as child friendly as it may appear. - Serial Experiments Lain aired at 1:15 AM, which in 1999 was one of the earliest attempts at broadcasting anime in this timeslot. Coincidentally, much of this anime takes place at night or in otherwise surreal circumstances, so the decision to air it at night may have been to enhance the viewing experience. That and the fact that it Starts with a Suicide. - According to the Japanese commercials, GUN×SWORD appeared at 1:30 AM. Despite this, American audiences frequently tag it as a shonen series. - The second season of The World God Only Knows aired around 1 AM or so. - A Little Snow Fairy Sugar aired at this time despite being G-rated. - Umineko: When They Cry got this sort of time slot when it came out. - Attack on Titan first aired on at 1:58am on MBS. Toonami aired the dub at 11:30pm, which is close enough to the trope. - Some Toku and Dorama programs that are most definitely not for younger audiences also aired during Otaku O'Clock: - GARO came on at 1:30 AM, its two-part made-for-TV movie was on at midnight, and its sequel series aired at 1:45 AM. Given that it's a horror series, its late-night timeslot is thematically appropriate too. - Cutey Honey The Live had a 1:00 AM broadcast time. - Ultra Q Dark Fantasy was aired at 1:00am on TV Tokyo. - Ultraseven X was aired at 2:15am on CBC and 2:25am on Tokyo Broadcasting System. - Deep Love was shown at "25:30" due to the fact the main character is a prostitute and the audience gets to see her at work. - Lion Maru G for the same reasons as Deep Love and it is also aired at 1:30 AM. - The Ancient Dogoo Girl was on at 1:25 AM and its Dogoon V sequel was on at 1:35 AM. - Both seasons of Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger airs at 1 am and 1:30 am on BS Asahi and TOKYO MX, respectively. - In Japan, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is one of the absolute pinnacles of Shounen anime. But due to how violent it is, the 2012 TV anime adaptation is aired at 12:30 AM. - Oddly enough, Hunter × Hunter (the 2011 version) started airing at 10:55 AM on Sunday morning, despite being one of the most violent mainstream Shounen manga out there. It was censored, but it was still quite violent for its time slot, hence moving to Tuesday Nights 25:30/Wednesday Mornings 1:30 AM for the last portion. - Persona 4: The Golden Animation got amazingly dead time slots after 1:30 AM on both channels it aired on, due to being an expansion on the original Persona 4: The Animation, that only fans of the original show or the games would understand and want to see. - Sands of Destruction was originally created to promote the game, but was aired at midnight and 1 AM, casting doubts on how much "promotion" it actually accomplished. The game was only rated B (12+) by CERO, and the show itself is incredibly tame, no more violent than your average afternoon Shounen, with no foul language or sexual content. There is the little matter that the show's "heroine" claims to be out to destroy the world, but half the time they don't even mention that fact... - The first season of Haikyuu!! aired on Sundays at 5 PM. The second season, however, moved to the Saturday late-night time slot. - Despite being a Shonen Jump series, Food Wars! was determined to be too risque for a daytime slot, therefore aired at 2:30am on MBS. - Osomatsu-san aired at the 1:30 AM time slot. - Nightwalker was part of the early wave of late-night shows in the late 1990s, and aired at 1:45 AM. - Little Witch Academia (2017) aired at 12:00 AM time slots. Many people questioned why due to its kid-friendly content until the second cour from Episode 15 onwards which included more swearing, Heroic BSoD and a living nuke trying to destroy the world. The reason why it was aired at 12:00 AM was that it had no other timeslot to air. - Azumanga Daioh originally aired at 1:25 AM on TV Tokyo. The show, however, is kinda family-friendly with the ADV Films DVD's giving it a "TV-PG" rating (aside from Mr. Kimura being a Ephebophile and a few swear words). - The original Aggretsuko TBS shorts that aired between 2016 and March 2018 would air late at night alongside other adult-oriented series. - Compared to the previous incarnation airing on Saturday mornings, Tokyo Mew Mew New aired at midnight. - An early version of Otaku O' Clock relates to different reasons in the years before anime was mainstream in the US. During its initial 1985-1986 runs, Robotech was shown mostly during the early hours of the morning such as 6:30 or 7:00 am, along with many other syndicated import shows. This was believed to be due to the tendency for parents to still be asleep and unaware of the mature content of what was supposed to be "just a cartoon". It should be noted that Robotech was originally broadcast on NBC affiliates before their Saturday Morning Cartoon lineup, which at the time usually began around 8:00 am. At that time, NBC broadcast an annual primetime preview special giving glimpses into the season's soon-to-start Saturday Morning Cartoon lineup, particularly highlighting new cartoons. Robotech was not mentioned in the fall 1985 special. - Likewise, Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers also got hit with this, part because it was in syndication, part because it was not backed by a toy company (which was a rarity of the era), and part for the same reason as Robotech - the tone was far closer to Gargoyles than Bravestarr. It was not uncommon for it to air at 4 or 5 am (which was the start of the broadcast day for stations at the time) - In Australia, anime is most prevalent on public children's channel ABC3 where it airs in a block at the latest point on the channel's run on Saturday ( Astro Boy, Deltora Quest, Fruits Basket, and other kids shows). Being a children's channel, however, ABC3 stops at 9pm. Otherwise, anime airs at either seven in the morning on a commercial channel ( Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon: The Series, Digimon and other kids' programs) or around midnight on the multicultural channel SBS (the collected works of Hayao Miyazaki, Ghost in the Shell (1995) and so forth). - .hack//Roots on Cartoon Network used to fit this bill, airing pretty close to midnight — though only on one day of the week (Friday), and it eventually got, of course, Screwed by the Network in the middle of the latter half of the anime. It was moved to 4:30 AM EST without any warning or advertisement. It would eventually finish airing in its entirety, but the final few episodes were deliberately put on hiatus for a few weeks to coincide with the release of the first .hack//G.U. game due to spoilers involved in the plot. - Near the end of its life, the short-lived UK channel Anime Central consisted of a two-hour block on another channel by the same owners, starting at about 1 AM. On the site for the audience ratings board in the UK (BARB), showings were referred to as "25:00". - The Sci-Fi Channel's Ani-Monday block ran from 10 PM to midnight Eastern time. They adjusted it for time zones for the standard channel but not the HD channel, so on the west coast you could see it at 7PM, potentially averting the trope. It was relocated to Tuesdays in January 2011. - In 2000-2002 and since 2015, Italian channel Italia 1 has aired anime and cartoons after midnight, usually in the early morning hours and featuring multiple episodes of the same series. This slot included series that couldn't have been broadcast during the day, mostly because the cartoon line-up was already filled with more profitable series and, in one istance, to avoid backlash from Moral Guardians for series aimed at an older demographic. - The slot started in July 2000 and initially aired on Fridays at around 1 AM note : Actual time could vary widely between weeks according to the length of previous programming.. For unknown reasons, the very first series to be broadcast, without proper advertising, was the third season of BeastWars (the first and the second one had aired at lunchtime), with 3 or 4 episodes each Friday. After that, Italia 1 aired Wedding Peach, which had been bought years earlier after the great success from Sailor Moon, but despite being announced, it didn't find its place on the schedule and finally aired on the night slot between August and September 2000, again on Fridays at 6 episodes each time, to fulfil the contract obligations as rights were going to expire. Fans who stayed awake or recorded the show on VHS were upset to still find, even in a late-night airing, a heavily censored and Bowdlerised dub. In fact, the series had been edited originally with an afternoon time slot in mind, and received the same treatment of most Mediaset acquisitions at the time. - Logo's "Alien Boot Camp". The website helpfully calls it "where LGBT fans of video games, sci-fi, comics, horror and cool techie stuff collide". - This is the theory behind [adult swim], which broadcasts nightly from 8 PM to 6 AM and devotes Saturday nights to anime (since May 2012 under the "revived" Toonami brand note : This was originally an April Fool's Day joke, however. In actually, it's just the previous "Adult Swim Action" block running under a different name.). - [as]'s "DVR Theater" segment showed some older Cult Classic programs around 4:00 AM. - During the years when being a Doctor Who fan meant you were an anorak of colossal proportions, the Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas were played on Radio 4 at painful hours of the night (and in the years before iPlayer and Listen Again made this less important) - especially cruel seeing as they were still, essentially, children's programmes. As the revival series started and the show's profile improved, the BBC gave it more sympathetic time slots - in particular, broadcasting the first season of the Fourth Doctor Adventures in the traditional Fourth Doctor-era time slot of 5:15PM on Saturday. - In the Pacific Northwest, if you wanted to watch Doctor Who, you had to catch it on KVOS TV 12 out of Bellingham, Washington. For decades, KVOS ran the the omnibus versions of the '63-'89 show on Saturday night starting at around eleven-to-midnight. That's not too late when you're watching a four part Fifth Doctor story, but heaven help you if that week it's a seven part Pertwee episode - or god forbid, the 10 parter The War Games. - The children's network Qubo had a block called "Qubo Night-Owl," which played episodes of old Filmation cartoons. - Preteen male-oriented cable network Disney XD broadcasts a block simply named "The Anime Block" every Saturday morning which includes shows such as Pokémon: The Series, Beyblade Burst, and Yo-Kai Watch. - Toad Patrol was aired by Toon Disney in the wee hours of the morning when its target audience was asleep (one timeslot was 5:00 AM) despite being a kids show (the dark undertones might be why it was put in such a timeslot). - This might be the reason for early morning or middle of the night airings of older shows on some TV networks (for example, Nicktoons). - HBO made its Spawn adult animated series with the intent of airing it in this kind of time slot, and Todd Mc Farlane ended up using the freedom that the time slot gave him to make the kind of show that could only be shown late at night when kids were asleep. - For much of its run, MTV aired its pioneering Alternative Rock block 120 Minutes in the early morning hours. In the late '80s and early '90s, the time slot helped build the hip and inaccessible reputation of the program and the music it played. When MTV2 briefly revived it in 2011, it was slotted at 6 a.m. on Friday mornings. MTV Classic still airs a 120 Minutes block at midnight on Monday mornings.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtakuOClock
Otherworldly Visits Youngest First - TV Tropes It's not every day that you hit a Unicorn in the face with a rock... Ghosts. Aliens. Fairies. Santa Claus. Entrances to other worlds. Be it magical or advanced life forms, for whatever reason, the youngest person in the group seems to be the first to see it. This trope can be played for lighthearted works, but it has equal, and just as potent, uses for more sinister stories. The force in question needn't necessarily appear to the adults in the story, but they must appear to the youngest member of the group first, and then subsequently appear to older members. Adults who do learn the truth may be amazed, or horrified, to learn that what their child was telling them was Real After All. If the supernatural or otherworldly force only appears to one person, then it is not this trope, even if that person is the youngest. Compare Invisible to Adults, where an otherworldly being can only appear to the young. Also compare Children Are Special. In stories about a family with multiple children, this trope easily overlaps with Youngest Child Wins, at least in more light-hearted works. For good or ill, there can be overlap with Not-So-Imaginary Friend. ## Examples: - Flying Witch: Zig-zagged. While Chinatsu is the first to witness any actual act of magic from her cousin, Makoto, the rest of the family already knew of her "witch" status. - My Neighbor Totoro: The titular spirit appears to Mei, the youngest child, first. He reveals himself to her older sister, Satsuki, later. Though their parents never actually see Totoro, they see enough hints that they don't doubt his existence by the story's end. - Haruhi Suzumiya: Zig-zagged due to Timey-Wimey Ball. Haruhi met "John Smith" (actually Kyon), when she was only twelve. But this was after Kyon had met time-travelers, ESPers, and aliens, as well as being told that Haruhi was a Physical God, albeit an unaware one...three years in the future. - Ponyo does this twice over. Sosuke is the first person to encounter the titular Ponyo, a rather unconventional mermaid. On the flip-side, for Ponyo thinks of the surface world as a magical place, and she is the youngest of her sisters. Both sides quickly learn of the existence of the other when Ponyo decides to try and stay in the surface world. - Sailor Moon: Helios visits the Kid from the Future Chibiusa first when Queen Nehelenia takes over the realm he's from, Elysion, and turns it into a desolate wasteland. - Fantastic Four: In the build-up to the Onslaught story, Franklin Richards was visited by his "imaginary friend", Charlie. Charlie was a manifestation of Onslaught, who was, initially, gestating in the brain and body of Charles Xavier. Eventually, the entire Marvel Universe would be reeling from just how real he was. - Bode Locke of Locke & Key is the youngest child of the Locke family and is the first and only one to find any new keys hidden around the property. This is revealed in supplementary materials to have been invoked by an ally of the Locke family in the past. He enchanted the front door of the Locke house with a Weirdness Censor that veils knowledge of the keys from adults to keep them from exploiting the power of the keys. - Phoebe and Her Unicorn: Nine-year-old Phoebe Howell is the first person to meet Marigold Heavenly Nostrils, an honest to goodness Unicorn, but she quickly introduces the magnificent (just ask Marigold) Unicorn to her classmates (and presumably the teacher as well, as it was during Show and Tell), and her parents (Dad wonders if Marigold is housebroken, while Mom tells Marigold she simply has to paint her, though Marigold is curious as to which color). - Beetlejuice: When the Maitlands, as ghosts, try to drive out the new family that has moved into their home, and begun remodeling it, the only person who is initially aware of their presence is teen daughter Lydia. Before too long, though, everyone is aware of the ghosts in the house, especially after a Calypso-inspired dance number via possession. - In Casper, even though the Whipstaff Manor was rumoured to be haunted from the get-go and characters occasionally experienced weird stuff in there (such as being Covered in Gunge or having their head reversed) the first person to actually see the ghosts is Kat, a teenage girl. It doesn't take long for her father to learn the truth, though. - Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Barry Guiler is the first person to actually see the aliens in the film, though a select few are quickly made aware of their presence. Barry is also clearly unafraid of the extraterrestrial beings, while others who see their presence are initially terrified of the unknown. Fortunately, the aliens turn out to be benevolent. - Dark Skies: Zig-zagged. \|\|The film makes it seem like the youngest son is the target of the aliens, until the older son, Jesse is abducted. However, when his mother goes through his older drawings, she finds sketches of the aliens by Jesse from when he was an only child, and therefore the youngest when the visitations began.\|\| - Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: Eight-year-old Sally is the first to be made aware of the existence of the "tooth fairies" living in the Blackwood house. However, before long, her father Alex and his girlfriend Kim learn the reality of their existence. These Tooth Fairies, though, are not benevolent creatures, and try to abduct Sally. Kim saves her, but at the cost of her own humanity, as the tooth fairies seize her and transform her into one of their own. - Ghostbusters: Afterlife: Phoebe, who is only twelve, is the first to experience any hint of supernatural activity when her family moves to Summerville \|\|the ghost of her grandfather, Egon Spengler, trying to reach out\|\|. Before the film is over, she has joined forces with her older brother, Trevor, the girl he's attracted to, Lucky, a classmate, "Podcast", her mother, Callie, and \|\|the surviving original Ghostbusters\|\| to battle \|\|none other than Gozer the Gozerian\|\|. - Pete's Dragon (1977): Elliot is a dragon who only appears to the young Pete, until the climax of the film, when Pete's adoptive family are in a crisis, and Elliot manifests himself before them all in order to help. - Poltergeist (1982): Carol Anne Freeling is the first to encounter the mysterious presence in their new home. However, events move swiftly to reveal that the poltergeists are quite real, especially after Carol Anne is abducted by the spirits. - SHAZAM! (2019): Thaddeus Sivana is the youngest member of the Sivana family. As a child, he was transported to the Rock of Eternity, where he met the Wizard Shazam, and was declared unworthy of possessing the power. He is able, years later, to return to the Rock of Eternity, seize the power of the Seven Deadly Sins for himself, and then demonstrate to his father and older brother that his claims of supernatural events were quite real...to their detriment. - The Boogieman, a short story by Stephen King, has the narrator tell a psychiatrist about how his three children were all terrorized and subsequently killed by the eponymous Boogieman. The narrator noted that he began seeing signs that his children actually saw the creature. They move houses, and lose the Boogieman for a bit. But then the creature finds them after the third child is born. The wife leaves town for a family emergency, and the narrator, to save his own skin when he learns the Boogieman is real, puts his son in a separate room. The child dies, and the narrator's wife realizes that her husband sacrificed their son to save himself, and subsequently leaves him. Then the narrator learns that the psychiatrist is actually the Boogieman. - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has Lucy Pevensie, the youngest of the group, discover the path to Narnia first. Edmund, the next youngest, also learns of Narnia's existence, but having fallen under the influence of the White Witch, lies and tells Susan and Peter that it was merely a game the two played. The Professor who has taken them in (and whom we later learn has good reason to believe Lucy) points out to Peter and Susan that if Lucy is the one who has a history of honesty, and Edmund is noted for being the more mischievous of the pair, then why are they doubting Lucy? This prompts them to enter the wardrobe with Lucy and Edmund, and learn the truth for themselves. - A Wrinkle in Time: Charles Wallace is the youngest of the Murry children, and the first to meet Mrs. Whatsit and her friends, having chased the family dog onto their property. It isn't long before the rest of his family meets them. And it isn't much longer after that that the Mrs. Ws are whisking them off on an interstellar adventure to rescue their father from the planet Camazotz. - Series 5 of Doctor Who plays with this. Amelia Pond as a young girl is the first person to encounter the latest incarnation of The Doctor (MattSmith's very quirky Eleven). She spent the next twelve years, and four psychiatrists (she kept biting them) with people trying to convince her it was all just a dream that she had. But she's vindicated when The Doctor reenters her life (for him it was a five minute jump). In short order, all of Leadworth learns that The Doctor is very real. - The Real Ghostbusters: A horrifying aspect of some of the Ghostbuster's foes. - Zig-zagged. This is the modus operandi of the eponymous character of "The Grundel". It seeks out young children, encourages them to do bad things, which causes them to transform into Grundels themselves. Usually, by the time anyone else in the family has any suspicion of anything going wrong, it's too late, and the child is forever transformed into a Grundel. The Ghostbusters learn that Alec is being corrupted by a Grundel from his brother, Lee. However, while they've never encountered one before, the Ghostbusters already know of the existence of creatures like the Grundel. - "The Boogieman Cometh". The Boogieman targets young children to terrify, feeding on their fear. Typically, their parents don't believe the children about his existence. But when the Carter children tell the Ghostbusters, Egon, a past victim of the Boogieman, agrees to investigate. By the time the Ghostbusters are done, the Carter parents are just in time to see the 'Busters finish off the Boogieman, at which point they believe their kids.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtherworldlyVisitsYoungestFirst
One True Pairing - TV Tropes The One True Pairing (usually abbreviated as OTP) is the couple that a fan or group of fans prefers over all other 'ships. Canon and logic do not necessarily apply, and crossover OTPs are not uncommon. The degrees to which this is taken varies wildly. It can mean anything from "I just like Drakken/Shego best" to "I won't read Fan Fic that pairs Anya and Xander with anyone but each other" to "Cloud always and still loves Aerith and they made love to each other in the flower field at the end of the movie", to the extreme "All of the canonical evidence that Harry and Hermione are not going to get together is a lie spread by the Ron/Hermione 'shippers, who must be stopped before their evil destroys the universe". note : All examples chosen at random, but the last group really are that scary sometimes. When one of the Ron/Hermione shippers turned out to be J. K. Rowling herself, some of the "Harmonians" abandoned the series in anger, lashing out at Rowling for "ruining the story." That's right, some think Rowling intentionally ruined her own story. OTP shipping wars were second only to Subbing Versus Dubbing for heat and violence. The degree of fanaticism displayed for a particular OTP may be proportional to their distance from the Official Couple and/or the Word of God for the work in question. In some cases, holding their preferred characters to completely different standards than the official pairing is an excellent mark of OTP shippers. If someone argues that you need to show that X and Y got married to prove they're in love, and the rings on their fingers don't count, but they know that X and Z love each other because of 'chemistry', they're definitely defending their OTP. It is technically possible for a person to have multiple OTPs, just with no overlap between them. Some people refer to their favourite threesome ship by the similar term One True Threesome, or OT3. Or really, "OT" appended with any number if they're even more ambitious with the number of people involved. BroTP is used as a term for non-romantic OTPs, of the "these people are best friends and no one will tell me otherwise" variety (for instance, John Sheridan and Susan Ivanova of Babylon 5). Male/female and female/female BroTPs are sometimes also called FrOTPs. Inversely, a NoTP is a ship that one opposes vehemently. Often the term "OTP" is used sarcastically in parody of shipping, especially if it involves an unconventional pairing (such as the ever-popular ChadxFloor OTP), or a character and their favorite food ("Hiro/Waffles OTP"), etc etc. Compare to Fan-Preferred Couple, which it can overlap with if the OTP in particular ends up becoming more popular than the canon couple.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OTP
The Other Darrin - TV Tropes This is when a new actor is brought on to play the same character as a previous actor who has left the series, with no explanation for the switch given to the audience. Named for the famous Darrin swap case: Dick York to Dick Sargent, on Bewitched. Sargent-York became a notable phenomenon only with the rise of series television. Prior to TV, there was no expectation that a role in a theater production would be played by the same actor. It was, and still is, assumed that any production of a particular work would seek out whatever actors it wanted for the roles, and a single production can feature different actors in the same role on successive nights. However, TV broadcasting made a bond between a role and a particular actor. Television audiences, unlike theater audiences, found it more difficult to suspend their disbelief in this respect. Maybe this was because reruns existed which would forever tie the appearance of a character to the actor that played them. Or maybe because a TV series, however long, is still perceived as a single, continuous narration — as opposed to multiple performances of a theater play. In daytime soaps, there are several standardized ways this is done: Contrast The Nth Doctor, which is the trope for cases where a character's new voice and appearance are explained in-universe. If there's a Time Skip and most of the cast remains the same then it can be a Time-Shifted Actor if the age difference justifies the particular change. For long-term cast attrition in general, see Long-Runner Cast Turnover. Flashback with the Other Darrin is a subtrope where a previous scene is reshot with the new actor. This often is the case for spinoff series and video game versions of animated films. Celebrities typically do not reprise their roles in these cases, either because the producers cannot afford them, or because they work solely in films. For obvious reasons, this phenomenon is much easier to hide in animated works, where actors aren't actually seen onscreen. In these cases, it might happen to a character who was originally played by a celebrity guest star who would be too expensive to hire for a regular or recurring role, necessitating the casting of a professional voice actor (or an established member of the regular cast). For example: Akira in The Simpsons was originally played by George Takei in a guest role, but by Hank Azaria in all subsequent appearances; and Roger "Booda" Sack in King of the Hill was originally played by Chris Rock in a guest role, but by Phil Lamarr in all subsequent appearances. Unsurprisingly, this tends to be the cause of many cries of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! from the fandom, especially if the previous actor had been associated with the character for so long that they're considered to be the actor for that character. Sometimes though, the new actor can be wholly embraced by the fandom, with the new actor being regarded as the actor instead of the previous one. Unsurprisingly, when these two sides meet, the results tend to be predictable. Compare Suspiciously Similar Substitute, Fake Shemp, The Other Marty, Obvious Stunt Double. Directly related to Character Outlives Actor. Contrast with You Look Familiar for when the actor returns as a different character in a later installment. Can be Hand Waved via Direct Line to the Author. Often subject to Replacement Scrappy-ism. Or on the other hand, look to The Pete Best when replacement surpasses the original in popularity. Often done with Continuity Reboots. Occasionally explained away with Magic Plastic Surgery. Usually the replacement is a Poor Man's Substitute. Defiance of this leads to Role Reprise. If the original actor returns to the role later on after being recast, see The Original Darrin. <!—index—>	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtherDarrin
Otokonoko Genre - TV Tropes "Otokonoko", also known as "Otoko no Musume", is a Japanese genre of romantic and/or erotic stories for men, focusing on Attractive Bent-Gender male Crossdressers. The name is a pun. Details : The word "otokonoko" normally means "boy" (literally "male child"), but swapping the "ko" meaning "child" for a different "ko" meaning "girl" gives a compound that Japanese sites like to translate as "male maiden". It is sometimes called '"josou" ("women's clothes"), a more generic term for male crossdressers. Western fandom uses the terms "trap" note : This word is offensive when directed at transgender people., "femboy", and — less often — "tomgirl" (as the opposite of Tomboy). Otokonoko features both girl-on-crossdresser and guy-on-crossdresser stories (it's one of the few places where you will find m/f stories and m/m stories side-by-side in the same magazine). The target audience is men who crossdress (or are interested), and men who have a fetish for crossdressers, and the art styles and tropes are typically those of male-oriented romance / ecchi / hentai material. There is also a significant Periphery Demographic of female readers. (Although guy-on-guy otokonoko is often mistaken for Boys' Love Genre, and some Shoujo, Josei, boys love works, and otome games do include characters that identify as otokonoko, anything targeted to women is not the otokonoko genre.) Although cute crossdressers in romantic situations have been an occasional theme in Shōnen and seinen since the '80s, otokonoko did not start as an identified genre until about 2004. Most works created before this are not usually considered part of the genre, although some have been grandfathered in. An otokonoko character must be anatomically male (no Hermaphrodites or Gender Benders) but look convincingly like an attractive girl. Most identify as male, but even when the character identifies as female, few works try to deal with actual Transgender issues in anything like a realistic way. Since otokonoko is mainly an otaku thing, otokonoko are quite likely to wear Sailor Fuku, Meido, Miko, Cat Girl or Naughty Nurse Outfits as well as "ordinary" female clothes. Some non-fiction magazines exist to provide advice and help with crossdressing for men who identify as otokonoko in Real Life and who crossdress to achieve the look (or want to). Most otokonoko is technically seinen, although some is shounen. Works aimed at a female audience are never this, so don't list Shoujo, josei or boys' love. If you are looking for people who are otokonoko, you may be looking for Dude Looks Like a Lady. # Examples: The following works either technically aren't Otokonoko or precede the establishment of Otokonoko as a genre, but have been influential in its development: - MariaHolic - The inspiration for dozens of "boy crossdresses to infiltrate an all-girl's school, gets involved in pseudo-lesbian sexual hijinks" stories, although it's not the first to do this. It's not quite an example of the genre (in ways, it's almost a parody of it, actually). - The iDOLM@STER - It has two iconic otokonoko characters, Ryo Akizuki and Saki Mizushima, the latter whom is voiced by an actual otokonoko. However, they are but two characters in a huge franchise; SideM is mainly aimed at women (though Saki is very popular with men), and Ryo stopped crossdressing in the True Ending of Dearly Stars and his subsequent appearances in SideM. The two are total opposites when it comes to why they came to do it: Ryo was forced into it at first but came to love the people he knew while on the job, and Saki adores the practice, but was inspired to start crossdressing in the open after Ryo confessed the truth to his fans. - Happiness! - Jun is pretty much the type-model for the "guy meets cute girl, finds out girl isn't a girl, decides he doesn't care" plot. Doesn't quite fit into the genre, as Jun is only one of a number of possible Love Interests in the game and is mostly a side-character in the anime adaptations. On the other hand, Jun is also heavily implied to be transgender and can be romanced as a boy or, via magic, a girl. - No Bra - Like Happiness!, a model for the "guy meets cute girl, finds out girl isn't a girl, decides he doesn't care" storyline. Predates the genre, sometimes grandfathered in as it otherwise fits quite well (though it's implied that Yuki is transgender). - Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts - Hideyoshi is an icon for the subculture. Doesn't quite fit into the genre, as it doesn't focus on Hideyoshi's love life (he's only a side character). - If you were to explain otokonoko to someone, Bridget from Guilty Gear would probably be the first character to come to mind for many, but he's not the focus of the series and the series predates the genre by a few years. And when Bridget appears in Guilty Gear -STRIVE- after a long absence, she's decided to identify as a girl outright. - Wandering Son - The three "crossdressers" are all transgender, but the series is often mistaken for at Otokonoko series. Waai did run some articles and ads for the anime adaptation. - Stop!! Hibari-kun! - Hibari is well-known as a classic in the genre, but predates it by at least twenty years, being from The '80s. From a modern perspective, the protagonist also seems much more like a transgender girl than a crossdressing boy, though the author has referred to Hibari as a boy (and an otokonoko specifically). - Princess Jellyfish - Kuranosuke is an icon, well known for being both incredibly fashionable and a rare adult crossdresser, and the series does focus on the Sibling Triangle. But it doesn't quite fit the genre, being a manga josei (aimed at young adult women). - W Juliet - It is about a boy pretending to be a girl at school so his father will let him become an actor. However, his female Love Interest is the lead, and the manga is Shoujo. - Usotsuki Lily - A parody on the genre aimed at the Shoujo crowd. - Love Me For Who I Am - The series is about male assigned at birth people working in dresses at a cafe, and the characters do call themselves "otokonoko" sometimes, but the protagonist is explicitly non-binary and at least two other characters are trans girls. <!—index—> - There are a couple of magazines that focus specifically on otokonoko manga: - WAaI! boys in skirts (more clean) (suspended indefinitely as of early 2014) - WAaI! Mahalo - A spinoff magazine focusing on manga. Cancelled after about 6 issues. - Oto★Nyan (more raunchy) (on a most likely permanent hiatus as of summer 2013) - Otoko no Ko Comic Anthology (filthy) - Otokonoko HEAVEN (even more filthy) - Amahara-kun +: A sociopathic tomgirl tries to convert other boys into tomgirls by whatever means necessary, and often ends up helping them in some way. - Boku to Boku: A girl who looks like a boy befriends a crossdresser. - Bokura no Hentai is light on the Fanservice, but it's seinen and therefore fits the "targeted towards men" part. Notably, one of the three main characters is explicitly transgender, while the other two are boys who are crossdressing for personal reasons. The series comes off as a Genre Deconstruction as with its cute art style and "Middle school crossdressers" premise it seems to be normal game, but the cast has a serious case of Dysfunction Junction and the series handles its topics seriously. - Brocken Blood: a borderline example, started off as a gag comedy with a crossdressed Magical Boy but has increased the crossdressing-fanservice levels to appeal to otokonoko fans. - Crossplay Love: Otaku x Punk is a romcom about two crossdressing boys, a gloomy otaku and a delinquent, who hate each other's male identities, but are attracted to the other's fem alter ego, without knowing they're not a girl. Hilarity ensues. - Excuse Me Dentist, It's Touching Me! follows a yakuza member who falls for his attractive female dentist, not realizing that she's actually a crossdresser and a member of a rival yakuza group. - Handsome Girl and Crossdressing Boy is about a Wholesome Crossdresser guy who starts going out with an assertive Bifauxnen. - Hikaru to Hikari: A young boy is made to crossdress by his childhood friend for a singing contest, and discovers that he is far more confident in himself as his new alter-ego. - Himegoto by Norio Tsukudani, a rare 4-koma work (at least the first few chapters). The first in the genre to get an anime, though it was badly received. - Himegoto Plus: A spinoff focusing on the main character's little brother. - I'm a Royal Tutor in My Sister's Dress revolves around a boy impersonating his older sister in order for the both of them to avoid execution. - I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into a Girl: A guy's childhood friend lets him practice makeup on him, and discovers that he likes presenting femininely. The guy finds himself attracted to his friend's new feminine appearance. - Josou Shounen, An ongoing (as of 2014) manga anthology featuring cross-dressing boys. The majority of the stories have romantic elements to them. Some more notable recurring series include the following- - Hatsu Kokuhaku: A boy is roped into cross-dressing in order to get closer to a classmate he likes... initially, anyway. - Zenryoku Otome: A cross-dressing boy becomes infatuated with the person who saved him from a perverted train passenger. - Haruno To Natsukawa: A student's male friend takes his entrance into high school as an opportunity to make his cross-dressing debut. Hijinks ensue as the friend attempts to get closer to the student. - Mayo Elle Otokonoko: would be yet another "boy crossdresses to infiltrate an all-girl's school, gets involved in pseudo-lesbian sexual hijinks" story, except that most of the "girls" aren't... - My Cute Crossdresser: a guy who likes doing makeup convinces a classmate to crossdress so he can use him for practice, gets turned on by the result. One of the first in the genre to be officially published in English. - Onnanoko Tokidoki Otokonoko: yet another "guy meets cute girl, finds out girl isn't a girl, decides he doesn't care" story. - Ookami Shounen Wa Kyou Mo Uso O Kasaneru is about a Nice Guy with the Face of a Thug. Being rejected by the girl he loves he runs to his Cool Big Sis for help. She drugs his coffee and makes him look like a girl. Now he saves the girl he loves from some real thugs and Love Interest reveals she has a crippling fear of boys. After a while he finds out that he actually likes being dressed like that more as he can be himself without people fearing him. - Past Future: A boy starts crossdressing to try and bond with his disapproving and distant sister. - Porte Tricolore: A short-lived Slice of Life series set in a magical world where only tomgirls can use magic. Notable for implying that most of the cast is actually intersex in some way. - Prunus Girl: yet another "guy meets cute girl, finds out girl isn't a girl, decides he doesn't care" story. - Reversible!: An all boys school that at first glance seems to be coed due to the eccentric dress code, and the relationships that develop there. - Sazanami Cherry: A boy confesses his attraction to a girl but it turns out the girl is a crossdressing boy. In this case, Ren has an Ambiguous Gender Identity and is implied that he's actually a trans girl who hasn't began identifying as so yet. - The Secret Devil-chan: Guy wishes for a Hot as Hell devil to take his virginity, gets a cutie, freaks when he realizes he forgot to specify female cutie. - Sensei Anone: A hapless male high-school teacher gets pursued by an also male student who wears girls' clothes. <!—/index—> - Otoboku - Maidens Are Falling For Me: Possibly the original "boy crossdresses to infiltrate an all-girl's school, gets involved in pseudo-lesbian sexual hijinks" story; released at a point where the genre didn't have a name and consequently advertised as "Girls' Love" even though the main character is male.<!—/index—> - Josou Jinja is a fairly generic otokonoko gay Hentai Kinetic Novel which is mainly notable for being the first one in the genre to be not only released in English but also given a widespread release on Steam (under the name Trap Shrine). <!—index—> - Otome Domain* features an otokonoko protagonist who is admitted to an all-girls' school by a rich young lady, who also offers him a place to stay. The only caveat: He must pose as a girl.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtokonokoGenre
Other Me Annoys Me - TV Tropes Not only more popular with the ladies, but better at being evil. "My ghost is 8eing a FUCKING LOSER!!!!!!!!" A character encounters an "alternate" version of themselves that they greatly dislike. The alternate can be a work of fiction existing only on a written page or Show Within a Show, or a Doppelgänger of some sort (Clone, Reincarnation, Time Travel, Alternate Universe, etc). The alternate version may be a thinly veiled caricature that exaggerates negative qualities or emphasizes neutral or even positive traits in ways the original dislikes, or invents traits whole cloth that are highly out of character. Or maybe they're just Too Much Alike. The original is likely to become very angry at the author or the alternate for the real (or perceived) insult. The "original" may find that For Want of a Nail their alternate version is really annoying, and (if not a fictional creation) the alternate may likewise find the original embarrassing. On the other hand, the alternate may be a much more successful or well developed individual who angers the original by outshining them. Expect at least one of them to say "I Resemble That Remark!", "Do I Really Sound Like That?" and/or "Why didn't anyone tell me this makes me look fat?" Can result in Hypocritical Humor if they're annoyed at a fault their other self possesses, unaware they have that flaw themselves. Compare Future Me Scares Me, Evil Me Scares Me and I Hate Past Me. Often is a key plot element in Meet Your Early-Installment Weirdness. ## Examples: <!—index—> <!—/index—> Across TV, audio and literature, Doctor Who has a long history of featuring several incarnations of the Doctor (plus the Master and companions) taking an instant dislike to an earlier, later or alternate version of themselves. - Doctor Who itself: - "The Three Doctors" (featuring the first three Doctors), "The Five Doctors" (featuring the first five Doctors), "Cold Fusion" (featuring the Fifth and Seventh Doctors) and "The Two Doctors" (featuring the Second and Sixth Doctors) all had them fighting and bickering amongst themselves, with "The Three Doctors" being particularly nasty. The Doctor never got along with himself until a mini-episode featured the Tenth Doctor meeting the Fifth Doctor, who the Tenth Doctor eventually said was his "favourite". It's somewhat fitting that the Fifth Doctor is the only one who's ever totally gotten along with the others, as the Fifth Doctor is the only one who lacked the arrogance and utter-self-assuredness that permeated all the other regenerations to varying degrees. - Averted in "The Almost People" when the Doctor encounters his Ganger copy, whom he helps to ease through the memories of all his past regenerations at once. And then the two of them start doing everything in tandem, to their delight. - "The Day of the Doctor": - Played much straighter: War Doctor: You're my future selves? 10 th and 11 th Doctors: YES! War Doctor: Am I having a midlife crisis? - As well as: 11 I demand to be incarcerated in the Tower of London, along with my co-conspirators, Sand Shoes and Granddad. th Doctor: War Doctor: [indignant] Granddad?! 10 They're th Doctor: not sand shoes! War Doctor: [glances at 10's feet] Yes, they are. - It should be noted, however, that not all of the Doctor's relationships are quite so turbulent. Excluding the very touchy subject of the Time War, Ten and Eleven get along rather swimmingly and are in practically perfect sync, and even the ones that bicker constantly like the Second and Third have been shown to praise each other and work together under the right circumstance. - Double subverted in the series' only televised multi-Master episode, "The Doctor Falls". Harold Saxon and Missy get along well enough, apart from one or two minor quips, \|\|only to end up murdering one another once they actually start being honest about their respective agendas.\|\| - "Twice Upon a Time" initially has the First Doctor uncertain about the Twelfth's identity, and is later outright horrified when he learns that his future self is considered "the Doctor of War", before \|\|the Twelfth's manipulation of time to save a British captain in the First World War assures him that the "Doctor of War" is not the man who revels in conflict, but the man who steps in and does what he can to limit that conflict\|\|. - "Fugitive of the Judoon": \|\|When Thirteen and Ruth are both aware that they are incarnations of the Doctor, they immediately start taking potshots at each other's fashion sense, try to order each other about during a hostile situation, and generally get very annoyed with each other. The fact that, unlike any other multi-Doctor meetup ever seen, neither of the two have any memory of ever being the other, does not help the situation, giving them even less reason to trust each other.\|\| - Doctor Who Expanded Universe: - In The Eight Doctors, the Eighth Doctor visits his previous seven selves, with mixed results; the first three Doctors are particularly hostile towards the Eighth as they resent him giving them advice given his current amnesiac state, the Fourth being more accepting of his future self can be attributed to the Eighth saving his life, the Fifth is generally cooperative despite being frustrated at the Eighth's initial arrival mid-crisis, the Sixth is annoyed at first but soon falls into a comfortable working dynamic with his successor, and the Seventh has a comfortable conversation even as the Eighth is awkward about talking to his predecessor so close to the Seventh Doctor's death. - The Sixth and Seventh Doctors bicker when they interact in "Project Lazarus", with the Sixth Doctor teasing his future self, but \|\|this is tweaked when the Seventh Doctor realises that the Sixth is actually a clone of his predecessor\|\|. - In "The Wrong Doctors", an older Sixth Doctor teams up with a younger version of himself (pre-Character Development), and finds said younger version to be unbearably arrogant and completely full of himself and likewise, the younger Sixth Doctor doesn't care much for his calmer and more reserved older self. The two incarnations of Mel don't get along, to the point where one punched the other out! (although it should be noted that \|\|the younger Mel was essentially being brainwashed and her mental energy used by an external attacker that compromised her mental state\|\|). - In "The Shadow of the Scourge", the Doctor states that inside of his mind sometimes other regenerations (both future and past) show up in "dire times" but all they can do is turn up their noses at the way he runs things. This is presumably true of all Doctors. - Sometimes, however, the current regeneration doesn't take well to being criticised: in "Timewyrm: Revelation", by the same writer as "Shadow of the Scourge", Seventh imprisons Fifth in his mind, metaphorically silencing his conscience, until Ace sets him free. - In "The Light at the End", this is subverted for the most part; the Second and Third Doctors don't get along as usual, but the Sixth finds the Seventh to be charming company and the Fourth and Eighth work very well together. - In the first multi-Master audio adventure, "The Two Masters", Crispy Master really hates his bald incarnation and calls him "my great enemy", which the Seventh Doctor takes offence to. He goes so far as to actively search for the Doctor to enlist him in a revenge plot against his later, hairless incarnation. This is particularly twisted when it turns out that \|\|the bald incarnation and the burned incarnation have actually swapped bodies, with the bald-in-burned Master trying to confront his younger self in his body to get his own form back rather than being trapped in his current husk. It's also revealed that Baldy was actually responsible for his current state, attacking his own past self as part of a plan to 'prove his loyalty' to a cult bent on erasing the universe; Baldy later claims that "the Cult fogged my mind" to defend himself, but his attitude suggests that he always knew what he was doing, and he either considers his past self an idiot or reasoned that he was just setting up a situation he knew he would survive anyway. Eventually, the two Masters restore themselves to their real bodies and work together to destroy the Cult and remake the universe themselves, but the Doctor draws their attention to their inability to work together to give himself the chance to undo their plan. Even when actively cooperating, Crispy despises Baldy for being, in his view, a giggling idiot more obsessed with cracking jokes than just killing people now, while Baldy regards his past self as a kill-stealing grump, and would rather be with any of his other incarnations\|\|. - The New Series Adventures novel Silhouette has a psychic shapeshifter who learns how his victim sees themselves and transforms into someone they'd identify with. When he tries it on the Doctor, he discovers the Time Lord has twelve distinct self-images, and doesn't seem to like any of them much. - "Day of the Master" has the Eric Roberts, War Master and "Missy" incarnations working together. However, it's only Missy who irritates the others, mainly by constantly flirting at the "Deathworm" version and trying ( very badly) to imitate his host's American accent, but also by being the most completely unhinged of the three. By contrast, the War and Roberts Master get along fairly well, with the War Master basically taking charge of the trio, \|\|although they all work together in the end to grant another version of themselves- the one who will become the Bald Master, between Roberts and the War Master- a full regeneration cycle\|\|. - The audio Masterful brings together nine different incarnations of the Master, and naturally they all set about bickering with and backstabbing each other. Among other things, the Parker Master is horrified by all of his future selves, the Jacobi Master condescends to everyone, everybody is irritated by Missy's apparent insanity, and \|\|the Simm Master brought them all together just to extend his own lifespan after he accidentally doomed the entire universe.\|\| - In the audio "Daughter of the Gods", the First and Second Doctors have a particularly hostile encounter, although this is due to the First Doctor being angry at the Second for telling him that their interaction is the result of the Second's companions changing history so that the last three months of the First Doctor's life should never have happened, and restoring reality will also kill the First Doctor's companion Katarina. - The audio "Thin Time" ends with the Fifth Doctor, currently travelling alone, having just thwarted an invasion from another dimension in Victorian London when he is visited by the Eleventh Doctor, currently in his "retirement" ("The Snowmen"). The two Doctors have a civil enough conversation about recent events, with the Eleventh treating the Fifth to breakfast at the Ritz, but seeing his future self so bitter and alone prompts the Fifth to return to his companions (who he left behind to recover from recent traumatic experiences) because he explicitly states that he doesn't want to turn out like the Eleventh. - In the Four Doctors comics event, the Twelfth Doctor refers to his previous selves as "incarcerations", while the Eleventh regards him as something that shouldn't exist, given that as far as he knows, he's living his last life. The Tenth isn't particularly impressed with either, and everyone takes potshots at each other over their TARDIS - Ten gets mocked for keeping Nine's design, Eleven's is criticized, and Twelve's gets mistaken for the Master's. - In Titan Comics' Missy miniseries, Missy and the Delgado Master travel up and down their timeline, encountering their other selves, though only a few encounters are seen in full. The Delgado Master is not exactly thrilled by the cannibal Simm Master from "The End of Time", and is disappointed in Missy for working with the Doctor, but likes \|\|the Dhawan Master\|\| for making the Doctor kneel, even if he refuses to let his future self show him up. Missy, meanwhile, sees the Delgado Master as a child, albeit a brilliant child, and while she describes the cannibal Simm Master as their "emo phase", needs to remind herself that she's better than that. The Simm Master just sees them both as food, not caring about the paradox eating the Delgado Master would cause. - Fanfic: - Broken Faith takes the Doctors usual issues with each other to a greater extreme when the Tenth Doctor realises that his attachment to Rose was basically the result of him inheriting the Ninths post-Time War psychological trauma; when Martha later meets the first nine Doctors when the Tenth makes telepathic contact with her, the Ninth's persona remains silent because the Doctor is trying to re-evaluate how he feels about his predecessor. In The Legacy of Gallifrey, \|\|the Ninth and Tenth Doctors actually fight because the Ninth briefly joins forces with Rassilon, Omega, Davros and the Valeyard to try and save Gallifrey and Skaro despite the dangers of their enemies' plan, the younger Doctor still consumed by his post-War trauma where the Tenth has been able to move past his more extreme issues\|\|. - Basically defied in "Eight by Thirteen", when the Thirteenth Doctor meets the Eighth; the older Doctor tells her past self "the planner [Seven] would get a lecture, the rainbow [Six] would get a high-five, and the scarf [Four] would get some therapy", but affirms that she's missed being the Eighth Doctor and feels that he genuinely deserves a hug. - Fear and Freedom is an interesting case, in that the meeting between the Sixth and First Doctors is very brief; the main focus is in the manner their respective companions view the Doctor at different stages of his life. - Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes has had this problem, because he takes It's All About Me so far that it becomes "it's all about this me." - In one story arc, Calvin makes a clone of himself to do his chores for him, but the clone blows him off and goes to play instead. When Hobbes comments that "he's a clone of you, all right", Calvin responds "What do you mean? This guy's a total jerk!" - When he makes a copy of only his good side, it works out at first because this one is willing to do all the work, but eventually they come to blows over whether they should be nice to Susie, whom the good side openly admits to having a crush on. - And when Calvin travels to the future to get his completed homework from his future self, three different versions of him end up fighting over which of them should have done the homework. Averted with Hobbes in the same story, as his egotism is of a sort that gets along with itself. "You're right, as always, Hobbes." - As Bill Watterson stated in his commentary on the first duplicator arc: "I think we all would be horrified to meet a double of ourselves and find out what everybody else already knows about us." - In Dilbert, Dogbert founds a consulting company staffed by clones of himself. Being the conman that he is, he ends up having to dissolve it when every single one of his clones embezzles from him, noting it as the end of his "journey of self-discovery". - Daniel Amos: The Doppelgänger liner notes include a short story where the narrator sees himself from the outsidewithout realizing that it is himselfand gets so angry at his own flaws that he tries to attack himself. - Taylor Swift's video for "Look What You Made Me Do" ends with a brief sequence of fifteen different versions of Swift bickering. - Blackbirds RPG: The Allmother is a malevolent Deity of Human Origin who kills people and replaces them with "orphans," doppelgangers of the original person who all possess the Allmother's personality and act as the Allmother believes that person should have acted. Unfortunately for her, these doppelgangers also possess free will and the same ironclad certainty that they should be the only one making decisions, leading to them mostly plotting against each other rather than actually advancing the Allmother's schemes. Since they all have the exact same skills, experience, and personality, they also find themselves unable to make much headway against each other due to being stuck in a perfectly even match. - The Infinite Worlds setting has Otto Skorzeny, leader of ISWAT. In his timeline of birth, he was a hero of the multicultural and multidenominational Republican Alliance. Out in the Infinite Worlds, most Otto Skorzenys are Nazis, like the one from our timeline, and killing his other selves is one of his favorite hobbies. - Paranoia has an entire secret society (the Sy-B-LNG Rivals) made up of clones who want to assassinate their active-duty counterparts. Hey, if they're gonna be stuck living in a deathtrap anyway, they at least want to hurry up and do something interesting while they're at it. - In the Yu-Gi-Oh! game, Warrior Dai Grepher has several potential futures, among them Good (embodied by Knight Day Grepher) and Evil (embodied by Dark Lucious). As seen in the card Different Dimension Encounter (where both Knight Day Grepher and Dark Lucious confront each other) each clearly doesn't like the revelation that this opposing counterpart exists. - Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony has this in the post-game Ultimate Talent Development Plan mode. One possible event while playing Byakuya Togamis route is running into the Ultimate Imposter, who just so happens to like impersonating Togami. Issue #1. Togami takes his family name very seriously. Issue #2. And Imposter is almost 300 pounds. Issue #3. - In Fate/stay night, \|\|Even though he is unaware of his true identity, Shirou\|\| has enormous problems getting along with \|\|his future self, Archer (Counter Guardian EMIYA),\|\| on a purely instinctual level (although the great personality differences may have something to do with it too). The future version, on the other hand, has some very well thought-out reasons for despising the other. - Ironically, the same thing comes up again in Fate/Grand Order between \|\|EMIYA and his Alter self\|\| for the very same reasons. Specifically, \|\|EMIYA Alter despises the fact that EMIYA has become less of an asshole and isn't as hardened anymore\|\|. On a lighter note, \|\|EMIYA doesn't actually give his Alter counterpart much mind beyond the fact that he wishes he came up with modifying his swords to be more like guns first\|\|. - In the All the Statesmen! event of Fate/Grand Order, the protagonist gets a chance to meet a darker version of their alternate self in the parody manga Learning with Manga! FGO. Despite presumably going through the same thing, the prime protagonist goes from getting annoyed about just how psychotically crazy their alternate self (called 'Nameless Master') is to reaching a breaking point when they realize just how abusive the Nameless Master is in treating their Servants (read: low levelled and weak, ignored for the sake of collecting the more rare Servants, to no avail) - There was a battle between Courtney Love's 2 twitter feeds. The first one was the official feed managed by a ghost writer, the other was a private feed under a Nom De Plume. Courtney got enraged when the official feed started publishing polite things, and she published not-so-polite things about the official feed on her private feed. - SF Debris: Whenever Parody Janeway comes face to face with herself, she gets annoyed...and aroused.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OtherMeAnnoysMe
Oscar Bait - TV Tropes "The diseased/addicted/mentally impaired character always gets the Oscar." It would be naïve to think filmmakers always make movies according to whatever story they want to tell, and that a prestigious award like an Oscar, if they're lucky enough to be honored with one, is just icing on the cake. An Oscar is a big deal. It enhances the studio's reputation and boosts future ticket sales. Since around the early 1980s, instead of expecting an Oscar to be a natural side-effect of a film being exceptionally good, studios and producers have often tried to engineer certain films specifically to attract Oscar nominations. Typically, the results are more serious, depressing, or "artistic" films. They're called Oscar Bait, and the practice is also derisively known as "Oscarbation". The trend started in the 1980s in the wake of the emergence of the Summer Blockbuster, and as New Hollywood ended. Before then, it was a pretty good bet that the most popular movies were also the best ones and thus the likely Oscar winners. But as directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas hit their stride, they made beloved and well-received movies which were nevertheless seen as too lightweight to win the "important" categories (acting, direction, writing, and picture) if/when they were nominated. At the same time, the "serious" fare that did win those categories slowly became less popular. While into the mid-'90s it was common for at least one major, mainstream hit to make it to the highest categories when it came to Oscar nominations, and sometimes they even won ( Rain Man and Forrest Gump were the highest-grossing films domestically in their respective years, for instance), there was a growing focus from studios on targeting younger audiences with simpler Summer Blockbusters that didn't deal with realistic concerns of people over the age of 30. With fewer and fewer opportunities for "serious" films to get made and widely released at all since the Turn of the Millennium, what ones are made tend to focus on going for the gold and making their studios at least look like they care about True Art. Such films are usually depressing dramas, Glurgey inspirational films, and examples of man's inhumanity to man an abnormally large proportion of Oscar Bait films have been set during The Holocaust. There's also a big focus on mental illness or Inspirationally Disadvantaged characters. It's rare for a comedy film to do well at the Oscars (in fact, one of the biggest clichés of this trope is a comedic actor starring in a heavy-handed drama in an attempt to be taken seriously); sci-fi and horror don't do much better, and animated films were given their own categories once they flirted with pushing into the big leagues. These aren't hard and fast rules; you might see a Dramedy or Dark Comedy get a nomination, mostly because there's still room for suffering. The cost of all this is that most Oscar Bait movies don't do well at the box office. Hype Backlash and Hype Aversion play into that — the heavy campaigning to win an Oscar can be a big turn-off. Furthermore, many Oscar Bait films are released around December or January (as a direct lead-in to the Academy Awards show in late February), so it's easy to tell them apart from Summer Blockbusters. Perhaps because the Academy can actually tell the difference between a good, honest movie and an Oscar Bait attempt, and partly because sometimes they respect the general public's opinion of a movie and will try to reflect that, there are many movies that are obviously gunning for awards that don't get nominated at all much less win. (This can mean an Award Snub.) And no matter how genuinely good these kind of films can be, depressing films about people suffering through tragedy, alienation, physical and mental disability, and/or the horrors of the worst periods in human history don't often have the makings of a fun night out at the movies. The phenomenon isn't exclusive to the Oscars, either; on TV it's "Emmy Bait", on Broadway it's "Tony Bait", and in music it's "Grammy Bait". See also Death by Newbery Medal and Award-Bait Song for the literary and musical equivalents, respectively. Contrast It's Not Supposed to Win Oscars. ## Oscar Bait tactics and examples: - 1978's The Deer Hunter was a game-changer. After a disastrous preview screening the studio brought in Allan Carr, a flamboyant producer (he was just coming off of Grease) and party-giver, as a consultant. He didn't expect much but loved the movie once he saw it. Still, he knew that it was so grim and depressing that people would only watch it if they had heard that it had been nominated for Oscars. Before then, it was the other way around — films (usually) got Oscar nominations based on their popular reception. Carr turned the system on its head and gave the film only a short run of screenings in New York and Los Angeles near the end of the year; the audience was mostly limited to film critics and Academy members. The former raved about the film, and the latter nominated it for multiple Oscars; it ultimately won Best Picture and Director among other honors. Only then was it put into wide release to the general public. - Oscar-worthy films tend to be released in the last two months of the year, to get them in before the December 31 deadline but as close to the February ceremony as possible to ensure that the film hasn't fallen out of the public consciousness. Sometimes this results in rushed productions. Specifically, to be considered for an Oscar a film must shown in a theater for at least one full week in the year of nomination in either Los Angeles or New York (more often L.A., due to it being, you know "Hollywood"). So to push it as close to that deadline as possible, studios will do two things: 1) release the film on/around the Christmas weekend, the last week of the year, and compound that with 2) only giving it in limited release to start. In this, they can technically qualify, letting the limited release period build up word-of-mouth as well as early nomination talk, then go into a wide release that will take the film, should it have legs, well into February and right up against the Oscars. - Long before Oscar Bait became a thing, studios would and still do shamelessly lobby the judges directly by: - Massive advertising directly to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ( i.e. the famed For Your Consideration ads). These campaigns got so out of hand at the Turn of the Millennium that people speculated that it may have been a reason the Oscar ceremony was moved from March to February to get people to pay attention to the films and not the ads. (The main reason, of course, was to coincide with Sweeps.) - Widespread distribution of free screeners, often for little films which may not have been in theaters for long. These were typically just DVDs mailed en masse to all the voting members (which are so pervasive that many Academy members never even go to theatrical screenings, although they often dont have the time to). Academy members have also been known to accidentally leak these screeners to smugglers, although that never dissuaded the studios (and a Mexican scientist did invent a watermarking technology for them). However, starting in The New '20s this was done away with in favor of special streaming sites made for voting members, due to environmental initiatives. - Studios will sometimes vie to be the one to get the most Oscars in a given year, which leads them to release several Oscar Bait films in a row. One of the most notorious for this was Miramax, who hit us with Shakespeare in Love, Chocolat, Chicago, and Cold Mountain within a few years. At the turn of the millennium, virtually all of the major studios set up subdivisions specifically for arthouse-style films, like Paramount Vantage, but most of these went out of business in The New '10s due to studio downsizing as more attention was paid to Summer Blockbuster tentpoles. - The typical Oscar Bait film is a Period Piece or Costume Drama with serious subject matter. This often leads them to be Biopics (or at least Based on a True Story) as well. But they dont always follow this pattern. Some Oscar Bait films can be lower-budget dramas aimed more at the age group of the Academy voters, such as Away From Her and Steel Magnolias. - From about 1993-2008, kicked off when Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List finally got him proper attention from the Academy, The Holocaust was a go-to setting for films gunning for Oscars. It checks all the boxes: historical, dramatic, mans inhumanity to man, Downer Ending, True Art Is Angsty; it also helps that a large number of Academy voters are Jewish. It even worked if you made it a comedy ( Life Is Beautiful did it); this was a license to print money. (One winner was about people in a concentration camp printing money!) However, for every film of this type that made it to the nominations there was at least one that didn't (i.e. the American remake of Jakob the Liar). Over 2008-09, there was a major backlash to The Reader being nominated for Best Picture in 2008 over more acclaimed but less "serious" fare like The Dark Knight and WALLE, and another film using the setting, Defiance, couldn't get anything more than technical nods. More details on those can be found in the next folder. After this, the setting became less popular and more recent films that have used it (such as the 2013 adaptation of The Book Thief) have largely been brushed off or at least viewed with suspicion by critics and commentators, some of whom have complained about creatives exploiting and/or trivializing the subject matter for awards glory and/or Glurge purposes. - It was particularly prominent in the Best Documentary Feature category from 1995 to 2000: three of the five winners directly involved the Holocaust ( Anne Frank Remembered, The Last Days, and Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport) and another winner, The Long Way Home, was about post-WWII Jewish refugees. See also the 1981 winner, Genocide. - Holocaust-themed foreign language films that have won the Foreign Language award include The Shop on Main Street, the aforementioned Life Is Beautiful, The Counterfeiters, and Son of Saul. There's also Nowhere in Africa, about a Jewish couple that fled to Africa before the war started, but have family members back in Germany that fall victim to the Holocaust, and Ida, about a Polish novitiate nun finds out that she's actually Jewish and that her parents were betrayed and murdered when she was an infant. - Short films about the Holocaust that have won the Short Film prize include Visas and Virtue and Toyland. - This phenomenon was referenced in Extras, where Kate Winslets character notes that the best way to win an Oscar was to play in a Holocaust movie. Amusingly, Winslet herself later won an Oscar for Best Actress for The Reader. - Over at the Cannes Film Festival, the most famous of the international festivals, Palme d'Or-winning films that center around the Holocaust include the feature The Pianist and short film With Hands Raised. - Broadway musicals adapted to films might pick up a Movie Bonus Song purely to snag a Best Original Song Oscar nomination. This was a common strategy even before that category existed, just as a way to differentiate the film version from the play (and get people to see both). But with the Oscar incentive added on, studios will add songs whether or not the score needs it. The movie versions of A Chorus Line, Little Shop of Horrors, Evita, Chicago, The Phantom of the Opera, Dreamgirls and Les Misérables all got original song nominations this way; the only one of these to win was You Must Love Me from Evita. - Make it about mental illness or disability. Its been a consistent Oscar winner over the years: - The first actor to win an Oscar for playing such a character was Cliff Robertson in 1968, for playing the mentally handicapped hero of Charly (an adaptation of the short story Flowers for Algernon), after a massive For Your Consideration campaign. - John Mills won Best Supporting Actor in 1970 for playing a mentally deficient, mute, and crippled character in Ryan's Daughter, baffling his costar Sarah Miles. - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of only three films to win all of the Big Five Oscars (Picture, Screenplay, Director, Actor, and Actress). note : The other two, for those keeping score, are It Happened One Night and The Silence of the Lambs Oddly, though, the acting awards were given to actors who played non-mentally ill characters. - Peter Sellers was the subject of an infamous Award Snub when he was nominated but didnt win an Oscar for playing the mentally-challenged Chance the Gardener in 1979s Being There. He was hit by the Comedy Ghetto and his insistence on treating the film not as Oscar Bait, but rather the roles inherent challenge and extremely personal Reality Subtext. When people later found out how much Sellers put himself into that role and how badly he wanted that Oscar, Sellers himself became the subject of award bait in 2004s The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (where he was even played by Geoffrey Rush, who had himself won an Oscar for playing a mentally disabled character in Shine) that film, released on TV in the U.S., nearly swept that years Emmy and Golden Globe awards. Amusingly, Being There is something of an Unbuilt Trope version of the modern trend, since the central joke of the story is that Chance has nothing profound to say about the world or to teach others but has those things projected onto him by people who don't know he's handicapped. - Rain Man gets a lot of credit for kicking off the modern trend. The film won Best Picture, Best Direction, and Best Original Screenplay in 1988, and Dustin Hoffman won Best Actor for his portrayal of the autistic savant Deuteragonist (the protagonist is played by Tom Cruise). It was also a huge box-office hit, unlike some of the films that followed it. - Leonardo DiCaprio got his first Oscar nomination for playing a mentally handicapped boy in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. He kept up acting in typical Oscar Bait films, often to genuine acclaim, but wouldnt win for another 22 years! - Forrest Gump won four of the Big Five (Actor, Director, Screenplay, and Picture) plus two more in 1994, and it centered around a mentally handicapped man. Its considered a textbook example of how to win an Oscar because of its historical setting and social commentary. It was also a gigantic box-office hit long before the awards started rolling in, being released in the middle of the 1994 Summer Blockbuster season. - Live-action shorts about disabilities that have won the Oscar include I'll Find a Way (spina bifida), Board and Care (Down syndrome), Stutterer, and The Silent Child (deafness). - The female equivalent of the mental health angle is having an attractive actress play an ugly character. But Hollywood Homely isnt good enough; you would have to drastically change your physical appearance to do it. Actresses who have won Oscars this way include Charlize Theron, who put on 30 pounds and thinned her hair and eyebrows for Monster; Nicole Kidman, who wore a number of prosthetics to play Virginia Woolf (a character with mental illness, to boot) in The Hours; Anne Hathaway, who played a bald, emaciated, filthy, and apparently toothless Broken Bird in Les Misérables (2012); and Allison Janney, who played a heavily aged abusive mother living in the backwoods area in I, Tonya. - Physical disability can get you an Oscar. This is what got Jamie Foxx a win for Ray, Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman, and Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot. Even John Wayne got his only Oscar this way, by playing the half-blind Marshall Rooster Cogburn in True Grit; he joked he would have put on an eyepatch sooner if he'd known it would net him one! The Trope Maker for this sub-category is probably Jane Wyman, winning the gold statuette for playing a deaf woman in Johnny Belinda. - White Man's Burden is a common trend; a privileged white character will take it upon himself to help an underprivileged minority and thus show his nobility. It earns nominations like for Gran Torino, The Blind Side, Freedom Writers, Glory Road, The Soloist, and Dangerous Minds but of these, only The Blind Side was either nominated for or won anything (with Sandra Bullock winning Best Actress). Green Book went all the way to a Best Picture win for 2018...but many critics and commentators were upset by this, especially as it won over films that made minority characters the center of their stories (such as Black Panther, Roma, and BlacKkKlansman). - An oddly specific recurring theme related to that is the subject of abused, often illiterate, black women. It's more or less "Oscar Bait: Black Edition". The Ur-Example of this trend is The Color Purple, which got eleven Oscar nominations but didn't win any (it was controversial in the black community for its portrayals of abusive black men and lesbianism, and other commentators felt director Steven Spielberg's approach to original Alice Walker novel was too sentimental — this was his first attempt at Oscar Bait). Monster's Ball featured a black woman whose husband is on Death Row, has to deal with a problematic, overweight son who later dies as well, and then enters a relationship with a similarly troubled white man before she finds out that he's her late husband's executioner. Halle Berry earned an Oscar for it. Precious was about an almost implausibly depressing character an illiterate black teenager who's raped by her father, abused by her mother, has a child called "Mongo" (short for "Mongoloid"), and whose uplifting ending to the film is just getting the chance to take the GED test. It garnered six Oscars nominations and won two, one of them going to Mo'Nique (who played the abusive mother). - A more recent phenomenon is playing a gay, lesbian, or transgender character and outlining the injustices or tragedies they face. Examples include Sean Penn in Milk; Tom Hanks in Philadelphia; Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote; Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry; Christopher Plummer in Beginners; and Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club. It wasnt always a winning formula; films like Transamerica and Brokeback Mountain are considered Award Snub victims (although the latter did win Best Director). This trend began losing credibility at the dawn of the 2020s as many of these actors aren't LGBTQ+ note : One notable exception being Daniela Vega, a transgender actress who played the lead role in A Fantastic Woman, a Chilean film that won for Best Foreign Language Film in 2018, meaning that actual LGBTQ+ performers are not getting opportunities to tell their stories — and are not often nominated when they do. (For similar reasons there are increasing complaints about able-bodied/neurotypical performers playing disabled characters.) - Dyeing for Your Art is a common way to win, but only if its bad for you; actors tend to do better by losing weight, gaining body fat, or otherwise becoming uglier as opposed to adding muscle mass or becoming more attractive. Actors who have won by punishing their body to look less attractive include: - Robert De Niro is credited with starting this trend by training and bulking up to become a convincing boxer, then binge eating for months on end to portray the same boxer as a washed-up has-been, and winning Best Actor for Raging Bull. - George Clooney, who gained 35 pounds for his Oscar-winning role in Syriana; - Philip Seymour Hoffman, who lost 40 pounds for his winning role in Capote; - Tom Hanks and his generally downtrodden and disheveled look in Cast Away; - Charlize Theron, who gained 30 pounds and underwent an extreme Beauty Inversion to win for Monster; - Heath Ledger, whose extreme Method Acting to play The Joker in The Dark Knight may have contributed to his untimely death but won him an Oscar anyway; - Natalie Portman, who did it twice first slimming down to 97 pounds and undergoing intense ballet training to win for Black Swan, and second for shaving her head in V for Vendetta to win the Best Actress Saturn; - Christian Bale, who lost a lot of weight to win Best Supporting Actor for The Fighter; - Anne Hathaway, who lost 25 pounds, had her head shaved, and picked up the general look of a tuberculosis-stricken prostitute to win Best Supporting Actress for Les Misérables; - Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, both of whom lost a lot of weight to earn Oscars for Dallas Buyers Club (Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively); and - Leonardo DiCaprio, who broke his long losing streak by doing extreme things for his role in The Revenant, including putting on weight, eating raw bison, and sleeping in animal carcasses. Observers joked that the Academy should give him the Oscar right away before he kills himself trying. - If youre going to make it more lighthearted, at least have it star an underdog. Winning examples include Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Erin Brockovich, On the Waterfront, and Cinderella Man. - Make it foreign. If nothing else, Europeans are very responsive to Oscar Bait films. And the Academy likes films set in interesting foreign locations. Films like Slumdog Millionaire, City of God, and Babel are successful examples. - An interesting trend is to subvert the typical Oscar Bait film by creating a "quirky" independent dramedy - among the winners and nominees in the field of such movies are Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, Silver Linings Playbook, Sideways, The Big Sick, Lady Bird and Happy-Go-Lucky. These films always feature hip dialogue, eccentric characters, and many a Snark Knight. - Don't make it sci-fi, fantasy, or to a lesser extent action; the Sci Fi Ghetto is very much in effect at the Oscars. They usually only get nominated for Visuals, Sound, or Makeup rather than the Big Five categories. The only way they get one of those nominations is if they are more cerebral or philosophical, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Dark Knight, Avatar, Inception, Gravity, Arrival and Black Panther. If you actually want to win with a sci-fi or fantasy film, it should be based on a highly acclaimed previous work (no, not Star Trek, older than that) this was a big reason The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won Best Picture (because it was a big-budget groundbreaking adaptation of a highly acclaimed work of literature). Mad Max: Fury Road notably bucked both trends - it was neither cerebral nor based on a particularly critically acclaimed work - but was nominated for Best Picture regardless. - Very, very few actors from horror movies have been nominated, much less won — especially if they're not seen as sufficiently arty. - No actors from animated movies have been recognized, and the Academy had to create a new category to try and make sure an Animated movie didn't get nominated for Best Picture after Beauty and the Beast was nominated in 1991. It didn't entirely work, but it has blocked most animated films from any category besides Best Animated Feature. Actors doing mo-cap fit in here as well, since they're not technically on screen. A good example is Andy Serkis for his roles in Lord of the Rings and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. - An unusually specific type of Oscar Bait is the movie about a troubled country singer. Robert Duvall (for Tender Mercies), Jeff Bridges (for Crazy Heart), and Sissy Spacek (for Coal Miner's Daughter) all won Oscars this way. And Reese Witherspoon won hers for Walk the Line, where she plays a troubled country singer helping an even more troubled country singer (played by Joaquin Phoenix, who snagged a nomination). - Actors have had success playing previously celebrated actors (or big stars in general). Examples include Robert Downey Jr. as Charlie Chaplin in Chaplin; Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood; Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator; Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn; and Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. Ironically, of these older famous actors, only Hepburn ever won Best Actor or Actress herself. - Films about film-making and acting or who include Hollywood and the film industry as a part of their setting such as The Artist, Argo, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Trumbo (a Biopic whose plot includes three historical Academy Awards ceremonies) and La La Land. And those are just from The New '10s! ## Films (or otherwise) that come across as particularly obvious in their ambitions: - The West Wing episode "The Long Goodbye" was painfully obviously designed to score Allison Janney an Emmy nomination. It did so by omitting most of the regular cast to show her character battling her father's Alzheimer's disease. This was particularly strange because Janney won four Emmys on her own over the course of the series, so she didn't need a weepy Emmy-bait episode. - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "The Body" is a massive tearjerker episode where the cast deals with Joyce's death and seems to be pushing all the Emmy Bait buttons. It didn't get a nomination, but the No-Dialogue Episode "Hush" did. - Baywatch tried several times to net itself an Emmy with various Very Special Episodes dealing with death or another weighty topic. Despite all their efforts, it never worked and the show failed to even get nominated during its entire run. - American Son, a Netflix film (based on a play) that deals with racial tensions in America, is similar to Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close in that it was critically-drubbed upon release for its heavy-handed dealing with the topic, but managed to earn an Emmy nomination for Outstanding TV Movie. - The Good Place: Episode 3x09, "Janets" was the last episode to air before the mid-season break, meaning only three episodes were left at the start of 2019. According to the show's official podcast, part of the reason they split the season up this way was so D'Arcy Carden's performance would be fresh in the minds of awards groups like the Golden Globes and SAG awards. The episode involves the other main characters transforming into a likeness of Janet, meaning Carden had to essentially play every character. Despite receiving praise for her performance(s), Carden failed to be nominated at any of the major groups. (The Emmys did nominate her for the following season, however.) - He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): Animator Tom Tataranowicz, who came up with the idea for the Unexpectedly Dark Episode "The Problem With Power", openly admitted in the DVD commentary that he did so to enforce this trope, as episodes in which someone died always won Emmys. It didn't work, though the episode is considered to be one of the very best of the show. - Hawking, a biopic of famously disabled genius astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, was saturated with topics designed to warrant nominations from the BAFTA and not just about Hawking struggling with his ALS or his efforts in science. It even managed to include a few Holocaust references; a supporting character had to flee Nazi Germany with his family as a child. - Stranger Things dropped the first volume of Season 4 on May 27, 2022, four days before the 2022 cutoff. The most notable episode was "Dear Billy", a Max-focussed episode that deals with depression, suicidial ideations and survivor's guilt, giving Sadie Sink a lot of angsty material, before ending in massively emotional style via the use of the Kate Bush song "Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)". The show was nominated for Best Drama Series (losing to Succession) and got twelve Creative Arts nominations, winning five. Two of the wins, for music supervision and prosthetic make-up, were for "Dear Billy". Sadie Sink, however, failed to get an Emmy nomination despite the trades predicting one, although won a HCA award and ended 2022 with a much bigger profile. - In the Heights centers around an inspirational Fourth of July where impoverished immigrants in Washington Heights win the lottery and struggle with issues of college debt, gentrification, and American identity. The characters angst over everything, including (but not limited to): boatloads of Unresolved Sexual Tension, the hypocrisy of The American Dream, the expenses of living in the heights, and \|\|the death of a beloved community member\|\|. Sprinkle in some modern, catchy infusions of hip-hop and salsa music, and you have a Tony-winning musical. It was nominated for thirteen categories, winning four (but none for writing). - Hamilton, which centers around the titular character during the Revolutionary War, and has the special honor of being one of the only shows with a cast made up of people of color. It won 11 Tonys, and had 16 nominations in total. If you weren't Hamilton at the 2016 Tonys, there was no point in showing up. - Young @ Heart was not eligible for either an Oscar or an Emmy (for various reasons), so it set its sights on international film festivals, particularly the Rose d'Or. It's a documentary about a pensioners' choir going on tour, and it hit so many of the Oscar Bait buttons that it's a surprise that it didn't fall victim to Hype Backlash. It won almost everything it ran for (only Man on Wire could beat it in anything). - The Last of Us Part II has been accused by its detractors of being Oscar Bait in Video Game form, featuring a female lesbian protagonist in an extremely bleak and realistically violent revenge story set in a Zombie Apocalypse where the real focus is on human cruelty. While fan reception was divisive to say the least, it certainly wowed critics by sweeping The Game Awards 2020 and becoming the most awarded game of all time. Some critics even went so far as to (in a positive way) call it gaming's Schindler's List moment. The Oscar Bait trope is so pervasive that it defines the formula that wins Oscars. When a different kind of film wins big, and no one else can replicate that success, its worth noting. - 1931 film Skippy was an unexceptional little family movie about a nine-year-old boy who gets into mischief. Somehow it got four nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Jackie Cooper (the youngest nominee ever), and it won Best Director for Norman Taurog. Even more amazing? It was based on a newspaper comic strip. It wasn't until the 2019 Oscars that another film based on a comic strip, comic book, or graphic novel ( Black Panther) was nominated for Best Picture. - The 1934 film It Happened One Night was a small, low-budget romantic comedy Road Movie, released during a time when Oscar Bait meant elaborate musical and dancing showcases. It gained universal acclaim from both critics and audiences and swept the "Big Five" awards: Best Picture, Best Director (Frank Capra), Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Actress (Claudette Colbert), and Best Screenplay. This has only been done twice more in all the years since: by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1976 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1992. - The Silence of the Lambs is dark, deals with mental illness, and addresses man's inhumanity to man. It's also a horror film, a genre that usually gets no love at the Oscars. (The producers were aware of that and billed it as a "Psychological Thriller".) It was the first horror film to win any of the "Big Five" since Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1932 and was only the third film of any kind to sweep all of the Big Five categories. - Beauty and the Beast, against all odds, found its way out of the Animation Age Ghetto and wound up being nominated for Best Picture in 1991. It didn't win, but this in itself was an incredible feat (which Disney would futilely try to replicate). It remains the only animated feature to ever get nominated from when the field was five movies ( Toy Story 3 and Up got nods after the field was expanded to 8-10 movies). - Star Wars broke out of the Sci Fi Ghetto and got Oscar nominations for Best Director (George Lucas), Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Alec Guinness), and Best Screenplay. It didn't win any of them, but it showed that a hugely popular sci-fi film might catch the Academys attention. It opened the door for such films as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Avatar, Aliens, and District 9 to get nominations as well, and non-sci-fi films in the same vein (like Raiders of the Lost Ark). That said, the fact that they didnt win anything big pointed towards Oscar Bait becoming an end in and of itself in years to follow. - Titanic was unusual in that it wasn't meant to be Oscar Bait — just James Cameron's dream project that was supposed to be committed to the screen, and was originally being positioned as a Summer Blockbuster. People latched onto it, and it won almost everything. It does, however, tick a few of the boxes: it's a Period Piece centered around a famous historical event, yet still has a decade-spanning story thanks to said Period Piece story being told by a character in the the present, and Forbidden Love between people of different socio-economic classes. Critics who appreciated Cameron's dedication to dutifully recreating many of the details of the Titanic and its sinking, but didn't care for the fictional love story often accue the director of shoehorning said love story in to increase his chances during award season instead of letting the real history of the Titanic stand on its own as a story. - The Lord of the Rings is a strange case; although it is fantasy, it was also adapted from one of literature's most important and ground-breaking fantasy works, and it was also a huge spectacle that changed the game in epic filmmaking. But what was truly unexpected was for The Return of the King to sweep its awards. Perhaps its wins were meant to be for the trilogy as a whole — it was filmed as one project, so it might have been unfair for it to eat up all the important awards for all three years it was released over — but that is still a phenomenal accomplishment for a fantasy film series. More cynical explanations involve the series' great commercial success: either the Academy felt unable to ignore such a big hit, or it wanted to reward the series for helping the cinema industry by getting so many people through the door. - Annie Hall won Best Picture, Best Actress (Diane Keaton), Best Screenplay, and Best Director (Woody Allen). It was unusual in that it was a romantic comedy (although one with a Bittersweet Ending). It beat out Julia (a biopic about sticking it to the Nazis) and Star Wars to Best Picture as well. - The Dark Knight was the first comic book movie to win an acting nomination (for Heath Ledger) and only the fifth film based on a comic strip, comic book or graphic novel to earn an acting nomination. note : The others, for those keeping score at home, were the aforementioned Jackie Cooper for Skippy, Al Pacino for Dick Tracy, Paul Newman for Road to Perdition, and William Hurt for A History of Violence. With the pervasiveness of serious Oscar Bait fare, the idea that friggin' Batman can win an Oscar was unreal. Then again, Ledger may have had the advantage of sadly being dead. - The Departed was gritty, violent, and serious, but it was also not a war movie, very profane (relative to most Oscar Bait), and otherwise didn't touch on Oscar-baity subjects. And it won Best Picture. It was directed by Martin Scorsese, who had previously whiffed on the more baity The Aviator and Gangs of New York — although this led some observers to believe that its win was a "lifetime achievement" Oscar to make up for Scorsese not winning for previous line of work. - No Country for Old Men followed up on The Departed and won Best Picture the very next year with the same formula. This, though, was a relentlessly cynical film which won very big — rather than most Oscar Bait, it presents humanity's failure as inevitable and comments on the meaninglessness of the material world. It was also kind of an upset winner over There Will Be Blood — an even bleaker film. - There Will Be Blood was a Period Drama about the oil boom in Southern California during the early 20th century, but that's where the Oscar Bait qualities end - the movie's main character is a ruthless and sociopathic oilman who descends further into madness, greed, and cruelty the more successful he gets throughout the film, and eventually culminates in him driving away all of his loved ones, with his main rival being \|\|a weaselly False Prophet\|\|. - The Hurt Locker, other than being a Post-9/11 Terrorism Movie, had very little going for it on the Oscar front; it had a low budget, no big stars, no big studio to promote it, and not even a political message. It wound up winning Best Picture in 2010, in spite of having at the time the lowest box office numbers of any Best Picture winner ever. One thing that did work in its favor was the narrative of Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first female director to win Best Director — over her ex-husband James Cameron (but some suggest that this was why she wasn't nominated for Zero Dark Thirty a few years later). - The French Connection, the 1971 Best Picture winner, is a gritty and suspenseful genre film with a nihilistic tone. But unlike most Oscar winners, it has a morally ambiguous protagonist and an ending where \|\|The Bad Guy Wins and most of the other villains receive a Karma Houdini\|\|. Some speculate that the Academy gave the win to a film this dark to distance itself from the saccharine musicals that won in The '60s. - The Artist won Best Picture in spite of it being a Silent Movie from 2011. It's not often that Le Film Artistique (or something vaguely resembling it anyway) gets nominations beyond Best Foreign Film, but this one won the whole thing. It helped that it was also an unashamed love letter to Old Hollywood, which probably appealed to Academy viewers. - Quentin Tarantino's films Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained certainly seem like Oscar Bait at first glance, the first being set in World War II and the second tackling American slavery. They wound up getting seven and five nominations respectively. They're also quintessential Tarantino films — fictional and bizarre, so never feeling like Oscar Bait. - Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the least Oscar-friendly movies ever made. It's the fourth film in a franchise that never saw any Oscar attention before, and had its last installment all the way back in 1985. It's a loud, explosive, and unapologetic pure action movie. It has very little dialogue and is essentially a nonstop two-hour car chase scene. And it was released all the way back in May. But it got critical acclaim for its action sequences, Show, Don't Tell storytelling, and hidden themes and was regarded as one of the best movies of 2015, topping more official Top 10 lists than any other. It ended up being an unexpected Oscar contender, being nominated for ten awards (including Best Picture) and winning six, the most of that year. - In the same vein and in the same year as Fury Road, there was The Revenant, an ultraviolent pulp western, which got nominated for many Oscars and won three, including Best Director (Alejandro González Iñárritu's second consecutive win after Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)) and Best Actor (Leonardo Dicaprio's first). - Black Swan is a horror movie, and the director never denied that. (The producers, on the other hand, marketed it as a "Psychological Thriller"). It also features a lesbian sex scene, just to get eyeballs on it. It still got five Oscar nominations and was regarded as one of the best films of the year. - Get Out is a horror movie about a black man in a white suburb and was released in February. It earned acclaim for not only its storyline, but its hidden social commentary, and was nominated for dozens of movie awards, winning quite a few, including the Best Screenplay Oscar, and in doing so became the first horror movie to win a Big Five Oscar since The Silence of the Lambs. - The Shape of Water had one of the most oddball premises ever for an Oscar nominee (a love story between a mute woman and a fish person), which you might think would've alienated the Academy. Instead, it won Best Picture and Director. - Black Panther, the eighteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is a solo film about one of the most popular black superheroes. At first glance, it still feels like your typical superhero movie and the plot is about the hero inheriting the throne of his kingdom only to be challenged by an adversary who wants to lead a global revolution, which is not a common topic for an Oscar Bait. But Black Panther had an edge over the other solo superhero movies because the film touches on social and political issues that have significant cultural importance to the African and African-American communities. It earned many accolades and became the first superhero film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. And like Get Out, it was even released during the dump month of February. - Being (technically) a non-technical category, the Best Animated Feature category is a good place to subvert traditional Oscar Bait, as the following winners and nominees have shown: - Shrek was a subversive, Toilet Humor-involving Fractured Fairy Tale released when most animated movies were Strictly Formula. It was warmly received by critics and not only did it win the inaugural Best Animated Feature Oscar, but it also managed to be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. - Big Hero 6, which won in 2015, heavily touches on death and revenge, two very common Oscar Bait themes... and it's still a superhero movie where one of the main characters is a huggable robot. It ended up the first Marvel-related movie to win any major non-technical category. - Four years later, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse repeated the trick, having themes of loss and redemption, though its main achievement is its artstyle. It earned Sony Pictures Animation an Oscar among many other accolades. - Wreck-It Ralph deserves special mention purely for the fact that it's a video game movie, in an industry not well known for producing quality video game movies. Beyond that, it's about a video game bad guy who wants to prove he can actually be good. No Oscar (it lost to the more Oscar-baity Brave), but several other awards and nominations anyway, including the Best Animated Feature Annie Award over Brave. - Parasite is an interesting case. While it was a South Korean film (let alone the country's first showing for even the now-renamed Best International Film category) against established directors with credbility like Martin Scorsese, Sam Mendes and Quentin Tarantino and ostensible lockins like Joker, it also dealt with Capitalism Is Bad and Eat the Rich themes that made it popular with critics and audiences alike, even netting it a Palme d'Or win (notably one of the few unanimous wins of that prize). Still, the supposed odds against it had many people predicting wins for the aforementioned directors and their films, which wasn't helped by Director Bong Joon-ho making a critical comments toward the Academy by comparing them to "local film festivals" for having a bias towards recognizing "safe" movies, which is why it shocked everyone by setting historical wins by: - Being not just the first South Korean film but the first foreign language film note : while 2011 winner The Artist was a French production, it was also a silent film \|\|with the sole dialogue being in English\|\| to win Best Picture. - Having Bong also win for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. - Making Bong the second person in Oscar history to win four Oscars (together with an aforementioned International Film win, the only category it was considered a lock for caveat : though technically he is not a named recepient in the Best International Feature (it is ascribed to the country of origin)) in one night, a distinction only shared by Walt Disney. - More impressively, Disney's four wins for four different films, all of Bong's wins were for just this one. - Speaking of the Palme d'Or, it was also just the third film in history to win both it and the Best Picture Oscar, this last happening back in 1956 with Marty. - CODA had the disability angle going for it, with a mostly deaf cast, but as a remake of a French film that wasn't particularly known or loved outside France, by a writer-director only making her second feature film, it got lost in the shuffle during awards season and only netted three Oscar nominations. But then it built up tremendous buzz during the Oscar campaign and ended up winning all three nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Troy Kotsur) and Best Adapted Screenplay. - The 2023 Oscars had two major exceptions: - Everything Everywhere All at Once touches on themes of Generational Trauma, nihilism, and is about the reparation of a mother-daughter relationship. Sounds like something the Academy would love. What did you say? It's also a humorous, action-heavy, and very surreal trip into The Multiverse, featuring concepts like a universe where everyone has hot dogs for fingers, sentient rocks, and an everything bagel capable of destroying universes? OK, maybe not so much. But it was distributed by A24, a studio that's carved out a special niche with quirky, auteur-driven Genre-Busting movies that do well with critics and audiences alike, and it became a Sleeper Hit that gradually gained traction throughout the 2022 awards season (and since A24 distributed the aforementioned Moonlight, they know how to navigate the awards circuit). It got eleven Oscar nominations, the most of any film that year, including Best Picture, and became the first film ever to win six of the seven topline Oscars (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, with Best Film Editing giving it a seventh win). - Top Gun: Maverick was the long-awaited sequel to a film that, while a hit with audiences, was never a critical darling, and was a big-budget action Summer Blockbuster released in May. However, it ended up receiving critical acclaim and began to be regarded as one of 2022's best films, which would lead to it getting six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and a surprise nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and eventually won for Best Sound. - Batman Beyond is an odd case of Emmy Bait. The show won an Emmy for the episode "The Eggbaby", which is a comedic slapstick romp that is light-hearted in tone and feels very out of place with the rest of the series. And yet, it won, even though superhero cartoons lived in the sewer of the animation ghetto. note : The producers did this deliberately ## Spoofs of this trope: - The Mask has a shootout sequence where the Mask, after dodging a ridiculous number of bullets, turns into a cowboy and allows himself to be shot — so that he can give several Final Speeches (all Shout Outs to award-winning movies) and die in another characters arms. Then the audience cheers, and he gets up and tearfully accepts an award. Even the mobsters shooting him check their hair and straighten their suits as if they were on TV. - In Wayne's World, Wayne gives a dramatic, teary-eyed note : He didn't actually cry, he just splashed water in his face speech, while the words Oscar Clip are emblazoned over the shot. He even finished it off by claiming to be illiterate, which he then admitted wasn't true after "Oscar Clip" stopped flashing on the screen. - From the Road to ... series: - At the end of Road to Morocco, Bob Hope's character has accidentally blown up the ship, leaving the main cast stranded on a raft. Hope chews up the scenery, acting as if they've been stranded there for weeks. Then the camera pans up to reveal the New York City skyline. Bing Crosbys character tells him to calm down, to which Hope bitterly remarks that theyve ruined his chance for an Academy Award. - In Road to Bali, Crosby finds the Oscar Humphrey Bogart won for The African Queen. Hope points out that Crosby already has an Oscar, snatches the trophy from him, and begins making an acceptance speech. (While Hope was never nominated for a competitive Oscar, he did win four Honorary Oscars and hosted the show a recorded fourteen times.) - In Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, after parodying one of the dramatic scenes from Boyz n the Hood, the main character tells his girlfriend that he's trying to win the Best Black Actor at the Soul Train awards. - In Tropic Thunder: - One of the fake trailers at the beginning of the movie shows Kirk Lazarus and Tobey Maguire playing Irish monks who fall in love with each other in a clearly Oscar-baity film, Satan's Alley. - Action star Tugg Speedman reflects on the failure of his Oscar Bait film Simple Jack, in which he plays a mentally-challenged farmhand. It was a total Box Office Bomb and called one of the worst films of all time. Kirk Lazarus explains that it's because people who won for playing Inspirationally Disadvantaged characters never went "full retard: Speedman: What do you mean? Lazarus: Check it out. Dustin Hoffman , Rain Man : look retarded, act retarded — not retarded. Counted toothpicks, cheated cards. Autistic, sho — not retarded. You know Tom Hanks , Forrest Gump : slow, yes. Retarded, maybe. Braces on his legs. But he charmed the pants off Nixon and won a ping-pong competition. That ain't retarded. And he was a goddamn war hero. You know any retarded war heroes? You went full retard, man. Never go full retard. You dont buy that? Ask Sean Penn , 2001, i am sam . Remember? Went full retard, went home empty-handed. - Lazarus has a lot of experience with these, as he himself is a spoof of Oscar Bait actors. He's a five-time Oscar winner, and that's before Satan's Alley. He mentions having played Neil Armstrong, ticking the "based on a true story" box. His third Oscar was for a Chinese film called Land of Silk and Money, which he prepped for by working eight months in a textile factory. According to supplemental material, one of his five Oscars is for Best Actress, having apparently tackled a Cross-Cast Role, going to extremes with the usual Oscar-worthy physical transformations. In the movie itself, he's attempting that again, having undergone "pigmentation alteration" surgery to play a black man, a move which has generated more in-universe controversy than Oscar buzz. He never breaks character, despite realizing very early on in the film that production is ruined. As the icing on the cake, Robert Downey Jr. actually received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Lazarus. - Want even more icing on the cake? Along with Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe, one of the inspirations for Lazarus is Daniel Day Lewis, an actor who is to Oscar Bait films what Sylvester Stallone is to action films and Julia Roberts is to chick flicks. - At the end of the film, the Oscar for Best Actor is presented. The stills of the nominees include Tom Hanks winning a race in a wheelchair and a blind Sean Penn learning braille. - In Bowfinger, black action star Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) weighs in on the trope: Ramsey: White boys get all the Oscars — it's a fact! Manager: I know that, but look— Ramsey: Did I get nominated? No, and you know why? Cos I havent played any of them slave roles, where I get my ass whipped — that's how you get the nominations! A black dude plays a slave role and gets his ass whipped, they get the nomination; a white boy plays an idiot, they get the Oscar. Maybe Ill split it; find me a script as a retarded slave, then I'll get the Oscar! Manager: (awkward pause) Uh, I'm gonna go schmooze. I'll be right back. (starts to leave) Ramsey: Yeah, and go find that script. Buck the Wonder-Slave! - In Blazing Saddles, villain Hedley Lamarr announces to his gang of thugs near the climax: You will only be risking your lives, while I will almost certainly be risking an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. - The first fifteen minutes of In & Out are rife with references to this trope. Matt Dillons character wins an Oscar for playing a gay soldier unfairly discharged from the military, in a film that appears to be equal parts A Few Good Men, Philadelphia, and Forrest Gump. The actors he beat: Paul Newman for Coot, Clint Eastwood for Codger, Michael Douglas for Primary Urges, and Steven Seagal for Snowball in Hell. - The Naked Gun 33 1/3 includes a scene at the Oscar ceremony, where all the films were ridiculously High Concept, like "the story of one woman's triumph over the death of her cat, set against the background of the Hindenburg disaster," and "the story of one woman's triumph over a yeast infection, set against the background of the tragic Buffalo Bills season of 1971." - Om Shanti Om: Parodied when Om has to play a blind deaf mute with no legs or arms. Sure, critics will love it but his fans will be bored. - Theres a monthly online contest called Bait an Oscar, where contestants write film pitches to be voted on as if they were Oscar contenders. Oddly enough, this is a subversion; most participants tend to be fans of this kind of movie and are genuinely trying to pitch good ideas. - Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: - Parodied in this spoof video done by BriTANicK.com and hosted on Cracked. It was such a spot-on parody that it even got its own page on TV Tropes, A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever. Catchphwase! - Kickassia has this in every scene regarding Spoonys attempts to avoid giving in to the madness ( i.e. his Enemy Within Dr. Insano). He even engages in Ham-to-Ham Combat with it. - In the third segment of Linkaras History of Power Rangers series, he shows a clip of Bulk and Skull trying to save a bunch of kids from drowning in a lake. They run down the pier in slow motion with inspirational music. Linkara responds by putting "Oscar Clip" at the bottom of the screen. (And it turns out the lake was knee-deep and the children were just playing.) - Nerd To The Third Power host Dr. Gonzo swore up and down that Precious would win Best Picture (based on his belief that Oscar winners were always the most depressing movie on the docket), because it's about an underprivileged black rape victim who gives birth to an incest baby with down syndrome. I haven't even seen the movie and I already want to kill myself! It has to win!" (It didnt; The Hurt Locker did.) - 11points.com had an 11 Points Countdown webisode about the 11 Least Deserving Best Picture Winners, which claimed that The English Patient and The King's Speech were Oscar Bait. One of the commentators even says that The King's Speech was blatantly pandering to the older Academy voters, saying that it wouldn't have looked out of place winning Best Picture in 1965. - On Midnight Screenings, Brad Jones says he thinks calling a film Oscar Bait is an overused criticism. But he says he thinks it fits at least the trailer for the film of The Book Thief. - CollegeHumor made a video on this topic titled 21 Steps to Making an Oscar Movie, including: high-contrast low-saturation lighting, suspenseful piano music, period clothing, disability, drug addiction, low camera angle, suicide, and a lot of other clichés. - Game Theorist Matthew Patrick on his second channel Film Theory spends fifteen minutes discussing the formula yielding the highest statistical chance of winning an Oscar. - Super Deluxe released an Oscar contender trailer for Straight Outta Compton, with the joke being that the film was made more appealing to the Academy voters by presenting it as an uplifting White Man's Burden movie about the group's Jewish manager. - The Nostalgia Critic gives a fierce Take That! to Selma, The Blind Side, 12 Years a Slave, and Django Unchained when Malcom refers to them as "White Guilt Oscar Bait movies" and points out the only reason he likes them is because The Critic always takes him out to dinner after they watch one. - Honest Trailers mocked Anne Hathaway's role as Fantine in Les Misérables (2012) as this, crediting her as "I Really Really Really Wanted To Win An Oscar". - A hilarious musical performance actually took place at the 79th Academy Awards, featuring Will Ferrell and Jack Black lamenting about how they never win Oscars for their comedy. They sing about beating up serious actors in the audience until John C. Reilly joins them on stage and tells them that they should also do serious films from time to time like he does. Reilly: Fellas! This madness must stop, there is no need to fear, you can have your cake and eat it too, just look at my career! I didn't cry when I would lose, I didnt pick silly fights, I chose to be in both Boogie and Talladega Nights ! Don't just be clowns, 'cause then you're just bores, mix it up, and Oscars shall be yours! Black: He's right! I'm gonna re-read that script about the guy who gets lead poisoning and then sues a major corporation, there's not a laugh in there! Farrell: And I'm gonna take that project about the guy with no arms and legs who teaches gangbangers Hamlet !	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OscarBait
Our Banshees Are Louder - TV Tropes Many have heard the beginning of its low, sustained shriek but few the end. "The banshee wails her horrible song! The bone-charring sounds rip your heart apart! You die..." Here we have the ghostly women who originate from Celtic Mythology. They are usually noted for their voices, which are either hauntingly hypnotic wails, or blood-curdling screams. Traditionally, hearing a banshee wail is a Portent of Doom, though this is often Sadly Mythtaken for the wail itself being a sonic attack or Brown Note that causes death, which to be honest is a lot cooler and a lot scarier, and makes for a more active antagonist. They are also prominent in Irish legends, where many of the more well-known banshee stories come from, as being a type of fairy typically connected to a single family. Believe it or not, their crying was actually due to mourning for members of the family who were already about to die, which often served to warn others of their loved one's death; if she's screaming at all, she's screaming in grief rather than as a threat and she herself means no harm, as it's only her job to warn the family. It was actually a privilege for a family to have a Banshee. There have been stories of banshees haunting families even as late as the 19th Century. And, as often in the original folklore, the fairy woman might be explicitly described as a ghost; The Fair Folk were a little unclear about the edges. In modern fiction, along with the above-mentioned sonic attack, they are usually depicted as purely a type of undead or ghost, without a hint of The Fair Folk. A clue to their origin can be found in their name; bean sídhe can be translated as "fairy woman". ## Examples: - The Ancient Magus' Bride: Silver Lady was originally a banshee who's entire clan died and thus herself was on the verge of death until Spriggan took her to Elias' house when it was under the care of another who followed the old ways and transformed into a silky. - Magic: The Gathering has several banshee cards. They are typically Black creatures with abilities that weaken other creatures or injure players without discrimination. - Corto Maltese: In one story, Corto meets an Irish girl named Banshee and asks her why she was given such an inauspicious name. She dodges the question, but she isn't, as far as the story goes, a supernatural creature. - The DCU has Jeanette, of the Secret Six, and Superman's foe the Silver Banshee. The banshee of the DCU are typically mystical in origin, receiving immortality, superstrength, and a hideous scream that can kill those who hear it. - Superman: - Villainess Siobhan McDougal, a.k.a. Silver Banshee. In order to affect you, Silver Banshee has to know your True Name. Her power doesn't work on Superman because she doesn't know his birth name is neither Superman nor Clark Kent, but Kal-El — or, at least, it won't kill him, but it will cause intense pain. An absurdly loud sound, at close ranges, being heard by someone whose ears are sensitive enough to pick up a whisper from across the city? Not fun. However, if she does know your true name, her scream is less "standard sonic attack" and more "Brown Note as you're forced to relive her botched beheading". - Death & the Family reveals that Siobhan was transformed into an ageless banshee by her clan as part of a leadership test. When facing Silver Banshee, Supergirl touches her clan's heirlooms, is possessed by the spirits of the McDougals and turned into another banshee. - In Supergirl (2011), Silver Banshee gets reimagined, this time a girl named Siobhan Smythe who inherited a family curse, and became a friend of Supergirl. She retains the hideous scream, which now lays waste to anything around, but also gets the power to speak any language, even alien or animal, after hearing only a few words. Her father, who she inherited the curse from, became one of the undead, feeding on others' souls. - Death Vigil: Banshees' screams are enough to blow Sam halfway across a graveyard and paralyze him until Bernie intervenes. - Dylan Dog: In one story, Dylan meets a girl named Banshee, who brings death and bad luck to all those who are close to her. Of course, our hero tries to seduce her and break the nefarious curse by surviving himself. - X-Men: Banshee was a male mutant with a supersonic scream and bizarre flight powers. His daughter, incidentally, was originally called Siryn. Having accepted her father's death, Siryn has taken on his name — including a Lampshade Hanging that she was never quite sure why he named himself after a female spirit in the first place. Writer Roy Thomas had actually meant for Banshee to be a woman, but Stan Lee decided that a male character would be better. When Siryn was created, Thomas' reaction was "that was what Banshee was supposed to look like all along!" So, with Siryn's taking on the name, the Banshee he'd created has finally arrived... and it only took thirty years. But hey, Legacy Characters can take a while. - Child of the Storm has the traditional Marvel male Banshee, Sean Cassidy, who's Irish-American by background (though he moved to Ireland a long time ago), like in the First Class film, which probably explains why he picked it for a name: he heard about the banshee, connected it to his powers, but didn't realise that they're all women. A friendly experienced super-hero and Old Soldier who looks several decades younger than he is, he's nevertheless extremely dangerous. For starters, unlike his comics counterpart, he has absolutely no compunction about killing with his Make Me Wanna Shout powers if he deems it necessary, and having spent decades refining his powers, knows a number of horrifying methods of doing so (and that's before you get on to whatever he did with his Compelling Voice during a Roaring Rampage of Revenge when his wife was killed by an IRA cell that ended up giving Nick Fury nightmares). All in all, he's not someone you want to cross. - Harbinger (Finmonster): Ember McLain (from Danny Phantom) is a banshee instead of a ghost. According to her, they're people chosen by the Fates, neither ghosts nor fairies. Ember appears to have Magic Music, channeled through the literal Strings of Fate on her guitar, and she leeks creepy black tears when she detects evil forces nearby. And since she's from Ireland, she has a Funetik Aksent. - Son of the Western Sea has a banshee appear as a white haired woman with bloodshot eyes, whose wail induces grief and mourning for people the listener knows that have died. Most of them retreated under the hills ever since the Olympians influence spread to Ireland and they do not like demigod children of the Olympians. - The Discworld of A.A. Pessimal has Brigid O'Hooligan, a girl from the remote nation of Hergen, who is a Banshee. In her case, she is a shapeshifter who can Change from human to banshee form and back again. As she is also capable of flying without artificial or magical aid, and is generally a pleasantly-disposed law-abiding young girl, she has been snapped up by the City Air Watch as a Fledgeling. (Air Cadet). - In Irish and Scottish folklore, the banshee (or bean-sidhe) is a fairy-woman and often guardian spirit of the old Gaelic families who can foretell death in "her" family. She wails and cries through the night to warn the family that one of them will soon die; if the family hears her crying three nights in a row, they know that they should begin planning a funeral. As she can foretell death in the family that she protects, the banshee is also grieving with the family as well as warning them of impending death. When multiple mná-sídhe (plural of bean-sidhe) are heard wailing at once, it foretells the death of an important political or religious figure. She is heard more often than seen, and most often the banshee is depicted as old and menacing, but she can also appear as a strikingly beautiful woman of any age that suits her. - Another variation from Scottish folklore is the bean-nighe, a ghostly woman who is seen sitting by a stream and washing the clothes of those who are soon to die. - In Brazilian Folklore, it is said that the singing or presence of the american barn owl or common potoo indicates someone is going to die. More similar to the Banshee, the Bradador ("screamer"), a lost spirit who has to pay for his sins, and the Corpo-Seco ("dry body"), a wicked man cursed to wander as a shriveled corpse after his soul was denied an after life and Earth rejected his grave, give unbearable screams in agony at night. - Much of Latin America believes in the legend of La Llorona, the spirit of a woman who died after she drowned her children and cannot enter Heaven until she has found them; she is heard crying "¡Ay, mis hijos!" ("Oh, my children!") as she searches for them. Those who hear her crying supposedly are doomed to die soon. - The langsuir of Malaysian Mythology is the flying ghost of a woman who died in childbirth with long fingernails and the ability to turn into an owl. They eat fish and can be Brought Down to Normal by plugging the whole in the nape of their neck. - One of the last monsters encountered in Caverns of the Snow Witch is a Banshee inhabiting a cavern that you must cross, in order to complete a ritual to lift the Death Curse inflicted upon you. While the Banshee herself won't attack you, her scream is loud enough to drive you insane into trying to attack her (unless you drank a potion made from a dragon's egg), leading to a difficult battle against a SKILL 12 boss when your STAMINA is likely very low at this point. - The Banshee's Warning, a short story written in 1867 by Charlotte Riddell, concerns a doctor who is seemingly haunted by a banshee despite leaving his family behind in Ireland to make his fortune in London. This banshee resembles as a shoeless old woman dressed in rags, able to appear and disappear at will. Only the doctor is able to see or hear her (though his dog seems to sense and cringe away from the banshee's wails), an he fears that the banshee's sudden appearance portends demise either for a member of his family or for one of his patients. The banshee wakes the doctor in the middle of the night with a warning to get to his hospital, where he meets \|\|the young son of the woman his parents refused to allow him to marry — his own son, from their pre-marital dalliance — who has suffered a mortal injury. The young boy can see the banshee as well; the doctor correctly guesses this to mean that his son-and-patient won't survive the night.\|\| - Book of Imaginary Beings: As no one has ever actually laid eyes on one, banshees don't seem to be tangible creatures so much as a dismoded keening that comes to houses in the Scottish Highlands to foretell the imminent death of a resident. - David And The Phoenix: The protagonists meet a Banshee... who declares that she's sick of being a Banshee and not getting paid for her work, and she takes up witchcraft instead. She can still whip up a mean Banshee's Wail, however, which \|\|the protagonists use as a sonic weapon against the scientist stalking the Phoenix\|\|. - Discworld gives us two different varieties of Banshee. It's not clear that they are really related; they appear in different books, and behave very differently. Terry Pratchett may just have used the same word twice, years apart, for two different ideas, or in-setting, the word may just have been used for two different entities with terrifying cries and an association with death that were understandably confused by people. - There's "civilized" type, which as per the myth typically wails when someone is about to die — though the one we meet has a some kind of shyness problem or speech impediment, so he just slips a note under their door. This type seems to have a supernatural sense for when someone is doomed, and is probably an actual supernatural creature. The one depicted hung out with the local undead support group; it's never really established if he was undead himself or just spending time with the other supernatural outcasts, but the term is rather broad in that universe in any case (including werewolves and bogeymen for example), with the definition seemingly being "it often comes from Uberwald and it's really, really hard to kill". - The "feral" variety seems to be a natural creature — the only sentient species on the Disc that has evolved natural flight. They also wail when someone is about to die, but in this case it's generally because they're cutting out the middleman and hunting you down themselves. Basically, they're efficient predators with a cry that can be used to terrify prey. The one we meet works as a hired killer, and is good at its job. - Dragonlance: Banshees are the typical D&D kind, as that's the setting of the novels. The most noteworthy banshees in that setting are the three former elven clerics who sabotaged Lord Soth's quest to stop the Cataclysm, since they were part of the elf supremacist conspiracy that led to it, in the belief that they could force the Gods of Good to empower them to wipe out all evil races. Because of that, they are cursed to constantly tell the story of how their own blind arrogance led to the destruction of the old world and their own damnation. - The Florentine Codex: Some believe that La Llorana has her roots in one of eight supposed bad omens described in the book. For several nights, inhabitants of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan heard a haunting, mournful female voice crying out My children, it is already too late, and My children, where can I take you? This was retroactively seen as a warning of the imminent Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. - In The Gypsies in the Wood, an in-universe series of twee English children's stories features a stereotypical leprechaun with a housemaid named Brenda Banshee. The Every Episode Ending of these stories is Brenda howling with distress after being punished for misbehaving. - In Harry Potter, a Boggart turns into one when it's Seamus' turn; she's described as 'a woman with floor-length black hair and a skeletal, green-tinged face'. Seamus uses the Riddikulus spell to make her lose her voice. - The Icewind Dale Trilogy: In The Halfling's Gem, Drizzt do'Urden and Wulfgar have to fight a classic D&D-style banshee. \|\|Both sides survive, because the local village actually relies on the fact that a banshee lairs nearby for tourism, and Drizzt and Wulfgar promised not to destroy her.\|\| This is a plot point because her lair holds the enchanted mask that lets Drizzt pass as a plain old elf to avoid the obvious problems of being recognized as a dark elf on the surface and that eventually \|\|falls into the hands of Artemis Entreri\|\|. - SERRAted Edge, by Mercedes Lackey, has a male Banshee as an enemy of the elves, with a painful false etymology (mixing Gaelic with Old English) that banshees are the bane of the Sidhe. - Shadowfae, by Erica Hayes, features banshees with siren-like abilities. These banshees seem to be a type of fae with a magical affinity for sound rather than death, although they can kill with a song or scream if they want to. They can also cast a variety of spells through song, manipulate humans, and secrete venom from beneath their tongues that they can use as an additional weapon besides their voices. Their magical affinity for sound gives them preternatural hearing but also gives them the ability to filter sounds so they don't get overwhelmed by auditory stimuli, as well as enhancements to their inner ear that give them extraordinary balance and agility. They all look like attractive human women, but with unusually colored hair and eyes, and usually their eyes and hair are of different but unnaturally bright neon or metallic colors. They are known for being violent, lustful, and usually just a little psychotic, and in one book, a banshee is employed as an enforcer and bodyguard for a supernatural version of the mob. They are born with innately magical voices, but their magic can be taken from them by some other kinds of supernatural beings who use the banshee's voice magic for themselves. - In Shaman of the Undead, banshees are people who can predict somebody's death and, more often that not, they're also the ones to deliver it. Oddly, wailing not included. - Soul Screamers has Kaylee, who carries on the banshee wail whenever someone is near-death. - The Spiderwick Chronicles: Banshees are detailed in the series' field guide. They are described as ghost-like beings that appear around homes when an occupant is about to die, wailing without end. A single individual can appear by the same home for generations. - In Too Many Curses, Bethany the banshee haunts Margle's castle, immaterial and imperceptible except when foretelling disaster. As she's a sociable sort, eager for any excuse to chat with the castle's other residents, she shamelessly stretches the definition of "disaster" to include such grave tragedies as over-salted soup or a bruised shin. - In Charmed (1998), banshees are spirits attracted to heartbroken humans; they use their high-pitched screams to kill them. If they use their screams on a witch \|\|the witch turns into a new banshee\|\|. - The Imperfects: Tilda is a banshee who also has Super Hearing. \|\|In Episode 7, she learns to use her powers through a phone call\|\|. - In Lost Girl, banshees are a type of Fae who get involuntary premonitions of death. They don't consciously know who, how, or when, only that it's someone around them, that it has to be a member of one of the ten Noble Families (five human, five Fae) and that it will be soon. They do keep the details subconsciously, however, and it can be forced out of them using iron, to which they're highly allergic. In the relevant episode they used a liver shake. - In The Quest a banshee haunts the bog that the players have to cross in one episode and must be placated with an offering. - So Weird: Fi fears that a banshee has come for her Irish grandfather. - In Teen Wolf, \|\|Lydia\|\| is eventually revealed to be one. This comes with the ability to sense death and a piercing scream. In this universe, banshees scream to drown out noises that might distract them from listening on a psychic wavelength only they can hear. They can also use their scream to purposefully hurt other supernaturals, as fellow banshee Meredith demonstrates later on. - Henry Cowell's "The Banshee" utilizes a technique of plucking and scraping against the strings of a piano in order to mimic a banshee's wail. The piece is also reminiscent of a certain other horror music trope. - The folk song "The Banshee's Cry" by The Irish Rovers is about a banshee haunting the Kavanagh family. In line with Irish folklore, this Banshee wails when a Kavanagh is due to die soon and is explictly described as a "member of the fairy folk". By the end of the song, the narrator, Frankie Kavanagh, is the last member of the family left alive. - Siouxsie and the Banshees are named for them, of course. - The bean-chaointe ("keening woman") is the human equivalent of the banshee. The Gaels of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man have a currently defunct keening tradition, the practice of ritualized singing and wailing for the dead. "Keening" is derived from the Gaelic verb caoin, meaning "to weep, to mourn/lament" and the verb caoineadh ("weeping") also refers to a musical style, a lament for the dead. A keening-woman would be hired by the family of the deceased to lead the community through their grief, with the keening occurring at the graveyard and the keening-woman (or bean-chaointe in Gaelic) would sing and wail a semi-improvised lament with the rest of the mourners joining at least during the chorus, the whole performance often punctuated with sobs. It was a way of helping the family and the community through their grief as well as a means of ensuring that the soul of the departed with reach Heaven, The Otherworld, or wherever spirits seek to go. The wealthier the family of the deceased, the more keening-women that they would hire. The caoineadh usually consisted of stock elements (the illustrious ancestry of the deceased, their good qualities, and the heavy hearts of their surviving family and friends) and was often half-improvised, complete with beating your hands and tearing at your hair. - Lore mentions banshees, most notably in episode 112. - Betrayal at House on the Hill: One of the possible hauntings is a banshee of the ghostly type. - Dungeons & Dragons: Banshees have shown up throughout the game's history, although older editions refer them as "Groaning Spirits". They're pretty nasty because they're essentially ghostly undead of usually elvish origin whose wail (at least at full power; in at least some editions it has limited uses per day) forces anyone in range to save or die on the spot. The Wail of the Banshee spell allows a high-level wizard (or sorcerer in 3rd edition) who knows it to mimic this, although each casting is only good for one such attack. - Games Workshop games: - In Warhammer 40,000, the Eldar Aspect Warriors of the Howling Banshee shrines take on the image of the banshees of Eldar myth who were said to be the heralds of death an ill-fortune. The Howling Banshees go to war wearing masks that contain psychosonic amplifiers that magnify their battle cries into piercing screams that can destroy the minds of their foes. - In Warhammer, the Vampire Counts army, banshees are ethereal undead whose screams can stop the hearts of weak willed enemies. Depending on the edition of the game, banshees either act on their own or lead units of wraiths. - In Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, Tomb Banshees are a part of the Nighthaunt hosts, swarms of ethereal undead that plague the mortal realms. The Tomb Banshees themselves are the souls of women who have been slighted and betrayed who have returned to the Mortal Realms to take revenge on the living. Their piercing scream is enough to freeze the life of any they encounter. - Orpheus: Banshees are a Shade of ghost/projector. In keeping with the name, their major talents are the ability to see the future and a wail that can either control emotions or shatter your eardrums. - Scion: The original Celtic breed show up in Scion Companion, under their original name of bean sidhe ("sidhe" is pronounced "shee"). Since White Wolf has Shown Their Work, they're fixated on death but aren't particularly big on screaming. - Shadowrun: - Banshees are elven vampires (well, elven victims of the HMHVV virus). They aren't really much for screaming, but they do feed by using their Emotion Eater powers to induce fear and drive people to exhaustion. - Bean sidhe are entirely different things, being spiritual beings closely tied to certain Scottish and Irish families. They wail to announce the imminent deaths of these families' members, and are apparently in good standing among Europe's spiritual entities — summoned spirits and elementals simply refuse to oppose them. Some bean sidhe, however, go mad and use their wails to spread death indiscriminately, and these other spirits have no qualms about fighting. - Archon features the Banshee as a Dark unit, the equivalent to Light's Phoenix in mechanics while being the strategic opposite of the Valkyrie. Both are fast moving units with an area of effect attack to damage foes- represented as the Banshee's wail with an accompanying single pitch note. While not as powerful as the Phoenix's immolation burst, it compensates by letting the Banshee move during the attack. - Blood has ghosts which screamed. You got used to AAAAAH! AAAAH! AAAAH! as you had to fight these things. Their screaming didn't do any damage but holy hell, it was loud. - Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has the Cyhyraeth, who is for all intents and purposes a Welsh banshee. It's a notorious Beef Gate with incredibly powerful attacks, the ability to inflict the Curse status, and a slew of resistances that cover most available early-game weaponry and Shards. - Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia: One of the enemies in the English version is called the Banshee (in Japan, it was an onryo). One quest requires you to record its scream on a phonograph. - In City of Heroes, Cabal bosses with sonic attacks are called "Bane Sidhe," and their description makes the intended folk etymology explicit. - In Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly, Riona has sullen dark eyes, pale purple skin, and stringy blue hair, and her wails are believed to curse people with bad luck. Her screams get worse and her hair frizzes up when she gets angry, and she causes a blackout at the café in one particular fit. As a semi-spiritual being, she disappears when she dies. - Daily Life With Monster Girl Online, now defunct, had Nia the banshee. As the name of the game implies, Nia is a Cute Monster Girl almost indistinguishable from a human besides her Mystical White Hair and red eyes. Personality-wise she's entirely benevolent: she's described as a total woobie prone to crying jags when she randomly remembers an unfortunate event, and she enjoys animes with happy endings. Whether she has a sonic scream or anything of the sort is unclear, but unlikely. - Elvira II: Jaws of Cerberus: Two banshees, depicted as withered ugly women, are chained to the walls at the entrance to the dungeon level. Their wails damage you, so you need to kill them both quickly. - Fable: - Fable has Screamers, which fit the appearance, being floating female ghost-like creatures whose mouth outstretches as they scream while rush towards their prey, and their attacks drain life directly, ignoring both armor and Physical Shield. - Fable II: Banshees are enemies that tend to be accompanied by Undead Children. - The Final Fantasy series has a few Mooks called banshees, generally either sprite or pixie-like creatures or undead of various stripes. The Final Fantasy XII incarnation (which is a zombie) is distinguished by having as its signature move the strongest of the game's many sonic attacks. - Halo: Averted with the Covenant Banshee flyer, which is actually rather quiet. - In Mass Effect 3, the Reapers turn humanoid species into cyborg-zombies. When it's done to the Always Female race of Blue Skinned Space Babes with Psychic Powers, the result is called a Banshee for good reasons. In addition to a psionic scream that targets any nearby creatures, they can also cross large distances in a fraction of a second and make turns around corners, making it very hard to stay away from them. Joker: Mutating people to turn them into living weapons is one thing, but the yelling? Why make them yell?! That's totally uncalled for! - Miitopia: Banshees appear as enemies, but their gimmick is crying instead of shouting. Their Crocodile Tears can inflict the Crying status on the playable Miis. There is another variant, the Basheevil, who instead turn Miis evil. - Mortal Kombat's Sindel fits the criteria thanks to her Banshee Scream attack and ghostly appearance. She even returned from beyond the grave in her debut. - Mystery Case Files: The "Frozen Lady" in Dire Grove is identified as a banshee. She doesn't have a scream attack, but when you can freeze a good chunk of England solid while still mystically bound, do you need one? - Nancy Drew: Nancy investigates banshee sightings in The Haunting Of Castle Malloy. \|\|Turns out it's a weird old hermit woman who'd been spotted flying around with a jetpack.\|\| - Nexus War: The Doom Howler in Nexus Clash is louder to the tune of up to three different screaming-related attacks. The most basic one merely demoralizes the enemy, but the worst can kill huge numbers of people if left uninterrupted. - Pokémon: Misdreavus and its evolution Mismagius are a relatively lighthearted take on banshee, as they use their cries to scare others for fun as often as they use them to battle. Perish Song, which causes both combatants to faint if they listen to it for three rounds, appears to be their Signature Move, though other Pokemon can use it. They're portrayed as ghosts/witches rather than fairies, and can be male. - Quake IV: Played With with the Strogg Iron Maidens. They hover and teleport like ghosts, scream like banshees, and emerge from a coffin-like enclosure that's inspired by the Iron Maiden execution device. - Shadowgate: A banshee makes a brief appearance in the form of a Jump Scare. - Smite: The first Assassin to ever grace the Celtic Pantheon is the original Banshee from the myth herself, Cliodhna. She also comes with the ability to phase through walls just in case of causing a Jump Scare followed by the signature banshee scream. - Starcraft II: Referenced with the Banshee, a ground-attack chopper with Screamer missiles and cloaking capabilities. The pilot has a few lines on its namesake. Holler back. Screamin' fury. In space, everyone can hear me scream... 'cuz I'm the banshee, get it? - The Force Unleashed has the character of Shaak Ti as one of the bosses on the planet Felucia who has a sonic scream attack which can summon native Felucians to attack the player during the contest and sounds uncannily like a Banshee wail. - Warcraft banshees are Undead units who attack with their high-pitched screeches. They function as spellcasters, making enemies miss, rendering units invulnerable to magic, or possessing enemies. They were once High Elves whose bodies and souls were defiled by the Scourge, forcing them to exist as bitter, spiteful ghosts. - The most notable Banshee is Sylvanas Windrunner. Originally forced into a ghostly state as a final cruelty by Arthas, she was the first Banshee and became the "Banshee Queen". As a reward for her service to Arthas, she eventually received her original (now undead) body to possess. - They also show up in World of Warcraft, unsurprisingly. Part of them keep their long-range wail attacks while others melee the player, most still use curses that reduce stats or make the target miss. At least one (a boss) can temporarily possess players. - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: The Blood and Wine expansion has banshees as enemies. Appearance-wise and in functionality they are a specter enemy similar to higher wraiths like the noon and night variant, but with a sonic scream that can stun Geralt and the ability to summon skeletons to harass him. Lorewise they are closer to the original folklore: they are drawn to death and misfortune and weep over it, but despite not being particularly malicious they are still considered a bad omen. - Arthur: A banshee appears during an Imagine Spot in one episode. Binky slams the door on her. - Big Mouth represented menopause as a banshee with sharp teeth. However, she is nice and friendly (if a bit wild and frightening, much like the kids' hormone monsters), and she advises Barbara that this next chapter of life is hers to live. (And that she can now enjoy sex without having to worry about getting pregnant again.) She helps Barbara to stand up for herself, and to escape from a sinkhole that ended up destroying half of Florida. - Casper the Friendly Ghost: Casper's teacher Ms. Banshee, who had a particularly powerful scream. - Catscratch: A banshee appears in an episode when Gordon seeks to confirm whether or not he's really Scottish. - Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers had an Oireland episode with a banshee in it. - DuckTales (1987): In "Luck o' the Ducks", Far Daric sends a banshee to scare Scrooge and company away, so the leprechauns won't have to grant Scrooge's wish for the leprechaun king's gold. - The Extreme Ghostbusters fought Banshee sisters; one was the stereotype, the other could use her voice to hypnotize people. It was a trap: the Siren was the carrot, the Banshee the stick. In the episode, the banshee and siren could stay young if they stole the youth of humans. So, they would use the siren to lure young people in, and the banshee would then steal the youth. - Filmation's Ghostbusters had a banshee, but its screams created storms, and only a leprechaun's magic could stop it. It's inaccurate, but then again, the show seems to treat banshees as a type of ghost with different variations. - Gargoyles features the villainous Banshee, who is one of Oberon's Children, when the characters visit Ireland as part of the Avalon World Tour arc. She has a small cameo in a later episode when she refuses to answer Oberon's summons; as punishment, she's dragged back by the Weird Sisters and gagged indefinitely. - In The Leprechauns' Christmas Gold, the villain was a banshee named Mag the Hag, who was capable of causing storms and cataclysms, but unless she received gold willingly by Christmas Day, she would transform into tear drops and be washed away forever. \|\|This happens to her at the end\|\|. - The Real Ghostbusters: - In the episode "Banshee Bake a Cherry Pie?", the group had to stop an Irish rock star who actually was a banshee and was scheming to use her powers to destroy the entire United States through a broadcast concert. - Kenner's toyline has a monstrous "Banshee Bomber" in its ghostly ranks. It's a large, red, dragon-like creature that drips "Ecto-Plazm" [ sic] from its mouth. - In Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths and Legends Banshees are an all female race of aliens with the ability to fly and shoot energy blasts. They also have the ability to tell when a person is in danger of being killed. - Ruby Gloom: Misery is often suspected of being a banshee due to her wailing screeching singing voice, along with her all-female family, although it's not official. She also serves as a herald of misfortune, but mainly to herself. - In Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo, Scooby and the gang face a number of threats, including a banshee that was imported to America because the castle it had been associated with in Ireland had been brought, brick by brick, to the U.S. Shockingly, in the Scooby-Doo tradition, it turned out to be a fake. - In X-Men: The Animated Series, Banshee makes an appearance, and he flies by screaming. So, naturally, at one point he has to give Wolverine a ride. Logan is not happy about this. - The Irish and Scottish tradition of keening (singing a lament combined with wailing) over the body during the funeral procession and at the burial site is strikingly similar to the death wail of the Banshee - "Keen" comes from the Gaelic verb "caoin", meaning "to cry/weep, to mourn" and its active article "caoineadh" ("weeping", "crying", "wailing") can also be translated as "elegy/lament". The caoineadh itself was often composed and performed in an improvised way, with at least one keening woman (bean chaointe) hired to lead the rest of the mourners, who generally joined with the chorus. The caoineadh generally consisted of stock poetic elements (the genealogy of the deceased, praise for the deceased, emphasis on the sorrow of those left behind etc.) set to vocal lament. The tradition of keening-women is described here, plus a few surviving recordings. - Another potential source of inspiration for the Banshee's blood curdling screams comes in the form of the screeches and screams of the barn owl, one of the most common owls and most widespread birds on Earth. Since barn owls have a thick layer of feathers that help them hunt and fly in almost complete silence, someone walking in the dark would likely have no idea they were in the company of a barn owl and his or her mate or offspring until they heard its screams. Considering that these calls can be quite prolonged, especially if the owl is agitated, it's quite easy to imagine that wanderer being scared out of their skin by the sudden noise. Here's a healthy adult female barn owl giving her best scream. Now imagine that sound coming out of nowhere in the dead of night. Sweet dreams.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurBansheesAreLouder
Angelic Beauty - TV Tropes But one day, an angel of fortune as beautiful and radiant as a thousand suns appeared above the man. She had come to save him, and lifted him out of the hole with ease. With her beauty by his side, the man started to become admired and respected by everyone. Heavenly beings that demonstrate their goodness and divinity through their equally beautiful physical appearance. We all know angels in traditional religion run the gamut from being light-based mind shattering horrors to the basically human, and the human flavor are almost always divinely hot. This rule is almost without exception. This trope is largely derived from Greek theories of divinity and beauty. Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle thought that the gods were closer to Goodness Itself than humans and as such should be more perfect in all dimensions, including aesthetics. This theory that ultimate goodness includes perfect beauty would become re-popularized in the context of the angels around The Renaissance, after philosophers like Thomas Aquinas and artists like Petrarch attempted to fit the Greek theory of beauty into Christianity. As one would expect, this is an exceptionally popular trope in Renaissance and Romantic-era religious Art. More Old Testament based descriptions of angels and God appearing as benevolent terrors that kill those who see them would go out of style until modern internet culture's obsession with making things Darker and Edgier. Even still, if a work is trying to make a New Testament-looking angel, this is trope they go to, whether in Film, Television, Video Games, or any other new medium. A Sub-Trope of Inhumanly Beautiful Race, when it doesn't apply to human saints, and Beauty Equals Goodness, since the trope relies on the audience assuming physical beauty reflects the inner perfections of the Heavenly Host. The need to make non-humans beautiful also lead to the Winged Humanoid trope, since artists know what beautiful humans look like better than anything and the wings quickly establish divinity, since they're used to fly around Heaven Above. This trope almost always corresponds with God Is Good when it applies to God. If it doesn't then, the work is probably using Light Is Not Good because the audience has a tradition-ingrained association with the divine and the beautiful. Divinely Appearing Demons often imitate the divine by taking on the beauty and light this trope associates with them. Contrast Hot as Hell and Angelic Abomination. Their boss may also be a Hot God as well. Not related to Lovely Angels. ## Examples: - An ad campaign for Lynx deodorant used the tagline "angels will fall", and showed hot female angels plunging from Heaven to earth to be near the guy spraying on Lynx. Axe ran a similar campaign in the US. - Alluded to by the Victoria's Secret Angels, models who advertise Victoria's Secret products, sometimes by wearing winglike structures. - AIR: Kannabi-no-Mikoto. Misuzu \|\|who is the current incarnation of Kanna\|\| is often depicted this way outside the anime. - Ah! My Goddess: Every Goddess (who are themselves Hot Gods) has a very hot and barely-dressed angel to assist them with supernatural stuff. - Angel Sanctuary: In-universe, Adam Kadamon is considered the most beautiful entity god has ever created. - Black Butler: \|\|Ash and Angela\|\| both count, though being pretty is hardly a rare trait. \|\|May become less (or more) sexy when you find out they're the same person.\|\| - Cardcaptor Sakura - Nadeshiko Kinomoto... and that was before she died and transformed into an angel in Heaven. (Lampshaded by her husband when they first met.) - Yue is evocative of this to many fan girls, though whether he is an angel or not isn't clear. He's a creation of Clow, so it's possible he's not a real angel any more than Kerberos, Clow's other creation, is a lion. He certainly looks the part, though. - Tsuki Pro: Half of "Origins" illustration series, depicting the cast of Bishounen idols as angels and demons. - The Vision of Escaflowne: The imagery surrounding the Winged Humanoid race often invokes the trope. - When Hitomi sees Van shirtless and with his wings spread for the first time, she's extremely impressed and tells him "But your wings are beautiful!" - In-story, Van and Folken's very lovely-looking mother Varie was one of them and her husband Gaoh met her when she had her wings extended, which completely fascinated him. - In The Seven Deadly Sins, all supernatural races are beautiful in different ways. The beauty of Goddess Clan members is lithe and ethereal, tending towards white. That's not a metaphor for Caucasian descent- their hair and eyes are true white, variations of silver, blue or pale gold depending on the individual. When the Clan's princess is throwing a lot of power around, it/she burns so brightly that only the colour of her eyes is visible. It's likely the Supreme Goddess deliberately invoked this trope, to make it even easier for her army to make alliances. - Gian Lorenzo Bernini's marble sculptures display godly beauty (muscled bodies, soft features, and unblemished skin) that would become a standard during The Renaissance. - The Apollo Belvedere shows the god casually walking about in a human form, which is of course devoid of all imperfections and fits every Greco-Roman criteria of beauty. The sheer ease of Apollo's walk lets the audience know this isn't one of the forms the gods shapeshift into for the sake of deceit: rather, they are effortlessly beautiful when they are just being them. - The Rape of Proserpina: Proserpina, the goddess of spring, plays it straight by being a cute-looking teenager. Pluto averts it because while his body is muscular, he's a middle-aged man with a face full of wrinkles. - The Birth of Venus (Bouguereau): Venus is a beautiful woman as usual, but she is given an unusual air of purity and divinity thanks to being surrounded by a choir of winged children and minor deities at her birth. - Michelangelo Buonarroti: - His sculpture of an Angel in the Basilica of San Domenico is a child whose hair and wings are so well-ordered that not a feather or hair pops out of place. The whole body of the angel is ordered, making it pleasant to look at, just as the angel's whole being has been ordered to perfection by God. - The David is representing the king's saintliness rather than his literal physical appearance, and as such David is a flawless man deep in thought and full of life. The tell that the sculpture shows his spiritual status as a foreshadowing of Christ is that his penis is uncircumcised despite being a Jewish king. - Pietà: - The dead Christ shows no signs of death, with even his famous wounds reduced to nail marks. Instead, Christ looks like a beautiful man fully alive, with luscious hair, healthy veins flowing down his strong arms, and an expression of serenity that shows the beatitude he shares with the Father and the Holy Ghost as one of the Holy Trinity. - The Virgin Mary doesn't have a wrinkle on her despite the 33-year old son she holds in her arm. She retains all the youthful beauty of a virgin, not only because she is one, but because her Immaculate Conception and mothership of God have made her closer to the source of all life and goodness than any other, allowing the beauty of Paradise to shine in her more than any born of Eve. - Alexandre Cabanel's The Fallen Angel: - The subject of the painting is portrayed as an athletic, handsome young man who has retained his feathery angel wings after his betrayal, although they are black now. - Subverted with the good angels who, upon closer inspection, have poorly-detailed features that aren't ugly but you can't call them beautiful either. - Rosso Fiorentino's The Dead Christ With Angels shows the scourged, crucified, and lanced corpse of the Son of God as a muscular nude flooding with light. There isn't a bruise or a drop of blood on him, to the point that if you didn't know the subject, you'd think he was a sleeping god rather than the corpse of the God. - Raphael Sanzio: - The Archangel Michael in St. Michael Vanquishing Satan is a well-toned, pale-skinned youth with a face at peace and a step as light as can be when crushing the Devil into Hell. Despite being a warrior, Michael shows no sign of scarring or gore since his total contemplation of the Trinity has rendered him immune to the death and suffering Satan has brought into the world; in fact, that beauty is what allows him to crush the deformed demon out of the idyllic landscape of Paradise and into the gaping void of eternal darkness. - Sistine Madonna: - This Madonna is a woman of skin white as snow and hair smooth as silk, both befitting her stainless soul graced by the Holy Spirit and her virginal body wherein God the Son was conceived. - The two cherubim at the bottom of the portrait are portrayed as chubby little children leaning on the fourth wall. Their wistful looks render them positively adorable, which works quite well as a way to make audiences admire and long for their holy innocence. - Sistine Chapel: - In all the ceiling frescoes, God is not shown as a disembodied hand or a collection of light, but as a man with all his natural powers, stretching His massive arms as they create souls and flipping his long locks behind Him to see Day and Night be separated from each other. Michelangelo Buonarroti manages to give God the height of human beauty despite depicting him as an old man; he achieves this by giving God a massive grey beard without any wrinkled skin or emaciated limbs. - Christ in The Last Judgement foregoes the traditional beard and wounds given to Him in traditional art to render him a youthful and pristine Apollo-like figure. His muscles are highlighted by a Holy Backlight just as the light contrasts with his wavy brown hair, all there to show the divine perfection of Christ. - Empowered: Charity, one half of the superhero Divangelic, is dressed as an angel and is quite attractive. - Hellblazer: Subverted, where one demon has such a face... because she ripped it off an actual angel. - Lady Death: Aquiessence◊ was a female angel sent by Heaven to bring the titular protagonist to their side by seducing her with her intoxicating scent. - The Sandman (1989): A pair of angels take the form of immaculate pale-skinned blondes who are as pleasing to the eye as the demons are a torture to look at. - X-Men: Angel is a mutant whose only superpower is having wings but gets so many compliments on his appearance that it's not unreasonable to think he could get mistaken for the real thing if that wasn't a factor in his codename already. - Date with an Angel: The eponymous angel, who gets stranded on Earth after breaking her wing in a collision with a satellite, becomes the face of the 'Celestial Beauty' campaign being run by a cosmetics company. - The Devil's Advocate: The Devil briefly takes on his celestial form at the end after exploding into a fiery rage, essentially looking like \|\|Keanu Reeves\|\| with angel wings. - Ghosts of Girlfriends Past: The final ghost appears as an incredibly beautiful angel in a flowing white dress. - Little Nicky: When Nicky finds himself in Fluffy Cloud Heaven, the angels are all attractive perky women. One of them, played by Reese Witherspoon, reveals that she's his mother. - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: A rejected idea was to have Sauron (who is basically a Fallen Angel capable of altering his shape) appear in his fair form as Annatar to beguile Aragorn during the final battle at the gates of Mordor. This did result in some deleted footage, but was replaced with the Aragorn vs. Troll fight. - The Prophecy: Zigzagged by the different angels. Gabriel is played by the gaunt-looking Christopher Walken, Lucifer is played by an attractive-but-still-scary Viggo Mortensen, Michael is played by leading man Eric Roberts, and Pyriel is an outright Pretty Boy (interestingly, also the most evil of those four). Danyael is good-looking enough to get a human woman to fall in love with him, passing his looks on to his hybrid son. - Reefer Madness: The Musical: In the song "Listen to Jesus, Jimmy!", Jesus is joined by a dozen backup singers/showgirls dressed in sexy angel outfits. - Babylon 5: Ambassador Kosh is seen as such by various races \|\|due to the Vorlon's Ancient Conspiracy to manipulate the younger races into being Vorlon pawns for the coming battle with the Shadows.\|\| - Supernatural: Castiel is this to many fans; Michael, in the form of Matt Cohen and Jake Abel; Anna from Season 4 and 5; Season 6 briefly introduced another female angel named Rachel. Averted with Zachariah. These may not count as this trope however. They use hosts, so technically the fanbase is finding the human hosts pretty, not the actual angels. The angels themselves are actually of the Angelic Abomination variety, but the show has never shown their true forms. The only angel whose celestial form is explicitly described as "beautiful" by another angel is Lucifer, at least before his Fall from Heaven—there are hints that millennia of pure evil has done a number on him. - Demon: The Fallen: While most demons drive mortals who witness their true forms insane with horror, the few who still have low Torment do so with the angelic beauty they retained since the Days of Creation. - Dungeons & Dragons: - Aasimars, people with a celestial being in their ancestry, are frequently quite beautiful. - Devas, angels incarnated in humanoid bodies, are known to have an otherworldly beauty. - Warhammer 40,000: Sanguinius, Primarch of the Blood Angels legion, and his counterpart Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children are Long Haired Pretty Boys and described as the most beautiful of the Primarchs; Fulgrim seemingly being the most physically attractive and Sanguinius radiating a sort of ethereal, not-all-there beauty. This trait also to a lesser degree applies to their chapters, who share a genetic heritage with them. - Arena of Valor: Lauriel◊, as the Archangel, takes on the classical "beautiful blonde female with wings" trope and runs with it with a Stripperiffic outfit. Her Divine Grace skin◊ also does this. - Bayonetta: Zigzags this trope all over the place. Angels take on a wide variety of non-sexualized forms (Winged Humanoids, Dragons, Wheels, and hot rods for starters). However, hit them hard enough and that all falls off. What's underneath is NOT pretty. Played more or less straight however with the Joys, who appear as hot, jiggly women-like humanoids. - Bendy and the Ink Machine: Zig-zagged. The game occurs within Joey Drew Studios, which had a cartoon angel named Alice Angel among its stars. Alice, the cartoon character, has a cute face and an hourglass figure. But then, there are the attempts to bring the cartoon characters into reality by \|\|using the souls of Joey Drew's employees\|\| — two of which are versions of Alice, known as \|\|Susie\|\| and \|\|Allison\|\|. The first of these that Henry encounters is incredibly deformed and also happens to be criminally insane. The second is much more attractive and much kinder — enough that a halo can be seen over her head with the seeing tool. - Darksiders: Uriel (yes, that Uriel) is, as a notable departure from traditional biblical depictions, a dark-skinned blonde Action Girl. - Nexus Clash: Angels have this when they're the angelic classes that don't turn into Clock Punk constructs. The Holy Word really prefer the latter, but someone has to keep up public relations and recruitment. - Omen of Sorrow: Played with with Zafkiel, who is very-good looking but doesn't necessarily appears divine like most examples of this trope, since she is an Fallen Angel that lost contact with her fellow celestials during her quest to hunt evil. She still possess blonde hair and occasionally displays wings to mark her true nature. - Pokémon: The Gardevoir species has a beautiful, feminine appearance (though it's just as likely to be male as female). According to Word of God, it is supposed to resemble an angel, and its Pokédex entries emphasize its protective nature. - Shin Megami Tensei largely averts this. The root-standard "Angel" is a young winged woman... covered in bondage straps, including one over her eyes; it's actually pretty creepy. After that, angels come in two categories: harsh, masculine warrior, or Humanoid Abomination (in other words, close to the Biblical depiction). The only angels that could be described as pretty are Gabriel and Lucifer's angelic form (the one Persona 3 FES dubbed "Helel"). - Star Trek Judgment Rites: One episode has Kirk dealing with holograms representing two separate cultures of single-celled creatures, who claim to be at war with each other. The hologram representing the Omegan culture is a beautiful angelic figure, though his words are anything but angelic. His appearance is enough to convince Ensign Jons, a geneticist brought along for the mission, that the Omegans should be assisted in destroying their enemies. - Cursed Princess Club: During his unhappy days at military boarding school, Prince Frederick becomes obsessed with a fairy tale about one. In it, a man who is ridiculed for being unable to escape a deep hole is rescued by a beautiful blonde "angel of fortune" who becomes his lover, gives him courage to fight a giant serpent, and brings him respect from his peers. This makes Frederick hopeful that an angel of fortune will someday come into his own life. A major reason he is so resistant to his Arranged Marriage to Gwendolyn is because her creepy appearance is nothing like the angel from the tale. Over time, however, he realizes that while Gwen may not look like an angel, she certainly acts like one. - Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Mortis arc features the Daughter, embodiment of the Light Side of the Force, who usually takes the form of a beautiful, young woman, who visibly glows.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurAngelsAreHot
Our Better Is Different - TV Tropes Creative subversion of the omnipresent trope that "higher is better" (e.g., "higher quality", "higher rank", "higher calling"). When this trope is in effect, lower is generally considered better. For example, instead of His Royal Highness talking to a lowly peasant, you might have His Royal Lowliness talking to a higher peasant. Most common in constructed worlds and languages, and especially among nonhumans. Compare Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad. ## Examples: - Discworld's dwarfs & Tales of MU's dark elves, for who lower is better. - Also to Discworld dwarfs, "enlightened" is seen as a negative term, as light makes your pupils contract and can therefore blind you. - Also seen among the demons in Eric and of The Screwtape Letters, who do bad deeds in the hopes of being demoted through the lowerarchy. - Another Discworld example is that trolls believe history is lived backwards, because you can only see what's in front of you, which is the past, so the dawn of time is actually the end, and the sunset is the beginning. - Also, DC Comics' Hell works like this. - The humans in Above Ground are yet another example. - The Dispossessed by Ursula K Leguin: In the Conlang Pravic, the term "more central" is used instead. - Ringworld by Larry Niven: the Puppeteers value cowardice above all things, so their leader is called "The Hindmost". It's also often noted that the rear is the most dangerous position while running away... - In L. Frank Baum's Tik-Tok of Oz, Dorothy is dropped through a hollow tube to the other side of the world. Here, most people are Kings or Queens, with a lesser number of lesser royalty, but there is only one "Private Citizen" who is the most important (to the extent that anyone in the Oz universe has more than local and transient effect). - Used occasionally in Invader Zim, as Zim's alien species has a hierarchy based off of height. - The Addams Family all the freakin' time. A major theme and source of humour is the clash between the family and outsiders and the way the family always reacts pleasantly to horrified reactions because to them their words are compliments. - In Sergey Lukyanenko's Line of Delirium, the Silicoids (floating sentient columns of rock) value stability and balance above all else. As such, their hierarchy is inverted compared to humans. Unlike The Emperor, who rules from the top, Sedimin (the ruler of the Silicoid Basis) rules from the very bottom, supporting the Basis, thus his title is the Foot of the Basis. When the protagonist is thinking of how the Silicoids decide leadership based on a duel to the death, he has to mentally correct himself in that Sedimin did not ascend to his position, as a human would, but descend. - In some games, such as golf, a lower score is better. - Screwtape frequently mentions the Lowerarchy of Hell. - This website by the amusingly named "Doctor DOS Betamax" seems to be dedicated to demonstrating how the normally-held-to-be-technically-inferior DOS is a better operating system than Windows. (A Justified Trope to the extent it demonstrates how the command line and batch files are useful for power users, which many hardcore techies swear by, noting that the command prompt continues to feature in every version of Windows to date for a reason; however, trying to convince us that DOS isn't dead might put it a little too close to Disco Dan territory for some people's liking.) - In a variant of this trope, the song "Ain't Your Fairytale by Sonata Arctica, which is sung from the perspective of a wolf, uses the phrase "the dawn of our way of life" to refer to an end (and the rise of Humankind), inverting the standard (human) symbolism of sunrise as a hopeful beginning and sunset as an end. - In Beneath a Steel Sky, in the "city corporation" the game takes place, living on or near ground level is a sign of high social and economic status, while the poor and people with blue-collar jobs are forced to live thousands of feet above ground, not even allowed to visit lower levels. - "The Author of the Acacia Seeds", by Ursula K. Le Guin, discusses a manifesto written by an ant, which ends, "Up with the Queen!" The narrator notes that to ants, the safe and desirable direction is down, while danger comes from above. Also, the author of the manifesto was a revolutionary. So a better translation would be, "Down with the Queen!"	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurBetterIsDifferent
Ouija Board - TV Tropes A Ouija (roughly pronounced "Weegee", not to be confused with that Weegee— or for that matter, this Weegee or with someone from Glasgow) board has the alphabet, numbers, and a few short words (yes, no, goodbye) written on it, with a pointer called a planchette perched on top of it. At least two people touch the planchette and ask a question of the board. The pointer then may start to move, apparently on its own, and, it is hoped, provide an answer. Ouija boards are Newer Than They Think; they were invented in 1891 (and 'Ouija' is a trademark of Hasbro) and the idea the planchette was moved by spirits started in 1913. The idea is that if there are spirits present, the planchette will move under their power, or someone with one hand under the table and a magnet, or someone a bit away with a remote control. It's usually one of those three. Unless magic and psychic powers are rampant in the work, someone will be accused of moving it themselves, and they will, of course, deny the charge. Before 1973, the Ouija board was considered a harmless toy that, in works as innocuous as I Love Lucy, was depicted a source of fun. However, when The Exorcist was released, the Ouija board was depicted as a mystical device that lured the demon Pazuzu to possess and otherwise plague Regan McNeil. After that monumentally scary movie, the Ouija board was denounced as "the tool of the devil," not that sales suffered much considering it then got an alluring reputation for danger for daring consumers. In Real Life, it's believed the planchette moves because of the ideomotor phenomenon; the people touching the pointer are moving it without realizing they're doing so. However, many people (even those only moderately spiritual) believe that even if the likelihood of contact is exaggerated by horror movies, using an Ouija board is extremely risky, hunk of plastic or not. An older version of the "talking board" was improvised using an upturned wine glass, a reasonably smooth table, and index cards with letters written on them, but in the present day, most people interested in this sort of spirit communication buy commercial Ouija boards. A similar game called "Kokuri-san" is played in Japan. It also requires at least two people. A tori (traditional Japanese gate) is drawn in the middle, surrounded by the alphabet, yes/no and the numbers 0-9, not unlike your usual Ouija board. A window/door is opened to allow the titular spirit in. The players place a coin on the "board" and say "Kokuri-san, Kokuri-san, please come here" or something to that effect. With the coin as a planchette, you ask Kokuri-san questions, and, in theory, said spirit moves the coin to the answer. When finished, you are supposed to say "Kokuri-san, Kokuri-san, please go home" and then destroy the paper, either by burning it or tearing it into bits, and spend the coin before the night is out. Although it is generally considered a "safer" alternative to the Ouija board, since you're less likely to randomly summon a demon instead of your dear late grandmother, Kokuri-san is a Trickster spirit and thus can (and probably will) lie to you. Needless to say, using any of these in a horror film is inadvisable. See also the (allegedly) harmless fortune-telling Magic 8-Ball. ## Examples: - One chapter of Ayakashi Triangle sees Kachofugetsu playing a variant of Kokuri-san channeling "Shiromatsu-sama", the ayakashi Lu thinks is an alien, with a drawing of a UFO instead of a tori. In the English version, Suzu instead compares the game to a Ouija board. Matsuri lets Suzu know he'll move the coin, because "Shiromatsu" was Shirogane shapeshifted into Matsuri's original form. Once Yayo starts asking if Soga and Matsuri are in love, Shirogane himself stands in the window sill and telekinetically moving the coin to answer in the affirmative until it turns into a tense game of tug-of-war with Matsuri. - In Gugure! Kokkuri-san, "Kokkuri-san" is a mythical god that control ouija boards. - The girls in Noein use one to try to figure out what's bothering Haruka (who is being hunted by people from Another Dimension). It spells out the name of the Big Bad: Noein, although at the time none of them knew what that meant. - In Shaman King, Tamao uses a variant of this to perform divination's, in her initial appearance she is presented as being so shy as to be using it for regular communications as well. - One chapter/episode of xxxHolic focuses on schoolgirls playing "Angel-San"; featuring a desk that has the Japanese alphabet written on it and functions similarly to an Ouija board. Instead of a planchette, the schoolgirls are each holding onto a pen which would circle the appropriate Japanese characters. - The Destiny Board from Yu-Gi-Oh!. - Chapter 65 of Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun is centered on a game of Kokkuri-san, a Japanese variant of Ouija Board. - Tamamo-chans a Fox!: In one chapter, a student uses a Kokkuri-san board to get Tamamo's attention. - Touhou Suzunaan ~ Forbidden Scrollery has a chapter involving a Ouiji board from Kourindo; as usual, Rinnosuke exposits (wrongly) on its history for hours, and Kozuku and Marisa try to get it to work. Eventually Reimu uses her powers to get a local spirit to possess the planchette, but Kosuzu can't think of anything of substance to ask it. - For a series about apprentice Fortune Tellers, Kon of Urara Meirocho uses this—the kokkuri variant to be exact—as her preferred method of divination. - One arc of Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose had Tarot trying to find Raven Hex after the latter plotted to break into a magic library. Since Raven had managed to prevent Tarot from tracking her, Tarot consulted an oracle whose nude body was basically a ouija board. - The first issue of the 2017 edition of Runaways sees Nico summoning and using a ouija board to figure out how to save Gert's life. - In one issue of Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror, Bart uses an Ouija board while at camp, and accidentally summons a horde of demons from Hell. - In a The Fortunes of Flossie strip published in 1927, fortune-telling obsessed Flossie asks a Ouija board what's in store for her tomorrow. The board faithfully predicts what she'll get up to the next day (\|\|a relaxing spa day at the Turkish baths\|\|), but in such a manner that Flossie is left with the impression she's about to be kidnapped and made into a harem girl: "What will befall to-morrow?" she asked. The board went straight To letters that spelled out the message: "This will be your fate!" "To-morrow you'll be taken to a place where strangers lurk A place under the ruling of a great and powerful Turk! Your gems will be stripped from you, aye, and your clothes as well! You will be roughly handledbut more I cannot tell." - Rare non-horror example: An Ouija board advances the plot twice in And You Thought Your Parents Were Weird!. In the first Ouija Spooky Séance, the protagonist is contacted by his late father, who comes into the physical world; at the end of the film Albert Einstein himself (yep) contacts the protagonists through the board and brings the father's spirit back in the afterlife. - I Am Zo Zo is a psychological thriller about five young people who play with a Ouija board on Halloween and attract the attention of a malevolent demon. - The Bloody Man: In Michael's Bloody Man story, a bunch of teenagers bring out a ouija board to hold a seance. While they don't end up summoning The Bloody Man, they DO contact a spirit who tries to when them he's after them. - In Deadly Messages, Laura Daniels, single and bored, finds new interest in life when she discovers an old ouija board. - In Is Anybody There, Four friends get together one evening to play with a ouija board. - Paranormal Activity - In the first film, Micah and Katie try to use an Ouija board to talk with a spirit, despite warnings of the dangers from their hired psychic help. At one point, the Ouija board even catches on fire. - In The Marked Ones, Jesse, Hector, and Marisol are playing with a Simon electronic game when they find out they can use it as an Ouija board. Green is for yes, red is for no. - A Ouija Board wakes the evil djinn in Long Time Dead. - In Witchboard, the use of a Ouija board allows an evil spirit to enter our world and start committing murders. - In Drive-Thru, the villain communicates hints to his next murder victims through a Ouija board, a Magic 8-Ball, and an Etch A Sketch. - Jason Quincy (Howie Mandell) uses what is called the Tabarrok Board in the Apocalypse film series movie Tribulation in order to find out some things. Two of the answers he gets from it are Genesis 11:6 and "I AM". - Regan in The Exorcist (also in the book) uses one to contact Captain Howdy. - Characters in Amityville 3-D use a homebrew ouija board, and get in contact with spirits that tell them that one them is going to die. - The wife in What Lies Beneath uses one to communicate with a murdered girl. - The Unleashed: Supernatural chaos escalates when a troubled woman with a dark past dabbles with the infamous Ouija board. - The Ouija Experiment: Film series is about the game. - The Ouija Possession: After finding a vintage spirit board in their parent's basement, a group of teens conjure an undead relative, who stalks them from beyond the grave. - Ouija is a 2003-ouija-theme horror movie. Not to confuse with the same name Ouija 2014 film. - Ouija is a 2006 arabic movie. Two strangers try to solve a mystery that revolves around both of their tragic pasts. At the heart of the mystery lies a mystic board with an ability to kill. - The horror film Ouija is about this, obviously. This one has the distinction of being the only ouija film (and the only horror film to date) produced by Hasbro, themselves. - Seanse: The Summoning: Four friends decide to record themselves having a séance. - The Haunted House where the eponymous television special in WNUF Halloween Special takes place was a scene to two grisly murders, committed by a man who was convinced that demons were talking to him through his ouija board. - In The Uninvited, the people in the Haunted House stage a seance with basically a homemade Ouija board on a table—little cubes with the letters of the alphabet, pieces of paper with "YES" and "NO", and a wine glass instead of a planchette. - The two boys of Radio Flyer ask a Ouija board if there's really a Bigfoot. Eventually they take their hands off of the planchette, and it even continues moving a little. - You Will Kill A beautiful woman is haunted by an evil spirit after an innocent game of Ouija board goes horribly wrong. - In A Safe Place (1971), Noah and her friends draw a ouija board on a public table and use a drinking glass as a planchette. The glass spells out "SUSAN HELLO." When Fred shows up, the connection is lost. - Ouija Mummy: Naturally, there's a ouija board in this movie. Specifically, Natalie inherited an Ancient Egypt-themed one from her aunt when she passed away. Chase doesn't like it when Natalie plays around with the board. \|\|At the housewarming party, they all use it to communicate with the spirit of Cassandra Alexander, the house's previous owner, who tells them she was killed by the Royal Wife, who uses her necklace to possess Natalie, since she is wearing it.\|\| - The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill: The team has a ouija board that gets used to attempt communications with spirits at the church during the seances they hold there a couple nights. - An early scary example in 13 Ghosts (1960), where the family that just moved into a mysterious old house play with a ouija board which tells them that the ghost in the house will kill one of them. - Planchette automatic writing is discussed in The Haunting of Hill House. Mrs. Montegue and her assistant try to use it to contact the spirits of the house, which disgusts Dr. Montague, who approaches things from a more scientific angle. - In Diana Wynne Jones' The Time of the Ghost, the titular ghost tries to send a message to her still-living sisters via an Ouija board they are playing with (though it doesn't go as well as she had hoped because she's not very good at manipulating physical objects yet). - In The Stand, a Ouija board informs Nadine that she's supposed to be Randall Flagg's bride. Later, she uses one to contact him. - Caroline in The Bailey Game owns one, and at one point she tries to use it to communicate with the ghost of a supposedly dead boy, Michael Bailey. - In Victor Pelevin's Generation P, Tatarsky uses one to summon the ghost of Che Guevara and asks him for insight into advertising and marketing. - Ephraim Kishon once met some people too interested in the occult. Since nothing happened when he joined the session, he gave the glass a little push by himself. The "spirit" they contacted introduced himself as "MR4K?LLL", which the head spiritualist interpreted as a spy's code name. Later, they contacted Aaron (Moses' brother) and asked him for his favorite Jews. The answer: "David... Judah Maccabee... Ben Gurion... Ephraim Kishon..." But is it his fault that Aaron likes reading good satires? - A slightly upgraded version, using ball-bearings to minimize friction, appears in Childhood's End as a party game. The skeptic at the table points out that the responses are likely to be the result of subconscious memories moving the disc, even without the person's knowing it. The last of the questions asked becomes an important plot point. - An illustration in It All Started with Columbus shows F.D.R. using a Ouija board to create alphabetical agencies. - The psych professor's experiment from Voices From Beyond consists of four students - some curious, some snarky, and all badly in need of extra credit - attempting to call upon the supernatural using one of these. Unfortunately for all concerned, it works, and contacts something nasty. - In Too Bright to See, Bug and Moira use one in an attempt to contact the ghost that's been haunting Bug. All they get is a string of nonsense letters. \|\|But when Bug tries using the board again when he's alone, the planchette starts moving rapidly by itself, spelling out coherent messages.\|\| - In A Drowned Maiden's Hair, Phony Psychic Hyacinth buys a board to use in the "séances" with Mrs. Lambert. Maud tries to use it to spell out letters during Muffet's reading lessons, but Muffet isn't interested. - In Awkward., Stacie and Tamara use a Ouija board to contact Ricky, in order to settle whether or not one of them was responsible for his death. When they get a negative response upon asking if his death was an accident, their friend Lyssa flips out and knocks over the game. - In Charmed, the Halliwell sisters are in possession of an old Ouija board, and are sometimes contacted by their mother, grandmother and other higher beings through it. - I Love Lucy had Lucy study numerology and horoscopes in The Séance. The Ouija board was brought up and used to call Tillie and asked whether Tillie liked Mr. or Mrs. Merriweather more. Lucy provided the first voice here, and Fred provided to voice to speak with Mrs. Merriweather. Lucy and Fred later confess that they provided the voices, and one member of the group says that Tillie was Mr. Merriweather's dog. - In Kyle XY, the group tries to use one to figure out Kyle's Mysterious Past. It spells "781227", which is later revealed to be Kyle's "production number" at the facility he was created. - In a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch about police taking up occult methods, four policemen are shown using a Ouija board, with unhelpful results: "Up yours? What a rude Ouija board!" - In My Babysitter's a Vampire improper use of the family's antique Ouija board ends up releasing a demon that promptly possesses Sarah. - One of the Mystery Lab segments on ''Mystery Hunters features Doubting Dave showing the viewers how to make their own and how to use it though he points out that people who use them might be unconsciously moving the planchette since our muscles have a tendency to twitch on their own rather than being influenced by ghosts. - In episode 2.1 of Supernatural, Sam uses one to communicate with \|\|Dean, who isn't particularly impressed with this strategy\|\|. \|\|Dean\|\|: "I feel like I'm at a slumber party." - The main characters use one in their seance in the third episode of Ravenswood - One episode of So Weird featured a Ouija board that warned Annie of danger. - In a flashback on Pretty Little Liars, Mona and Hanna are using a Ouija board. Hanna asks about her missing friend Alison, and the board says "Alive." Hanna relays the good news to Alison's family... shortly before Alison's body was found. \|\|But it turns out the board was right.\|\| - In Stranger Things, after Joyce Byers discovers her son, who's trapped in another dimension, can make the lights flicker in her house she improvises one with letters on the wall and Christmas lights in place of a planchette. - This is mentioned in passing by Ralph Kramden in one episode of The Honeymooners, in which he is dreading an impending visit from his mother-in-law — more so than usual in this case, because he and his wife Alice had tickets to a Broadway play, but she had to cancel because of her mother coming. He becomes naturally upset that his mother-in-law ruined his plans and that he thinks she's doing it on purpose. Alice: How could my mother know you have tickets to a Broadway play? Ralph: Oh, she knows, Alice. She knows! I don't how she finds out, but she knows! I don't know she whether she uses a Ouija board or a corn teller, but she knows! - Sick Sad World: Dev's mother shares a story about when she, her sister, and her sister's boyfriend used one. A cat spirit possessed her niece, which freaked her out enough to forbid Dev from playing with a ouija board. - Calvin and Hobbes had a three-strip sequence in which Calvin and Hobbes play with a Ouija board. The first question asks, "Who is smarter, Calvin or Hobbes?", led to a tug of war. Calvin then asks the board whether he will grow up to be president, and it produces the answer G-O-D-F-O-R-B-I-D, which angers Calvin enough to kick the board. Finally, they ask the board how it knows all the answers to life's mysteries; the board answers "3." - On April 1, 2005, FoxTrot, Get Fuzzy, and Pearls Before Swine did very similar strips involving Ouija boards being used by Bucky/Jason/Rat to justify hitting Satchel/Paige/Pig, respectively. - Visigoths vs. Mall Goths: In an atypical use of the item, a careless Mall Goth's Ouija board is responsible for the Visigoths time traveling to the 1990s. - Chronicles of Darkness: The supplemental book Inferno has a story hook that reveals that using a Ouija board contacts demons every single time, and the demons are more than willing to use that contact to get their foot in the metaphorical door. - In The Bat, Cornelia asks a Ouija board if her hysterical maid Lizzie is right about the Old, Dark House where they are staying being haunted. The Ouija writes wildly, but the first intelligible string of letters spells "B-A-T." - In Banjo-Kazooie, the player rides on a sliding glass over a series of letters in the same manner as on a Ouija board to spell a word in order to get a Jiggie. - The World Ends with You includes a variation called "Reaper Creeper". It's a paper with three symbols inscribed on it, arranged in a triangle with a circle around them. Each has a different color: White, Black or Red. A 10-yen coin is placed on the paper and allowed to move by itself in order to provide answers to the one using it. The coin is moving by the player's influence. - Dark Fall uses one in two of its games. - Polly White brought one during her investigation with Nigel Danvers in the first game. You can use it to communicate with \|\|Thomas Callum, Betty's lover\|\| via a text parser. - Another one can be used in Lost Souls to unlock a couple of easter eggs and play some minigames with Amy. - The main menu of The 7th Guest is an Ouija board, here titled "The Sphinx". The save/load function makes use of the standard layout. - Goliath The Soothsayer centers on an Ouija board, with a storyline based on the Mars Volta. - The protagonists in Until Dawn are seen using one during the trailer. In-game, Chris, Ashley, and Josh use one (you know, for fun) \|\|as phase one of an elaborate prank horror scenario that Josh has crafted for Chris and Ash\|\|. - In Gone Home, Sam and Lonnie use one to try to contact the spirit of Sam's Creepy Uncle Oscar, whom they believe to be haunting the house. - The backstory of the first game in the The Blackwell Series has three girls using an Ouija Board to accidentally summon a demon called "The Deacon" who drives the girls to suicide. Upon learning that a Ouija Board is involved in the case, Joey has a Oh, No... Not Again! reaction and tells Rosa that the use of Ouija Boards always bring troubles. - Layers of Fear features this as a small puzzle in one area to unlock a secret item, and the Halloween DLC revolves around three children who used it to summon a demon that could grant their deepest desires. - A "spirit board" owned by Aleister Crowley kicks off the plot of Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell as the Boss is informed that he'll win the heart of a "Jezebel", who turns out to be Satan's daughter, and he's dragged down to Hell to marry her. - One of the many items in The Binding of Isaac is an Ouija Board, which turn Isaac's Swiss-Army Tears ghostly, allowing them to pass through solid objects. - Master of Darkness: In the game's opening cutscene, Dr. Social is seen using one that tells him to go to Thames River, where Dracula was last seen. You see it again in the continue screen, and finally during the closing credits. - In one level of Rusty Lake: Roots, one of these forms the main puzzle mechanic, as you answer questions asked of you with it. - Ouija boards can sometimes be found in missions in Phasmophobia, and some ghosts will use them to answer players' questions in a similar manner to the radio. This also counts as a Dangerous Forbidden Technique. While it can give helpful information such as the location of the ghost or its room, using it will drain your Sanity Meter, making the ghost more likely to attack whether or not you get an answer. Unless the ghost is a Demon, though if that's the case you likely have bigger problems. - Love You to Bits: This is one of the hidden collectibles that Kosmo can find on a planet. In the video of Nova's past memory regarding the Ouija board, both Kosmo and Nova think they able to feel the supernatural movements as the pointer moves without being directed by them, \|\|only to reveal that one of aliens is using its Psychic Powers to control the pointer for mischief.\|\| - As the name suggests, Ouija Sleepover centers around one of these that Aiden finds in the trash. He decides to prank his friend/crush Dan with it, moving it while pretending a ghost is making him do it, and he has a good laugh. Then they get in contact with a real ghost. Next thing they know, Aiden and Dan are dropped into a pocket dimension with meaty walls and something after them. \|\|Though it turns out the spirit, Gary, is a Friendly Ghost trying to help the duo, and the key to escape is just to finish the Ouija session.\|\| - PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo features the "Kokkuri-san" type of spirit board. Schoolgirls Yakko and Mio use said spirit board to communicate with a spirit, hoping to uncover the truth behind the mysterious death of their classmate Michiyo. - Board James uses a Ouija board to find out what really happened to his friends. Though nothing happens at first, the planchette mysteriously flies into his Domino Rally game, signifying the presence of a spirit. What follows can only be described as Surreal Horror. - The catalyst for Slendy and other such demons showing up in The Dead Are Watching. - Used as a catalyst for this video (called "Curse of the Weggy Board", just to give you an idea of what's in store) of a guy reading misspelled Yahoo Answers questions as best as he can. ("Luigi Board" is rather common.) - One is used by a boy named Lucas Villa in one episode of Bedtime Stories (YouTube Channel), who unwittingly summons a tall, thin, and black being from it that torments him for several months. - One Reddit board, or Subreddit, called AskOuija is dedicated to an internet version of Ouija. A poster asks a question and each user provides a single letter of the answer. When a answer is finished being written a user posts "Goodbye," and the "Goodbye" with the most votes becomes the answer. So for "how do you cure depression?", for example, the spirits recommended "blowjob." - Spooked had a Ouija board once in Episode 1 to reason with a Poltergeist haunting a lesbian couple. - Tribe Twelve: Milo's journal revealed he and \|\|Kevin\|\| played with a Ouija board one day to try and learn about The Tall Man. Slender Man shows up, and after hiding in the bathroom, everyone forgets what happened. \|\|Kevin\|\| doesn't even recall owning the game. - The Weather parodies this in one skit; a group of friends play with the game, correctly point out that the game is just made of plastic and yet somehow is capable of summoning spirits, and end up immediately contacting a Friendly Ghost who just happened to come packaged with the game. - Batman Beyond features an episode (Ep. 211, 'Revenant') where some of Terry's female classmates try to contact a dead student through one. The board itself was redesigned slightly to fit the show's 20 Minutes into the Future motif. - A Bob's Burgers Halloween special had the family exorcise a ghost from their cellar and contain it in a shoebox. Tina then brings the box to school and the kids use a Ouija board to communicate with the ghost. They learn that the ghost's name is Jeff, he is 13 years old, and that people eat soup in the afterlife. Played with in that \|\|deep down, they all know Jeff isn't real, but everyone holding the planchette had their own reason for believing in him (Tina wanted a boyfriend, Zeke wanted to believe in an afterlife, et cetera)\|\|. - Camp Lazlo: The episode Soul Mates started with the main Squirrel Scouts trio playing with a Universe Board, which served the same purpose as Ouija but with the belief that the universe itself is communicating with them through it. Patsy used it to ask who her soul mate was (Lazlo) and Nina is excited to ask the same question, only to find out it read Chip. Denying that with a nervous laugh, Nina asked again and got Skip. This further confused the girls and asked which one. The planchette moves and reads "Both-of-them-!" before breaking. - In the Tiny Toon Adventures episode, "The Horror of Slumber Party Mountain", Shirley uses one to find out who her, Babs, and Fifi's secret boyfriends are. Shirley's is Plucky, Babs' is Dizzy Devil, and Fifi's is Fowlmouth. None of the girls are pleased with the results.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OuijaBoard
Our Clones Are Identical - TV Tropes "Cloning, wow. Who would have thought? There should be a list of people who can and cannot clone themselves." An index of tropes having to do with clones and cloning. Not to be confused with tropes about twins. Nor are these about characters who are merely similar to other characters. This index is about duplicate people. Also closely related to the Doppelgänger index. ## Tropes involving cloning: <!—index—> <!—/index—> - Alternate Self Shipping: Shipping a character with their own clone. - Ambiguous Clone Ending: It's left ambiguous whether the person is the real deal or a copied replacement. - Artificial Human: Any person who was created in a laboratory as a clone of another person is this trope by definition. - Artificial Meat: Meat that was grown in a laboratory from cloned animal cells. - Belly Buttonless: Clones have no navels, as an indication of their artificial origin. - Body Backup Drive: When a person dies, their mind gets transferred into a fresh cloned body. - Born as an Adult: As clones typically enter the world the same age as the individuals they were cloned from, they are usually this trope by default. - Capture and Replicate: When a kidnapped person is replaced with a clone to infiltrate their life. - Clone Army: An entire legion of soldiers who are all duplicates of another guy. - Clone by Conversion: A person gets transformed into a copy of someone else. - Clone Degeneration: Clones who rapidly decline in mental or physical health. - Clone Jesus: Someone makes a clone of Jesus. - Clones Are People, Too: Clones are regarded as real human beings worthy of equal rights, instead of just being expendable duplicates that can be easily replaced. Can also refer to clones being treated as unique individuals with their own personalities, as opposed to only being exact copies of someone else. - Cloning Blues: The clone is insecure about the fact that they are a duplicate of another person. - Cloning Body Parts: Copying specific organs instead of a whole being. - Cloning Gambit: Someone creates a copy of themselves (or someone else) in order to fulfill some sort of plan. - Cloning Splits Attributes: When what looks like multiplication is actually division. - Copied the Morals, Too: The clone doesn't just copy the appearance of someone, they also copy the original's personality (including their moral code). This is the downfall of many villains who create a clone of a hero. - Designer Babies: Clones can sometimes be this if their genes were tweaked as embryos. - Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: A clone (among other possibilities) gets the same emotional reaction as their original. - Destructive Teleportation: A method of teleportation in which the original person/object is destroyed and then replaced by a perfect copy in another location. - Duplicate Divergence: A clone becomes different from their original over time. - Evil Knockoff: When the bad guys create an evil clone of a good guy to serve as their rival or antithesis. - Evil Twin: Any villain who happens to be a clone of the hero would technically be their genetically identical sibling. - Expendable Clone: The life of a clone is worthless to their creator or master. - Literal Split Personality: When an individual person gets divided into two or more clones who each have different personality traits. - Me's a Crowd: Someone creates multiple clones of themselves. - Modified Clone: A mutant clone that was genetically engineered to be somewhat different from the original. - Morally Superior Copy: A clone or duplicate turns out to be morally superior to the villainous original. - Only One Me Allowed Right Now: Where there's laws (physics or merely societal) that either disallows multiple clones to exist simultaneously, or cause problems when they do. - Opening a Can of Clones: Why should anyone care about what happens to these clones? - Opposite-Sex Clone: A clone who has a different biological sex from the person they are cloned from. - Screw Yourself: Someone has sex with their own clone or duplicate. - Self-Duplication: A character has the superpower to make copies of themselves at will. - Send in the Clones: The original guy was so great that we made many copies of him! - That Thing Is Not My Child!: Some people might have this reaction to learning that there's now a younger clone of themselves. - Twinmaker: Making a clone to replace a dead person. - Two-Donor Clone: A clone made up of two or more genetic sources. - Walking Transplant: A clone that literally exists to give organ transplants. - Which Me?: Referring to one's clone or doppelganger by first-person pronouns. - You Cloned Hitler!: Someone makes a clone of Adolf Hitler.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurClonesAreIdentical
Our Acts Are Different - TV Tropes Most modern theatrical pieces are written in two acts. There is one set point (sometimes at a Cliffhanger) at which the audience takes an Intermission, and when they come back, the action finishes. This, however, is pretty much solely a modern convention; older plays generally had three or five acts (with some sort of climax before each intermission, in order to make audiences excited to return). Even after the two-act structure became more popular (around the Victorian period), three- and five-act plays were not uncommon, and continue to be written to this day. Likewise, there is also a tradition of shorter, one-act plays, in part dating from a time where a night at the theatre was meant to be an entire night at the theatre, so what would now be considered a full-length (or even rather long) play was often bookended with a couple shorter one-act plays, which the audience could skip if they wanted to arrive late or go home early. Modern performances may change things about a bit, ignoring some of the gaps between acts, or finding a new point for an intermission nearer the half-way point, though how well these redivisions work depends on the director and the play in question. Also, sometimes, the word "Act" is used to replace the word "Scene" when a play has very few scenes, or each scene is extensive. Sometimes more than one of the above apply. It differs wildly. Oh, yes, and some genres of theatre keep to older conventions: Operas generally have between three and five acts, though a few use the two-act structure. The Gilbert and Sullivan operas are probably the most important of these, given they're still very widely performed, and since their major role in the birth of the musical is probably the main reason musicals follow the two-act convention. See also: Act Break, Two-Act Structure ## Examples: Note: As said above, some productions can change things around a bit; generally, the plays listed below should be categorised based on how the author divided them up. One Acts One-act plays are of two types: Short plays, generally meant to be played with a few other short plays to fill out an evening, and full-length plays which the author has specifically designed to be played without intermissions. Shorter plays - Trial by Jury, a one-act Gilbert and Sullivan opera, originally written to be performed before Offenbach's La Perichole, though, in the end, it proved more popular. Today, it is often performed before one of their shorter two-act pieces (it was first revived at the Savoy in 1884 with a revised version of The Sorcerer), or alongside one or more of the one-act operas Sullivan wrote with other librettists, Cox and Box and The Zoo. - Trouble in Tahiti by Leonard Bernstein, which was later incorporated into the second act of its full-length sequel, A Quiet Place. Full-length - Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice - A New Brain - Edmond - Man of La Mancha - American expressionist plays tended to be one-act dramas. Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape, Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine and Sophie Treadwell's Machinal each presented 7-9 scenes without intermission. The Musical of Adding Machine is also in one act. - The Last Five Years - The Drowsy Chaperone is meant to be performed without an intermission, despite the Show Within a Show that it is about being a two-act musical. However, some productions do choose to add an intermission anyway, usually after the song "Toledo Surprise". - "Master Harold"... and the Boys - Follies was originally presented in one act because an intermission would probably make an awkward interruption in the action. The awkward interruption (after "Too Many Mornings") is now usual. - A Chorus Line - All episodes of the Tsukiuta stage play series, and its various spinoff series (over 30 plays by 2022) tell their stories in one act, which can be almost three hours long. They have a second act, which is a separate show — the dance live, where the characters perform their songs as idols. Other franchises, such as Tou Myu, also follow this format. - Pippin was originally written in one act, but most regional productions insert an intermission. The Broadway revival also inserted one, with the Leading Player noting that attention spans aren't what they used to be. This change makes sense, given the second act quickly abandons and retcons the main plot of act 1. - Assassins by Stephen Sondheim has no intermission, as it has no real plot. - 1776 - Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit. - The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee ...usually. Many productions add an intermission before "Chip's Lament." - Cirque du Soleil tours are usually two act affairs (two-and-a-half hours with intermission), but their non-touring productions (the various Las Vegas shows, La Nouba, etc.) usually have runtimes of 90 to 105 minutes with no intermission. This allows for two performances a night/ten performances a week and doesn't try the patience of audiences who would also like to gamble, etc. When the tours Nouvelle Experience and Alegría were adapted for casinos, they lost their intermissions and at least one acrobatic setpiece in order to achieve a 90-minute runtime. In fact, editing "legit" shows has long been common practice in Las Vegas; The Phantom of the Opera, Avenue Q, Spamalot, and The Producers were all cut to 90-or-so minutes either when they opened or later in the run, dropping their intermissions among other things. - American Idiot. - Road Show was originally written with an intermission after Mama dies and Wilson and Addison part ways acrimoniously, but finally became a one-act musical. - The 1970s revival of Candide, with a new book by Hugh Wheeler, compressed the action into one act. The "Opera House Version" expanded it back into two acts. - A View from the Bridge premiered in 1955 as a one-act drama, with many passages in verse. The definitive 1956 revision expanded the play slightly and added an intermission. - A Streetcar Named Desire has eleven scenes with no act breaks in the script. However, the original production featured two intermissions. - Native Son was adapted into a play in ten scenes with no designated intermission, even though the original novel has a three-part division. - J.B. by Archibald MacLeish was written to be performed without interruption, or with optional breaks after the Godmask/Satanmask exchanges that end scene 2 ("Put not forth thy hand!") and scene 7 ("Save his life!"). Three Acts Partially due to the addition of much more elaborate sets, the former standard of five-act plays gradually reduced to three acts. This formed its own long-standing convention until finally being largely replaced by two-act plays. Three-act musicals were fairly common until the 1920s, when multiple sets in each act started to become the rule. However, a three-act play generally doesn't have any good way to make do with only one intermission, and an extra half-hour intermission tends to draw out the performance time, which is probably one of the reasons they aren't as common any more. - The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde's most famous play, is in three acts (though it was originally in four), with breaks usually taken between each. - Both Moises Kaufman's The Laramie Project and Gross Indecency are in three acts. - George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man is in three acts, but as the third is reasonably longer than either of the first two, the break usually comes after the second act. - The musical adaptation of Giant by Michael John LaChiusa and Sybille Pearson is one of very few musicals to be in three acts. - Most of Gilbert and Sullivan's operas use the basic two-act structure. Princess Ida does not, and since the second act is the longest one by a good bit, there's no good way to use a single intermission. - Gilbert and Sullivan tend to plot things so that each act begins relatively sedately (in order to bring the audience back in gently), then builds to a climax at the end (to excite the audience before the break). Since the first act is very short, it's hard to avoid a mood breaker through going directly from the high energy of the end of Act I to the calm academic scenes at the start of Act II. - Many Kaufman and Hart plays, including You Can't Take It With You and Once in a Lifetime. - "Millenium Approaches", the first part of Tony Kushner's Angels in America is divided into three acts, and as "Millenium Approaches" is three hours long, it's not unreasonable to assume most productions take an intermission after each act. - Of course, part II, "Perestroika", is divided into SEVEN acts, so whatever, Tony Kushner. - The play of The Odd Couple is written in three acts, mainly to facilitate a massive set change when Felix joins Oscar's household and cleans the place up. - Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly was originally supposed to be in two acts, with a long stage silence in the middle of the second act. (The Belasco play it was based on was in only one act, but was considerably shorter, starting at the point where the opera's second act begins.) After the premiere, many changes were made, including the division of the second act into two parts, with the curtain is lowered in between; the second part is sometimes billed as the third act. - Porgy and Bess is in three acts, though some productions have reduced it to two. The source play Porgy was in four acts, the middle two of which were simply put together. - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is written in three acts: traveling to Elsinore (though they arrive just before the end of the act), Elsinore itself (where most of the direct overlap with Hamlet lies), and the boat to England. - Anyone Can Whistle is a three-act musical, which doesn't make its action much more coherent. - The modern musical version of Peter Pan. - The Most Happy Fella was one of the few three-act musicals produced in the 1950s. - Many stage versions of Cinderella are in three acts, with the second act taking place at the ball (which is also true of Die Fledermaus). - Most of Richard Wagner's operas are in three acts, though the acts tend to run rather long at times. Götterdämmerung also has a rather lengthy prologue which segues into the first act without intermission. - Hansel and Gretel (1893) is a three-act opera, with an option to omit the first intermission and segue to the prelude to the second act without interruption. - Street Scene is a typical three-act drama with no scene changes, adapted into a two-act opera by striking the second intermission. - No, No, Nanette, an adaptation of a three-act farce, has always been a three-act musical. - Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff is a comic opera in three acts, with each act divided into two through-composed scenes of roughly equal length. Four Acts While never a particularly standard number of acts except in 19th-century opera, authors have often found it convenient to divide up the standard three-act structure into four equal scenes, or have failed to find a real use for the fifth act in a five-act structure, and so have chosen a four-act play instead. Unless the acts are particularly long, modern performances generally give an intermission after Act II, basically treating it as a two-act play with each act having two fairly self-contained scenes. - The Crucible by Arthur Miller is in four acts. While it normally has an intermission after Act II, there is an additional (sometimes cut) scene, "Act 2, Scene 2", much shorter in length and only including Proctor and Abigail. When included, it often follows the intermission. - Lady Windermere's Fan is in four acts, with an intermission usually placed between Acts 2 and 3. - Anton Chekhov's The Seagull and The Three Sisters, both of which usually break after Act 2. - Chehov's major plays were all written in four acts of continuous action, with scene changes at the intermissions. - Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night is four acts. - George Bernard Shaw's play Man and Superman (which has nothing to do with the DC Comics character) is an odd case. It consists of four acts, but the third act, "Don Juan in Hell", is essentially an entirely separate one-act play stuck in the middle of a standard three-act play. Performances of Man and Superman frequently skip it, and "Don Juan in Hell" is often performed as a play in its own right. - The Girl of the Golden West was originally a four-act play. The operatic version removes the last act, which is really just a brief epilogue to an already-concluded story. - The Vagabond King is in four acts, being based on a four-act play. The second intermission is supposed to be longer than the others. - The Student Prince is a four-act operetta. The play it was based on, Old Heidelberg, had five acts; it's obvious that the scene change from Karlsberg to Heidelberg in the operetta's first act was originally the first act break. Five Acts From Renaissance to Neoclassical this was the standard. Theatre at this time was based on Aristotle's and Horace's works (as they were understood at the time) since Classical theatre was considered ideal. The five act structure was incredibly strict (especially in the Neoclassical period), it wasn't until Romanticism and Melodrama that this structure fell out of fashion. Few modern productions have a full-length intermission between every act (though they may give a couple minutes to stretch while the scenery is changed), although this wouldn't have been done at the time either. The older five act plays tend to be fairly long, and are often somewhat abridged in modern performances. Now might be a good time to discuss scenes: The modern convention, and also that used by a lot of older writers, is that a scene change is only marked when there's a change in location, or the time frame moves forwards a significant amount. However, particularly around 1700, during the period known as the Restoration, you get plays such as William Congreve's five-act The Way of the World, where each act takes place in a single location, but every time a character joins or leaves a conversation, a new scene is declared and numbered. This can be very, very confusing if you're used to the more standard model. This is referred to nowadays as "French Scenes." Also, Elizabethan theatre, including Shakespeare, Jonson, Dekker, Marlowe, and so on, used very little scenery, so they have a tendency to switch very rapidly between different locations, whereas more recent five act plays actually do have scenery, and thus have to keep the number of locations down, generally to five or less, though one or two acts might have multiple scenes placed in different sets. - William Shakespeare wrote his plays in five acts, as was the convention; most of them were probably meant to be performed straight through without ANY intermissions. The earliest printed editions tend to have clear act divisions; the scene divisions, however, are often the work of editors. Modern productions often choose a point (rarely more than one point) in the script to take an intermission break. - Some plays do have a more obvious five-act structure. For instance, in Henry V, each act is preceded by narration from the Chorus. It's also often suggested that plays written for the indoor Blackfriars theater, which Shakespeare's company used as a winter playhouse starting in 1608 and which catered to a more upscale audience than the Globe, had music at the act breaks. - George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion is in five acts, each one a twenty-minute-or-so scene, although some productions include little vignettes in between. Intermission is usually taken after the third act. - "Perestroika", the second part of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, is in five acts. It is worth noting that, uncut, "Perestroika" is even longer than "Millenium Approaches", but it is virtually always cut down slightly, and Kushner wrote notes in the published script as to what could reasonably be cut. - All Neoclassical plays. Strict rules and regulations were put into place to mimic the ideal Greek/Roman theatre, including the five act structure that Aristotle outlined in his Poetics. Any work that did not fit these guidelines was considered to be a horrible play, even if it was wildly popular among play-goers (as was the case with Corneille's The Cid). These rules were not absolved in France until Hugo's Hernani and elsewhere until counter movements (like the German Romantic movement) began. More Than Five Acts - Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude is in nine acts, and runs twice as long as most plays.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurActsAreDifferent
Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious - TV Tropes The biological equivalent of UFO sightings, cryptids are legendary beings and mythical creatures which are rumored to exist in Real Life, in isolation or in hiding, yet remain unrecognized by mainstream science due to the absence of physical evidence that could verify their existence. Some may be relict survivors of species believed to be extinct, or known organisms displaced into inappropriate habitats; others are unlike any known species, with characteristics that border upon the supernatural. Folk legends tied to specific cultural traditions (Algonquian wendigos, Navajo skinwalkers, Japanese youkai, Irish aes sídhe, etc.) aren't usually considered cryptids, nor are other overtly supernatural entities like ghosts. Aliens usually aren't either, unless they've been on Earth long enough to "go native" and be sighted in the wilderness. Those cryptids that haven't received heavy media attention, so cannot be classified under the sub-tropes listed below, may have works of fiction in which they're featured listed here on this page. Works that feature a wide variety of cryptid types, or follow cryptozoologists' attempts to investigate them, also fall under this trope. Series that only have a Cryptid Episode usually leave their existence open to question, whereas cryptid-themed works generally do reveal their creatures to the audience (if not the characters), sooner or later. Subtrope of All Theories Are True. Compare Our Monsters Are Weird, which is for creatures that are too bizarre for even cryptozoology (the study of cryptids) to claim they're for real. Also see Fearsome Critters of American Folklore. ## Specific cryptids with their own pages: <!—index—> <!—/index—> ## Examples in fiction: - Engaged to the Unidentified has cryptids \|\|as part of its main cast (Hakuya, Mashiro, their mother Shirayuki and a few more), though while they are called many names, including "demons", "Youkai" and the like, they look and mostly behave like ordinary humans.\|\| Mashiro is also a fan of cryptids and collects figurines; one of the show's Running Gags is that she somehow always ends up with lots of Nessies, but not much else. - Kagewani has this trope as the main theme of the show. Each episode centers on Banba investigating claims of a cryptid attack on civilians from his and the victim's perspective. - Kemono Friends features a Tsuchinoko Friend. How exactly she came to be isn't stated, since Friends are created when a living animal or their remains come in contact with Sandstar and to date no physical evidence of the Tsuchinoko has ever been discovered. - Angus Og had Kelpies, Mermaids, and various other cryptids, all exist in Scotland's Western Isles. Thanks to water purification, the Kelpies even turned up in the River Clyde running through the middle of Glasgow. - Kaijumax: One of the major prison gangs is the Cryps, Kaiju-scaled versions of classic cryptids. - The Perhapanauts follows the exploits of a team of cryptids and other otherworldlies within a super-secret intergovernmental agency known as BEDLAM investigating other cryptids and other otherworldlies. - One Encyclopedia Brown mystery involved Encyclopedia investigating a "Skunk Ape", the Idaville version of an abominable snowman. Of course, it's only Bugs Meany again. - Harry Potter: Many cryptids in the series are acknowledged to be magical creatures, including the Yeti (a troll-like monster) and Nessie (a shapeshifting kelpie disguising itself as a sea serpent). Funnily enough, the wizarding universe has its own cryptids, such as the Nargles and the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, in which nobody believes except for Luna Lovegood. - In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes investigates the Baskerville family curse — a "gigantic hound" that has, according to the family doctor, recently accounted for the life of Sir Charles Baskerville. \|\|It's actually a very big dog painted with phosphorous to make it glow in the dark.\|\| - InCryptid by Seanan McGuire is all about a family of cryptozoologists who look after cryptids who exist but are still thought to be rumor by the world at large. - Jackie and Craig utilizes an entire armada of cryptids as the worshipers of the incomprehensible Eldritch Abomination Jykunne. - Monster: The title character is a freelance Cryptobiological Containment and Rescue Services worker, i.e. a dogcatcher for cryptids. - Simon R. Green stories: - Secret Histories: In The Spy Who Haunted Me, the rival spies are tasked to investigate several well-known tabloid-style mysteries, including the Loch Ness Monster and an Arkansas Bigfoot-sighting. \|\|And subverts them all, by attributing them to unnatural forces indigenous to Green's Verse, rather than whatever cryptozoologists assume them to be.\|\| - Cryptids in general tend to crop up in Green's Urban Fantasy series, from pet chupacabra being taken for walkies in the Nightside to Mongolian death worms trying to gobble down Secret Histories agents. - Vampirocracy: The main character and his friend took a cryptozoology course in college as a prerequisite for mythozoology. - One episode of Drop the Dead Donkey saw Damien going down to Cornwall in order to try and fake a sighting of the Beast of Bodmin Moor. Truth in Television, as a number of big cat sightings in Britain at the time were exaggerated (and in some cases quite possibly faked) by the media (see "Real Life" below for more details). - Face/Off: Season six has a cryptid-themed challenge. - Lost Tapes features plenty of cryptids in its stories. - Monster Quest and Destination Truth are cryptozoology-themed programs in the style of ghost-hunter shows. - Fortean Times is devoted to the investigation of anomalous phenomena. It absolutely loves this one. - d20 Modern: - The system includes a variety of cryptids from around the world on its "Menace Manual" book, including the Mongolian Death Worm and the Montauk Monster (a trans-dimensional hostile Energy Being race that was attracted to Earth by the Philadelphia Experiment). - Cryptids make up a large part of the DarkMatter setting, and several have their origin with the alien races that populate the settings. - Demon: The Descent uses cryptid as a catch-all term for animals exposed to the energies of the God-Machine, used as agents by both the angels of the God-Machine and the demons that rebel against it. Example cryptids include mothmen (who are harmless squirrel eaters who cannot predict disasters) and Reptoids (who are shy, timid creatures who cannot shapeshift and have no plans for world domination). - Dungeons & Dragons has an in-universe example in the form of the "forgotten" chromatic dragon family. Everyone knows about the five main breeds of evil dragons: the white, black, green, blue and red dragons, creations of the five-headed dragon goddess Tiamat. But some scholars and witnesses claim that there are three more color-based dragon breeds, the yellow/salt, orange/sodium, and purple/energy dragons. They're thought to be related to the "main" chromatic dragons through color theory (purple dragons, for example, are conjectured to be a True-Breeding Hybrid resulting from red and blue dragons interbreeding), or are perhaps the creations of a rival dragon deity whom Tiamat subsequently killed. While most scholars scoff at such talk and dismiss any sightings of these creatures as a witness misidentifying an established dragon while under the influence of its frightful presence, fringe theorists are known to fund expeditions into the wilderness in hopes that an adventuring party can bring back conclusive evidence of such cryptozoological dragons. As such, the "forgotten" dragons' stat blocks in Dragon come with the disclaimer "If these wyrms do indeed exist, this is the best estimate of their true capabilities." - Pathfinder makes use of a variety of cryptids. One sourcebook, Mystery Monsters Revisited, is dedicated to discussing eight such species — bunyips, chupacabras, death worms, mokele-mbembes, mothmen, the Sandpoint Devil, sasquatches, sea serpents, water orms and yetis — and goes into some detail about their habits, possible origins, and ability to remain elusive and mysterious even in a world of dragons, wizards and gods. - Sentinels of the Multiverse: Chrono-Ranger was bounced from the Wild West to a future where cryptids had destroyed the human race, leading to him being sent back again to go and kill cryptids. Monsters in that future, the Final Wasteland region, include skunk-apes, chupacabras, abominable snowmen and the Mongolian death worm. - Shadowrun: The Awakening brought many cryptids out of the closet. Some are paranormal animals developed from normal ones (e.g. mermaids as Awakened seals), while others as previously shy beings that didn't feel the need to hide any longer (sasquatches). - Yu-Gi-Oh! has the Danger! archetype, which is made of several cryptids that share the effect where the player reveals them, then the opponent chooses a random card for the player to discard. If the discarded card was not a copy of the revealed monster, then the player gets to special summon it and draw a card. All the monsters in the archetype also have effects that trigger upon being discarded. - BIONICLE: Keetongu is a legendary, fully sentient and sapient humanoid beast whose existence became a legend after his kind had been exterminated. Part of the 2005 story is about the search for Keetongu, with some characters doubting he exists. He was originally intended to be a nod to King Kong, being far larger than the rest of the cast and even climbing atop a tower only to get shot down (though Keetongu's tough enough to survive), but his height was decreased when LEGO decided that they'd only sell one figure of him rather than two: his to-scale model from the "Tower of Toa" playset was removed and replaced with another giant beast, so Keetongu was only released as a standard-sized Titan figure. - Barrow Hill: Bracken Tor will evidently involve cryptid sightings of mysterious predatory beasts in Cornwall. (That is, if it actually does get out of Development Hell...) The game's promotional website displays comments allegedly posted by people who've encountered these creatures. - Bigface Marsh Madness is an indie horror game featuring a monster that is a parody of Bigfoot who can only be warded off by recording him. - Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow includes several cryptid monsters that the player will encounter and must defeat during the game. - Disco Elysium features Lena and Morell, an elderly couple of "Cryptozoologists" (as well as their assistant Gary, the "Cryptofascist") who are in town searching for the Insulidian Phasmid, a giant psychic stick-bug-like creature. You can ask Lena about various other cryptids, much to your partner Kim's consternation. - Metal Gear Solid 3: The members of Mission Control are all really into "UMAs" (Unidentified Mysterious Animals, the Japanese term for "cryptid", which is therefore apparently the normal term in English in the Metal Gear universe as well) and frequently talk about them to Snake. There is also a Tsuchinoko in the game which you can capture (or eat), and bringing it back alive unlocks the Infinity Face Paint on a New Game Plus. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker also has a cryptid Otaku used to justify the Crossover with Monster Hunter. - Seaman: Seaman is said to be an ancient creature from Egypt discovered by French biologist/archaeologist named Dr. Jean Paul Gassé in the 1930s. Taking a sample of a seaman's eggs back to France with him, he started conducting research on the creature's evolution; the player is tasked with following his work in the present day, raising a seaman through all of its evolutionary stages. - Shadow Hearts: From The New World: Natan's personal sidequest involves hunting down and capturing different cryptids inside a special pot. Said pot is then taken to a shaman who uses the power held by the captured creatures to grant/power up Natans's skills. - The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! has dragons (intelligent technology users), Bigfeet (subterranean with a stone age culture), unicorns (animal intelligence, used as steeds by the Bigfeet because unicorns leave no tracks), and the Loch Ness Monster. Jean has spoken of exploiting Bob's verified Weirdness Magnet power to search for others like yetis and chupacabras and such. - Bedtime Stories (YouTube Channel): One episode covers the legend of The Mothman, which terrorized residents of Point Pleasant, West Virginia from 1966 to 1967. - Strong Bad Email: In "myths & legends", Strong Bad does a Mockumentary that claims the cardboard cut-out of the Bear Holding a Shark is based on a real creature of mysterious myth (or possibly legendary legend) that lurks in the woods of Free Country USA. - Cryptopia is a website dedicated to telling the stories of the rarest and most obscure cryptids, and the weirdest. Many of them, like the Octo-Squatch and the Bremerton Monstrosity, have been seen only once in history, or by only a single person traumatized beyond measure by what they say they saw. Others are considered local legends seen by a handful of people over the years, who described encounters with similar—if not the same—entities. - Ben 10 features an alien called Big Chill whose appearance is based off The Mothman, and another alien named Shocksquatch who's based on sasquatches. - Detentionaire features a creature known as the Tatzelwurm (sometimes spelled "Tazelwurm" or "Tazelworm"), based on the cryptid of the same name. They come in a variety of colours, with the red one being the rarest, one of which, nicknamed Taz, wears a sweater and is A. Nigma High's official school mascot. In one episode, Lee jokingly refers to it as "the Loch Ness Monster's first cousin". - Gravity Falls occasionally features investigations of cryptids and other alleged creatures in various episodes, including a lake monster, the hidebehind and a crashed UFO. - My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: A number of cryptids and similar beings have appeared over the show's run: - Pinkie encounters a quadrupedal yeti while traveling to Yakyakistan in "Party Pooped", while a tri-horned bunyip appears in "P.P.O.V. (Pony Point of View)". - The Great Sprout in "Going to Seed" plays the role of an in-universe cryptid, ticking off most of the category's boxes — mysterious nature, highly elusive and difficult to catch or observe, ambiguously real and prone to causing divisive opinions regarding whether it actually exists or not. - The IDW comics feature several other such beasts, including a highly feline Chupacabra and a humanoid squash monster referred to as a "sass squash". - The Real Ghostbusters: Some of the creatures that the Ghostbuster and their successors Extreme Ghostbusters face are cryptids, although most of the time are paranormal entities like ghosts and demons. Some examples of cryptids in the series are Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil and a Lake Monster. - Scooby-Doo: While most monsters have been made up from scratch for the franchise, the various series and movies have featured the likes of the Yeti, Loch Ness Monster, and chupacabra. - The Secret Saturdays: The whole premise of the show finding and dealing with cryptids. Creator Jay Stephens deliberately refused to use any of the more commonly-known creatures in the show, with the more popular cryptids only ever referenced as being past encounters at best. \|\|The only exception to this rule is the Yeti, which is the true identity of series villain V. V. Argost\|\|. - Globsters: These are unidentified organic masses of skin and organs that wash up on beaches from time to time. Globsters such as the "St. Augustine Monster" are often assumed to be cryptids, although necropsies may prove them to be known animal carcasses rendered hard to recognize by decomposition. - The United Kingdom has a history of mysterious big cats of various sorts (officially known as "ABCs" note : Anomalous, or Alien, Big Cats), for example the Beast of Bodmin Moor, the Beast of Exmoor, the Cotswolds Big Cat and the Galloway Puma. - Some of the stories are centuries-old and may derive from phantom dog legends, such as the Yeth Hound of Dartmoor (which inspired The Hound of the Baskervilles) and the Black Shuck of Suffolk (which inspired a song by The Darkness). - A lot of the more recent (ie. late twentieth century onwards) ones are usually attributed to pet big cats being released in the 1970s after the laws were changed to stop people owning big cats, or animals that had been held illegally which escaped or were released when they became too difficult to manage. Some sightings might possibly be explained as domestic cats (or, in Scotland, wildcat-domestic cat hybrids) that were seen near to a viewer being misinterpreted as larger animals seen further away. - Big cat stories got a fair bit of media coverage in the 1980s and 1990s, especially in the tabloids which exaggerated the stories and may have even made some of them up. In 1995, for example, a large cat skull was found in Cornwall shortly after a government report had disproved the existence of the Beast of Bodmin Moor. It was sent to London to be examined by the Natural History Museum, which determined that it was the skull of a leopard that had been dead for several decades and had likely come to Britain as part of a leopard-skin rug — leading to the conclusion that it had likely been planted in order to keep the "Beast" story going following the government report. - Although there have been less of these stories in the last few years, they do occasionally still crop up. - The Salawa was a dog-like cryptid blamed for dozens of attacks on humans in Egypt in the late 1990s. Authorities at the time didn't consider it much of a mystery - police killed one of the animals which they identified as a hyena, and suggested other attacks were likely feral dogs or fennec foxes note : Notably, an American television crew which investigated the killings followed an animal which matched descriptions of the Salawa, only to discover it was a particularly large fennec - but the Salawa received a lot of press coverage painting it either as an unknown monster or even an incarnation of the Egyptian God Set. - Brazilian Folklore has a number of creatures that are relatively recent legends, and are mix-and-match of real animals, like the Capelobo and the Mapinguari. - Europeans once thought a number of Real Life animals were this trope until they had hard proof of their existence. For example: - Komodo Dragon: \|\|Very large lizard.\|\| How its existence was deemed a myth is beyond us. - Mountain Gorilla: \|\|Great ape, cousin of the lowland gorilla\|\| Believed to be a native superstition until a German hunter killed two of them. - Okapi: \|\|What looks like a cross between a giraffe, a deer, and a zebra.\|\| Yeah, we wouldn't believe you, either. Even the people actively searching for it assumed it was an unidentified species of antelope, \|\|not a second extant giraffid\|\|. - Platypus: \|\|Like a beaver with a duck bill, except it also lays eggs and the males have venomous feet.\|\| Initially (and some would say reasonably) assumed to be the work of a rogue taxidermist.	https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OurCryptidsAreMoreMysterious

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